i have been pondering a difficult section in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach that brings a question of Reb Chaim of Brisk. The issue is a courier brings a divorce doc and says, "In front me it was written and in front    of me one witness signed." Rav Huna said either all in validation of the doc or all by the decree of the sages [that said he has to have seen both witnesses signing.] Reb Chaim of Brisk asks that  we see in Bava Batra pg 165 that one witness verbally and one in writing is considered a valid validation of the doc. [So what is the objection of Rav Huna? after all, it has been validated. ]Rav Shach brings a Ran [Rabbainu Nisim] that says one witness verbally and one in writing is considered a valid validation only when it does not concern laws that involve felonies that result in physical punishment. It applies only in cases of monetary disputes .

My intension in learning theArizal was because I had seen in Rav Moshe Haim Lutzato [Ramhal] the emphasis on doing so. That is in a small booklet attached at the end of Mesilat Yesharim. So my intension was not  for mystic powers or enlightenment. It was simply to continue my studies in the Oral Law. However there were side effects. One was when I got to Israel, the light that shines there did enter my soul in a powerful way. Another side benefit was that many of the questions that people have on the Written Torah evaporated since the Ari explains all the verses of Torah in a mystic fashion and he considers this to be the פשוט פששט simple explanation.

 Referendum if to join the Russian Federation. I had a friend in the Ukraine whose daughter was in the Crimea at the time of that referendum,  and she  became a Russian citizen instead of Ukraine. From my experience I can not see the people of those eastern regions as objecting to Russian citizenship. I think they will vote unanimously to join Russia.

 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.]

 z90 midi music file

 Rav Nahman said there is a evil inclination in the service of God of going overboard. It is hard to know what are the exact parameters of this. I for one took myself to study of the Ari while at the Mir Yeshiva in NY and this certainly can be considered to be going overboard. After all right at the Introduction of the Eitz Chaim you have the warning and oath of Rav Chaim Vital that no one should look at his book who has not fulfilled a set of enumerated conditions. Take a look at them and you will see that no one who has looked at that book can possibly have fulfilled those conditions in the couple hundred years. No one is fasting from after Shabat to the next kidush.

  

[not to leave the subject in the middle let me say that the issue still is unclear to me --since after all i think that this learning helped me in many ways. Still  i feel i jumped in too soon and still needed to do a lot more of Shas] at any rate i do think that learning the ari for some time helped prepare me for the land of israel and the amazing light which shines there. so i would have to say that rav shmuel berenbaum was right when i asked him about thissort of learning. he said first finish shas. i said i already did. he said do it again. [of course when reb smuel said finish shas he did not mean the way some do it. rather he meant beiyun with tosphot, maharsha and reb chaim of brisk. ] 

 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.]