When Litvak yeshivot mean to learn in depth, I think most people do not really understand what they mean. Even to me it seemed ridiculous. The first week in yeshiva you learn at most one page of gemara, And that does not mean to learn the commentaries at all. It means that there is inherent in the gemara itself that amount of depth that it takes at least a week of about 5 hours per day [in the morning session] to even begin to scratch the surface. And I freely admit that this really requires a very high IQ in the first place to see this. So when I was there just by force of circumstances I would read through all the commentaries that I could get my hands on. [For example the Shita Mekubetzet on the first page of Ketuboth is about twenty pages of tiny close lined print] but that was because I really was not on the level needed to see the depth on my ow,. And in fact never got there until many years later I began learning with David Bronson in Uman. and then I started getting the idea. [You can see a bit of this in my two booklets on Shas and Bava Metzia.]
Belief in God is rational. Everything has a cause. So unless there is a first cause, then you would have an infinite regress. And then nothing could exist. Therefore there must be a first cause. Therefore God, the first cause, exists. QED.
20.9.22
19.9.22
I noticed an odd fact. Julius Caesar was from the family of the Julii. The Julii were not originally Romans but rather from Alba which made war on Rome but the war was resolved by combat of three soldiers against three. The last one standing was a Roman so Alba came under Rome. But then in the next war against the Sabians, Alba rebelled. So Rome killed their commander who ordered his troops to defect. Then the city of Alba was destroyed and all the citizens were moved to Rome and some of their leading families were made patricians in the Senate. And one of those families was the Julii.
There is some irony here. on one hand Caesar was from a people that were not originally Roman. And he in fact was the end of the Roman Republic, Yet on the other hand, it is hard to think of any Roman greater than Caesar. There must be a lesson here about baali teshuva [don't trust the newly religious.]
[actually I can think of one roman who was greater than Caesar, i,e., the philosopher Plotinus.]
18.9.22
דאשתמש בתגא חלף "One who uses the crown passes away." מכאן אמרו כל הנהנה מדברי תורה נוטל חייו מן העולם "From here they said, 'Anyone who derives benefit from words of Torah, takes his life out of the world.'"
Pirkei Avot chapter 4 mishna 7. see commentary of Rambam who writes that the roshei yeshiva who say it isamitzvah to give money to yeshivot are liars It is a strong sort of language that you do not see usually in the words of the Rambam. But it seems that he saw that Torah was becoming a business and saw this would bring about a situation lie we see nowadays--when the vast majority of those who claim to be learning and teaching Torah are hypocrites.
