Ukraine was Russian territory since Tzar Alexei in 1654 until 1991. No wonder the Russians want it back.
Besides that everyone I talked with in the Ukraine whether in Uman or Kiev or Odessa thought things were better under Russian rule. But that was a surprise to me. I had thought everyone would have been happy at the fall of the USSR/ But as it turned out, people thought otherwise.
I wanted to mention at some point that I wish to make clear my dad's role in the U-2 project and the invention of the Infrared telescope. In both cases, I wrote here on my blog that I thought he did not get enough credit. But recently it was made clear. First of all, he had made the second camera for the U-2 that could see a toothpick from 20,000 feet. But that was rarely used because of its weight. The people that made the smaller camera that was the workhorse and did the photos over the USSR and Cuba got the credit they deserved.
And as for his invention of the infrared telescope, he did in fact get the credit that he deserved --not just in Life Magazine but in Time Magazine and on TV shows.
to accept on oneself the yoke of Torah is a help for oneself and the whole world as you can see in the Nefesh HaChaim of Rav Chaim of Voloshin vol IV. So when you see the world falling into chaos, the best thing is to set times to get through the two Talmuds and the midrashim. Commentaries on these also count as "learning Torah". The problem nowadays is there is too much pseudo Torah and false Torah. As we see in Sanhedrin that one who reads outside books has no portion in the next world. And the Rif and Rosh explain outside books are books that explain the Torah but have explanations that are not from the Two Talmuds or the Midrashim. That of course means almost 99.9% of all so calle Torah books today are pseudo Torah.
It occurred to me one reason why I have not merited to learn Torah [see the reason why Ilfa [who was learning Torah with R Yochanan] went to work, while R. Yochanan stayed to learn Torah.] the reason I believe was that I made my learning Torah contingent on circumstances. Before I got married, I made it clear that I was going to learn Torah, and that was that. My future bride asked, "But what if there is no money." I said, ''If it comes a day when there is no food and no money, I will go and work.'' [Just like Ilfa who made the same mistake.] and since I made my Torah learning dependent on circumstances, thus later even though there was plenty of food and money, my wife left me because I was learning Torah. and I was praying with the sidur of the Reshash [Sar Shalom Sharabi.] And then at that point , being a divorced older guy, I was no longer the type of person that yeshivot beg to come to them and lay out the red carpet. I was thrown out of every place I tried to sit and learn Torah. So eventually, I realized I had no place in the religious world, and went to the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, and went into Physics. [But that, in any case, was after I found support for this in the Chovot Levavot and the Guide for the Perplexed.]
I mention this because I see when one gets married he needs to be committed to learning Torah with no conditions attached and to marry a girl that is similarly committed.
People do not realize that pushing Russia they are playing with fire. Putin does not need 6000 nukes. Just one would destroy NY State and make the entire East Coast uninhabitable down to South Carolina. Ukraine would be the first to go, Then as the USA continues to "punish Russia" the West and East Coast will be then next to go. [That is why Russia has submarines. They are now sitting off the East and West coast of the USA--right now.]
Ukraine was ready to make a deal until the USA encouraged the government of Ukraine to continue fighting. Believe me, 99.9% of people in Uman prefer Russian rule rather than the leaders in Kiev. [i was in uman for years and talked with everyone I met about this exact issue.] No one benefits from the continued fighting.
z93 z93 nwcmy music background is not professional. i just write for myself. only a few years ago i found away to share with others a you can scattered on this blog different pieces with labels starting with when i began to share, plus some old music i wrote in high school and later in uman like the piece called mathematics.
Jesus is misunderstood. He did not say not to keep the commandments of the Torah. What he said about this specific subject is turned into its opposite in a feat of sophistry that even the most brilliant lawyer could never duplicate. [see sermon on the mount]
He never claimed worship or to be God.
But to be fair, Christians that take his words seriously tend to kindness towards others to a degree rarely seen anywhere else.
I should mention that Aquinas and Hegel did try to show the rational foundations of Christianity, but it seems to me that these two issues remain unanswered. I am not the first to notice them,- as you can see in the book of Saadia Gaon who also brings them up.
BUT I tend to see Aquinas as important for defending Divine Simplicity but not that he succeeded. Hegel also i see defending faith, but absorbing it into reason. Rather I think Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross do the best job in defending an approach which sees faith and reason as two separate areas of value. however these philosophers are unknown because Nelson was not translated and Kelley Ross wrote just his PhD thesis which goes into the Kant Friesian Approach in comprehensive depth. It is all just a side route in Kantian Philosophy which the West disregarded a long time ago.
Besides it deals with Kantian philosophy which asks how reason can recognize universals at all,-- while Michael Huemer [see his pre-graduate papers about objective morality ] deals with what reason can recognize among universals after you accept that it can do so in the first place. See Huemer proof of objective morality:(1) There are moral propositions.
(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)
in his paper: Reason, Objectivity, and Goodness.