midot tovot good character

 The Chazon Ish pointed out in his small Musar book the importance of being strict in halacha. But what happens when there are conflicts in how to keep the strict law? Then you need an awareness of the order of importance of the laws. In this  learned from Musar books the importance of midot  tovot.in particular the Duties of the Hearts is found help to see what aspects of Torah to emphasize.

Without Musar it is very easy to lose sight of what is important in Torah law. So the aspects of Torah that i think are the most important are monotheism and good midot--''to be a mensch''

[This came up yesterday when I heard one girl is disparaging fanaticism. I did not interject my own two cents at the time, but afterward I mentioned that you have to be fanatic about being in the middle--to seek the middle ground between faith and reason. And in terms of Torah law that means not to add nor subtract. כל המוסיף גורע --ALL that add, end up subtracting.]

 There was tremendous pressure on Israel to leave the Sinai desert from the 1950's until 1967 from both the USA the Soviet Union. [that had been the source of constant raids on Israel until it was taken. ] Israel lost nothing by sticking up for itself. The courts of the Hague which are backed by the U.N. should better investigate the constant calls of the enemies of Israel for final solution of the Jewish problem.

As concerning the general situation in Israel, take the advice of my learning partner-[David Bronson from Uman]-people are just born one side of the issue or the other, and all the arguing in the world will not change anyone's mind. I have a lot of respect for that advice and for him. It is kind of like when you were in your high school algebra class, and the teacher asked  a question that you were sure of the answer. But before you could answer, the smart kid in the class was called on and gave a different answer. How confident are you now about your answer? Not very much. YOU go back and check it again and again before you feel prepared to answer,--or by that time you have discovered your miscalculation. That is the same way people ought to check and recheck their ''facts'' before having an opinion about what they really know next to nothing about. 

 

All Torah institutions should be dropped except Litvak yeshivot that follow the Gra , Reb Israel Salanter and Rav Shach.

 I can understand the  great LITVAK YESHIVOT who just want to sit and learn Torah, but I can't understand the religious world  that makes Torah into a shovel to dig their means of making a living. The whole religious world looks  like a private club that uses the money of secular Jews to make it run. The whole enterprise seems like fraud. They want to be an exclusive private club? Then let them pay for it themselves. To me it seems that anyone wants to support a worthy cause, they ought to volunteer for IDF or the friends of IDF. 

All Torah institutions should be dropped except Litvak yeshivot that follow the Gra , Reb Israel Salanter and Rav Shach. All the rest are pure garbage. 

[The yeshivot that I think are worthy are Ponovitch, Mir, Shar Yashuv,] 

reform in Israel

 My opinion about the the attempt at reform in Israel is mainly based on my little knowledge about the Constitution of the USA  in which James Madison and the other founding fathers made sure that no branch of government would be totally independent of the people.  So judges could not appoint themselves;--they needed to go through people that had been elected by the people. That is why in the  US, there is no such thing as a judge appointing his underlings. So I think judicial reform was quite in order in  Israel. Judges appointing themselves  to me seems like straight tyranny. And all the more so that now that same Israeli Supreme Court has voted itself the right to annul any law they do not like [for not being constitutional when there is no constitution!], and to also remove any member of parliament that they do not like,-- including the prime minister.  Even in Rome where the Senate and most public positions could be held only by the Patrician class, still no public office (including judges) could be held without a vote from the people of Rome. [I mean physical voting in Rome itself.] [Thus the signature  of Rome was SQPR. The Senate and the People of Rome.] There is a lesson from this that extends beyond just the confines of Rome or the USA.

 Politics I think got mixed up with philosophy in a way that tends to blur the lines. I feel that here is a great insight of the Chatam Sopher [Sorry that I forgot his name. That is the name of his book.] He felt that in learning he made sure to make a clear divide between each discipline.  When it comes to politics I think John Locke provides the greatest insights, but I would not say as much when it comes to his philosophy. And even though Kant and Leonard Nelson provide the greatest insights in philosophy, I think their ideas in politics are way too high in the clouds. [THE mix-up between philosophy and politics began with Plato. The road to clarity IN POLITICS began  when Rome by force of necessity [not from philosophy] made a compromise between the plebeians (--the people), and the SENATE. --The story was that the plebeians ran away and the patricians in instead of war offered them the office of the tribune and equal representation and authority for their  elected bodies of the commons [one for each tribe.]] I would be amiss if I did not mention Marx. The flaw that I have held about any system of government from my early youth is the principle that no matter how logical system is , if when put to empirical testing, it does not hold up, then it is wrong. Marxism predicts material abundance way beyond anything that the free market can provide. It does not pass its own test.

 According to the Talmud there is a point in learning fast even if one understands not a single word. it says ''forever a person should be ''gores'' (which means saying the words in order and going on" even though he forgets and even though he does not even know what he is saying.'' And in fact it seems impossible to get through the  Oral Law without doing this. The Oral Law  refers to the parts of the law which were no written until the Mishna and Talmud. [It means the two Talmuds and the midrashei halacha and midrashei agada] It does not refer to any commentaries that were written after the completion of the Talmud. but the many commentaries come under the category of learning the Oral Law. [In depth learning also is important. SO one needs both a fast session and a fast session.]

Some Rishonim that hold learning Physics and Metaphysics are also included in the mitzvah of learning the Oral Law as the Rambam says in the third chapter of Laws of Talmud Torah that ''the things called     Pardes are in the category of Gemara'' and he [the Rambam] defined those things called Pardes in the first four chapters of the Yad haHazaka, and at the end of those four chapters writes ''the subjects explained in these four chapters are what the sages called Pardes. 

 Rav Kook  held with nationalism while the Rav of Satmer [Reb Yoel] did not. and neither held from radical nationalism. To me, nationalism has always seemed to be weak.  It had a slow start.  Somewhere in English history there came an idea- ''England for the English''. Much later, under Louis IVX, it became much stronger. But for most of history, whatever area was ruled by a king--that was the nation. The king mattered, not the area, nor language, nor any sense of identity what so ever. 

[To me personally, keeping Torah is what mattered and matters. I have never been able to see any case for nationalism. Berkley came up with an idea that makes a lot of sense to me-- a nation is not a good in itself. It has a purpose: creating conditions that make human flourishing possible. Thus when it does not serve that purpose, it ha no legitimacy.][This I noticed in Danny Frederick [a libertarian critic of Michael Huemer  who believes in anarchy]. ]

Hegel is known for his defense of the metaphysical state. Hobhouse wrote a critique on that.--

Hegel [and Howard Bloom] are advocates for the collective while Kant is an advocate for the individual.