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8.10.23

 Even though the Litvak world is about as close to the Gra as anyone could get, I still find a few things,  amiss. What about the herem of the Gra that is completely ignored? And I find this to be the root of many other things that are amiss. [Nor do I claim to be innocent in this regard. For I do learn the books  of Rav Nahman of Breslov. bBut I do have a reason for that. That is that after looking at a book that contained the original herems including that of the Gra, I noted that Rav Nahman would not be in that category. ]

7.10.23

 I think it is agreed that the Hegelian attempt to replace Aristotelian logic with his own was not successful. Even though there are fuzzy logics,  they have nothing in common with Hegel. The many attempts to discard Kant and the distinction between a priori and empirical truths have also not proven to be valid as Robert Hanna has pointed out. [Michael Huemer however goes along with Prichard and what are called the intuitionists, that school comes from G.E. Moore and to some degree is the beginning of the Analytic School which Robert Hanna has rightfully put into its place. However, I still can not decide the winner. To me it seems like a draw between the Friesian school based on Kant [i.e. Kelley Ross] and Huemer. 

6.10.23

to get through the two Talmuds

Simchat Torah is the best time to make a commitment to get through the two Talmuds with all the commentaries-every day to do a few pages with Rashi, Tosphot and Maharsha.  Beside that to do a few in depth sessions with the Reb Chaim of Brisk [Chidushai Harabam] and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri.

the Talmud asks since only the light of Torah can bring a person to the revival of the dead, [as is mentioned in the verse -טל תורה מחייה אותו that the dew of Torah will ring a person to be revived at the time of the revival of the dead] then how can women merit to a portion in the next world [since women are not obligated in the commandment to learn Torah -    so they get no reward by doing so]. The Gemara answers by bringing up their children to learn Torah and waiting for their husband to return from the study hall.

5.10.23

 I was looking at the Gate of Intentions by Rav Chaim Vital about Sukot, and it mentions there the importance of repentance on the night of Hoshana Raba. [The 7th day of Sukot after midnight] That is when the memo is given to the angels that was sealed on Yom Kipur. There it says there is still hope to repent before the angel of judgment gets the memo. But how to repent or on what to repent is the question. The most obvious answer is to learn Musar [books of ethics].  This is because every person is on their own path and can't know what they are doing wrong except by seeing what others do wrong. כל הפוסל במומו פוסל, all who cancel cancel with their own defect. SO only by seeing what is wrong with others, can one see what is wrong with himself.

4.10.23

 There is a fine line between exploitation and a  legitimate structuring of society. A hierarchy of a group is a natural phenomenon in all mammals and ants and lobsters.   To see all hierarchy as exploitation is a mistake. But there can be exploitation also--and often it is not easy to see the difference. You need a balance as the ancient Romans had figured out when there was a peasant rebellion, and instead of making war against them, someone had the brilliant idea of creating institutions that would insure the lives and liberties of the people while leaving the patricians in power to insure law and order. Thus was created the office of the tribune.


    Everyone has a place and just because one is low in the hierarchy  that does nor mean he or she is exploited. But there is a line that can be crossed. The advantage of  some systems is they give one the chance to excel based on ability and competence--not birth.

 I am not doing much in depth learning nowadays, but just occurred to me at the beach to ask an obvious question. With a gift we say that if the external circumstances show it was given with a mistaken assumption, then the gift is invalid--even though it was signed and sealed in a legitimate court of law according to halacha. To Tosphot [Ketuboth 37] this applies also to sales. But a forced sale is valid. You might answer that in a forced sale, there is no mistake about the circumstances. But even in the first case, it seems that the mistake in circumstance also ''forced'' the sale.


What I mean here you can see in a few examples. Let's say a person has heard that his son died in a faraway country, and then signs away all his property. Then we discover that his son is alive. We say that gift is invalid. 

But if someone ties up a person, and forces him to sign a document of a sale, that sale is valid- since we say because of the circumstances, he really did intend for the sale to be complete and valid. 

3.10.23

     Even though a lot of the woke and gender insanity depends on the Frankfurt School, that does not mean that Kant and Hegel had nothing to say of importance. Rather it is indicative of where philosophy  went wrong after them. And there were a lot of false leads and trails that veered off into lunacy. But it is hard to get to some sort of '''' birur'' [separating the wheat from the chaff].   High I.Q. does not seem to help much, since the philosophy professors in the USA universities are very smart.  [The highest I.Q.s in universities are the physics and math students and teachers, while the lowest are the teachers in the psychology departments.]