On the issue of idolatry in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, on page 60

To explain what I mean, let me give a little introduction.
In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, on page 60, we find a teaching [called a "braita"] which tells us how do we know one is liable if he serves idolatry not according to its usual way. It says: We learn it from "He who sacrifices to the gods will be destroyed ." [Exodus 22] (i.e. If sacrifice is the usual way, then why mention it? It is already included in "How do they serve?" So it must be coming to tell us also not in its usual way is liable.)
Rava asks, why can't we learn instead from "least  he will bow?"((Deuteronomy 17))
Rav Acha asks on Rava if we would learn from bowing then what would "How do the nations serve their gods"(Deuteronomy 22)  come to tell us?

Why does Rav Acha not ask this same question on the original braita? That is the question both topshot and the Baal HaMeor ask.

Before I go further let me offer a little explanation. The point of the Gemara here is that we have two verses telling us the same thing. They intersect the same set.
The answer of the Meor HaGadol is yes they do intersect the same set but you might have thought they don't. You might have learning from "least he sacrifice" to make forbidden also things that are not the way of that idol, and yet still in the way of honor like kissing an idol that one usually hugs.

That is the verse "How do they serve" come in fact come to exclude something you might have thought even though in fact "sacrifice" does not forbid things of honor that are not the way of that idol.

Tosphot develops a different line of logic. He starts out showing that "How do they serve" comes to tell us at least things that are forbidden. His point is that even though the Gemara does finds something to it comes to permit still it is implicit that it forbids some things. So since the fact of the matter is that "He who sacrfices to the gods will be destroyed" (Exodus 22)  and "How do they serve?" (Deuteronomy 22) in fact intersect the exact same set of permitted things,  we have to understand the original question of the Gemara as being all inclusive what at all does "How do they serve?" come to tell us--that is even forbidden things. Because Tosphot is saying that we would learn everything from "bowing" even service according to its way-- even not in the way of honor.


Appendix

But I might add a little background information for people that have only a little bit of experience with learning Gemara.

[1] Service to an idol is forbidden in two ways. One way is service that is usually done to that idol, like throwing stones at an idol that that is its way of worship. That is even though throwing stones at something is usually considered as disrespect, still if it is the way of that idol  then one is liable.


Another way something can be forbidden is if it is one of four types of serve pouring wine, burning incense, sacrificing an animal or bowing.

[2] People can be objects of idolatry. This fact is not relevant to the above essay but still important to keep in mind.
But the Talmud itself does not go into much detail about what can be an object of idolatry. It was written in Babylon where the distinction between Jews going to their Temple and praying was clearly different from worshipers of idols going to their places of worship. Only much later did people like Saadia Geon and Maimonides have to deal with the issue of what can be an object of idolatry. But the fact that this is not talked about much in the Talmud means the issue remains blurry.












I want to show here a little of the depths of Tosphot. There is one line in Topshot that says something that seems to not fit the rest of what he is saying. I have already pointed this out that this kind of thing is found in almost every Tosphot in Shas. At first glance it seems like a mistake. Then after you think about it you start to see the point. And much later you realize that he was saying something essential to his argument. Before Tosphot states his answer he says "and without 'How do they serve?' we would not know service according to its way not in a way of honor would be forbidden." True, but it seems to be the opposite of what he is trying to say. What could his point be? And it can't be part of his answer which says just the opposite. I want here to say that Topshot is reinforcing his question-in this way: We know that, "How do they serve?" has no intersection with bowing or with sacrifice, so what could the question of Rav Acha be? Of course we need "How do they serve?" We would not forbid throwing stones at Markulis (an idol that one serves by throwing stones) without "How do they serve?" So we have to say there is some intersection with bowing that we would not have with sacrifice. Tosphot is trying to get to his point that bowing would forbid quadrant IV (Its way and not a way of honor). But here his point is that without saying that "bowing" forbids something in quadrant IV, we would not ask "What does 'how do they serve' permit?" We would not ask such a question unless it did not forbid something. So Tosphot is asking two questions. Why does Rav Acha not ask on "sacrifice" also? If you learn from "sacrifice" then what does "How do they serve" permit? So the Gemara has to mean that it has gone through the options of what "How do they serve?" might forbid and found nothing. How is that possible? It must be because "bowing" forbids everything that "how do they serve" forbids. And if "bowing" would not forbid something in quadrant IV then the question would not even start because we would need "How do they serve?" for that quadrant. A simpler way of putting this is this: Tosphot considers the question of the Gemara in two ways. He asks himself: "What does it mean to ask what do we need 'how do they serve?'? Does it mean, what does it forbid? But that can't be because we know it forbids something that neither "bowing" nor "sacrifice" forbid --i.e. all of quadrant IV. Then maybe it means, what does it permit? But that also can't be because then why ask it only on "bowing" and not on sacrifice also? (Because both "sacrifice" and "bowing" and "How do they serve?" all allow quadrant III.) Tosphot concludes that therefore we have to say that "bowing" and "How do they serve?" that both forbid quadrant IV and that is the reason the Gemara asks only on "bowing." The Meor Hagadol asks the same question but as I mentioned he answers it differently. He says we use "How to they serve?" (Deuteronomy 22) to tell us things in quadrant II are permitted that we might have thought are forbidden e.g. kissing an idol that one usually hugs. That is a good usage. But we can't do the same thing with "bowing" because "bowing" in fact forbids that very thing. Appendix 1) I wanted to add one small detail that I hope was clear. It is that if we learn from "bowing" then all quadrant II would be forbidden--i.e. service not like the normal way and yet in the way of honor. But in fact we do not learn from "bowing" anything except to tell us that it is a forbidden kind of worship towards any idol. The verse that we do learn from is "least he go and sacrifice" and that tells us all types of service that were done in the Temple are forbidden-not just any kind of honor.] 2) I also wanted to add a point that I skipped in the above essay because I thought it would detract from the continuity. It is the reason why Topshot is considering the question of the Gemara in two opposite ways. I.e. what does, "How do they serve come to exclude?" clearly the Gemara clearly tries to find what does, "How do they serve?" come to permit. So why does Topshot treat it as, "What does it come to forbid?" The reason is contained in the very cryptic phrases of Tosphot. He exclude the possibilities of coming to permit because what ever bowing permits sacrifice will permit more. So Tosphot is showing why he has to go to the opposite direction. 3)Tosphot thinks that there is no way that "sacrifice" can possibly be expanded to all of quadrant II (not the way of that idol but honorable service). And therefore there is no reason we would need how to they serve to eliminate it. That is the essential reason he disagrees with the Meor Hagadol. And in that he seems to have a good point. And Tosphot does not need a extra verse to tell us that all kinds of serve done with honor are forbidden because the gemara understands that that is the essential meaning of bowing.[Actually this last point I am a little fuzzy on. Why would Tosphot not need a verse to expand bowing to all the things he wants to expand it to?!!!] 4) One thing I did not mention is that according to way of thinking of the Meor HaGadol when there might have been a prohibition for all of quadrant IV and "how do they serve?" tells us that there is in fact no liability there then how to we know which direction is determinate? But why? Maybe we should go with the idea that that area is forbidden and use "how do they serve" for something else?!  

Talmud Sanhedrin page 61a.



We have a outside teaching--(a braita) that says we know you can't serve idols in a way that is not usual from the verse "He who sacrifices to the gods will be destroyed."[Exodus 22] Rava asks: "Why not learn this from "He will  bow?"[Deuteronomy 17]
Rav Acha asks on this question of Rava thus: If we would learn from "bowing" then what would "How do they serve?" ([Deuteronomy 12) come to tell us?
Tosphot asks on this question of Rav Acha why did he not ask it on the the original Braita where we learn from "sacrifice?"

allow HaMeor





The Gemara in Sanhedrin page 61a and the second Topshot that starts, "How do they serve?"


________________________________________________________________

Appendix:
Idolatry should not be worshiped in one of two ways. One is its normal service and the other is not its normal service. The not normal service in order to be liable needs to be either sacrifice, burning, pouring, or bowing. If one just hugs it, then he is not liable (if that is not the usual way of worship).

But the idea of the normal way of worship is a bit frightening. What if someone says, "Give me charity, and I promise you a good year?" Is that idolatry if someone gives him money? It certainly seems so. After all it seems the basic implication is that the person involved is claiming Divine powers. And that seems to be all one needs in order to be considered an idol.

Not all religions are created equal. The troubling issue with Islam is that when given a chance to vote they vote for fanatic Islam. This was unexpected. George Bush II thought he would take a dictator out of the picture in Iraq, and everything would be hunky dory. The reason he thought this was because much of politics during the twentieth century revolved around the question of Communism verse Capitalism. These were the only two options.  People in the USA thought that when the USSR fell, people world wide and especially in the Middle East would automatically gravitate towards capitalism and democracy. No one thought people in the Middle East would use democracy process to vote for terroristic Islam.

It is hard for me to imagine how to defend Torah without philosophy.

That is I think that knowledge has to come from either material evidence or reason or something else. And I can’t see how material evidence supports the Torah. Nor can I see much in the way of reason except for the basic principles of faith. In fact I have to go towards non intuitive immediate knowledge.

Now I think that Orthodox Judaism today is based on the school of thought of the Ramban (Moshe ben Nachman) -- that is the fusion of Kabalah with Talmud.
[That is to say that Orthodox Judaism is not based on Maimonides in terms of world view but rather  Nachmanides]. And since that is the case many Orthodox Jews do not feel the need to defend themselves against questions based on reason. Because in the first place they are not thinking of anything outside of Torah as having any validity. Now I can't argue against that but personally I think the Rambam Maimonides was right.

The learning of philosophy  does  little to advance peoples' fear of God. Plus philosophy seems to have sunk into an abyss in the last hundred years. Analytic philosophy is based on a mistake. While the critique of Wittgenstein on Frege's expanded idea of the a priori was true, analytic philosophy assumed this proved Kant's idea of the a priori was also not true.  [Kelly Ross: For most of L/AP, the counterexamples to the principle of sense determining reference were used to deny that there were intentional senses -- often then used as evidence that meaning is extensional, i.e. consisting of the individuals to which the terms referred. Katz, however, properly argues that they only refute Frege's theory of senses, specifically the part of the theory that holds that sense determines reference. There are intentional senses; but sense does not determine reference. It's simple. But, unfortunately, it provides no traction for the project of the tradition to reject metaphysics. Thus, Katz introduces an "autonomous" theory of sense, that issues and truths involving sense are independent of issues and truths involving reference. This enables him to shed one mistake after another that was put forward by Wittgenstein or Quine.][Frege wanted to improve on Kant's notion of analytic truth by making it more "fruitful." Thus, the analytic meaning of any concept consists of definitions and all the implications derivable from those by the laws of logic. But As Katz says, If the content of concepts is determined on the basis of laws of logic, then there can be no concepts.This blows away Frege's theory, but the point, naturally, was used by Wittgenstein to deny intentional senses altogether (in favor of his "usage," behaviorist, theory of meaning). Katz simply points out that it recoils only on Frege's, not on Kant's, conception of analyticity.] So all twentieth century analytic philosophy is based on a simple mistake.

Also I should mention  that even though I think the Rambam the truth and the light, I still see the other Rishonim (medieval authorities) as having valid points and critiques. 

Dr. Kelly Ross on the State of Israel.

Dr. Kelly Ross on the State of Israel.



[This is a short version of his essay. In it he takes his basic viewpoint based on Kant and Fries and applies it to the situation in Israel. You can see right away his basic  approach is based on Kant's idea of individual moral autonomy.]


"Two questions are relevant: (1) Does Israel have a right to exist? and (2) Is Israel a just state? For the first question, we must also ask what it means. If Israel does not have a "right" to exist, does this mean that Jews don't have a right to live there and should be expelled or "driven into the sea"? The answers to all these questions, of course, depend on one's principles. In liberal and individualist terms, no state has a "right to exist." States exist, as Locke believed and Jefferson said, "to secure these rights," i.e. individual rights of life, liberty, and property. In those terms, Israeli Jews have every right to be where they are, in safety and security. Whether Israel then has the right to exist as such then depends on whether, in liberal terms, it is a just state. Unfortunately, the answer is that it isn't. Israeli Arabs may be freer, safer, wealthier, and more secure than the citizens of any Arab country, but they are not citizens in the same way, with the same duties and privileges, as Israeli Jews. Israel is not a liberal state, where all citizens have the same individual and interchangeable rights and responsibilities; it is an ethnic state, founded and devoted to the Jewish People, whose rights and obligations, as a group, are different from non-Jewish Israelis.







If Israel is not a just state, one might ask, does this mean that the Arab cause should simply be supported? Not if the Arab cause would fail to produce a state any more just than Israel. Israeli Arabs do not have much political power, but they have some. In Arab states, which are generally monarchies, dictatorships, or one party states, minorities (except in Lebanon), not to mention the mass of citizens, have little or no political power. If Israel were overthrown by force, it is hard to imagine, even if there was not a general massacre or expulsion, that a government could conceivably be established that would have the kind of freedom and political rights that would be necessary for a peaceful and equitable solution and for the communities to live together. What doesn't exist in any Arab state is not something that would be likely in a new Arab Palestine; and the way that Yasser Arafat ran the Palestinian Authority, with corruption, assassinations, etc., is not the kind of thing to suggest anything different. Arab countries simply do not have the kind of political tradition or cultural background that is necessary for democratic and liberal government. That a vicious, cynical, murderous tyrant like Saddam Hussein should be as popular as he was, and should have remained in power in Iraq so long as he did, is testament to the pathetic level of Arab moral maturity and political sophistication. We see this again, after the death of Yasser Arafat, when the radical Islamist and terrorist Hamas party won the general elections in the Palestinian Territories.

The Zionists, in short, bought themselves a world of trouble, and trouble for the rest of the world as well. Zionist ideology of collective national rights and aspirations was nothing special in 1900. It was never commensurable with the liberal principles of the Enlightenment, but now it pales in comparison to the overtly apocalyptic, totalitarian, and terrorist ideology of contemporary Militant Islâm -- in reaction, not just to Israel, but to the liberal, tolerant, commercial principles of Western states whose laws make no religious, ethnic, or national distinctions themselves. The anti-Israeli cause is now an anti-Western, anti-capitalist cause. Israel can identify itself with the West to benefit from this conflict, even if it is not the best representative of those Western values.

Much of the appeal of Zionism to Jews, then, was simply out of a sense of not being at the mercy of others. If you can protect yourself, you don't need to rely on the good will of people who, even if they actually are of good will, may change their minds or be replaced by lunatics. If nothing else, Israel changed the age-old impression of Jews as passive, frightened, weak, helpless, and, as any Nietzschean could tell you, contemptible. Instead, everyone knows what the Jewish army, the Jewish air force, and Jewish secret agents can do; and the hatred of the enemies of Israel has now for long been mixed with fear. Rather than a race of short, dark, stooped, and timid peddlers or bookworms, the modern Israeli emerges tall, golden, fit, confident, and forceful.

While it has always been possible to make reasonable arguments that are anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic, at this point things are well beyond that. The Islamic world is awash with a tide of naked Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism that draws on every source available, freely recycling Tsarist, Nazi, and Soviet propaganda, even while trying to label Israelis as the true Nazis. Lofty moral critiques of settlement policies rub shoulders with portrayals of Jews as pigs. Westerns may not see much of this, which mainly exists in Arabic and the other languages of Islam and is carefully ignored, if not denied, by apologists speaking to European or American audiences. Fortunately, it is available to the curious and the concerned through tireless translation projects. Yet some of the worst stuff turns up in textbooks used in American, and not always Muslim, schools.

Which brings me back to necessity. Zionists may not have believed that there was ever anything but anti-Jewish hostility on the part of the Arabs, and the development of events has provided little evidence that such a judgment would have been wrong.




... Indeed, not long ago Palestinians seemed to have a clearer sense that they were being used by Arab governments. Even as many of those governments have now been overthrown, they may think that Islam promises a unified force behind them; but the appeal in all this is still to a pure ethic of violence, in which no sensible Israeli is ever likely to find a hint of good will, let alone an inducement to compromise their security. 

Recollecting arguments that I used to have, mainly in the late 60's and early 70's, with Israelis and American Jews, about Israel, one thing now strikes me as noteworthy and revealing. Although essentially taking a throughly pro-Palestianian position and denying the legitimacy of Israel, what I faced were always earnest arguments and never any kind of hostility, threat, insult, or abuse. I don't think I was ever even accused of anti-Semitism. This was driven home to me when I later ran afoul of Assyrian nationalists, whose initial response to questions about the historicity of their connection to ancient Assyria (which was annihilated in 609 BC) typically seemed to be threats and abuse, with strangely inappropriate doses of anti-Semitism thrown in. The behavior of the Assyrians seemed all too much like the attitude of Muslims who think that "insults" to Islam must be immediately met with deadly force. In general, I have never known Jews to be like that.





As Israel drifts towards a more conservative and more observant vision, the Temple Mount becomes more than just symbolic; but as contemporary Islâm becomes more militant, the same effect also occurs. Sharon's visit, therefore, was incendiary. Israeli forces had withdrawn from most cities in the West Bank and Gaza, but negotiations were reaching an impass on a final settlement. Arafat was still asking for a "right of return" for Palestinians. This was probably more than any Israeli government could grant. So violent struggle again became the Palestinian approach, with the growing use of suicide bombers, even including young women. This continued for several years, despite devastating military action by Israel, with episodes of reoccupying Palestinian cities and refugee camps, often leaving them in ruins, either as retaliation or in the attempt to hunt down the bomb makers. Accusations of massacres have not been confirmed by neutral observers, but looting and vandalism by Israeli troops seems to have occurred. Considering the terror and horror of the suicide attacks, one can hardly blame them, but it is certainly not making things any better. The more suffering and humiliation that the Israelis inflict, it may be that the more determined and hostile that the Palestinians become.


 Although Israel has had generally peaceful and normal relations with Egypt and Jordan, the sympathies of the Arab public at large are entirely for the Palestinians, and increasingly for Islamic militants. In a way, only the non-democratic nature of these countries may have stood in the way of the general renewal of war. It was always possible that radicals could overthrow moderate governments, as almost seemed to occur when Anwar Sadat was assassinated. By 2012, of course, the Mubarak regime in Egypt has been overthrown and the (strictly speaking illegal) Muslim Brotherhood elected in both parliament and presidency. The military has displayed some reluctance to give this government real power, but the trend is clearly headed towards the worst result of Islamic radicalism, belligerence, and terrorism. The Christian Copts come under frequent physical and judicial attacks. Although Israel continues to be upbraided by the Left, including some radical Jews, for not making peace with the Palestinians, accommodation is now what is furthest from the minds of Hamas and its radical allies. 

What the prudent course is for the Israelis is not obvious. If the Palestinians in general are really irredeemably hostile and unreconcilable to Israel, then a hermetic division of the country and a sealing off of Israel, as it was from 1948 to 1967, may be the only way to prevent terrorism. But this would also mean returning Israel to something like an island existence, from the countries with whom it could have safe intercourse. That is not a life and world that anyone would like to have. This would also give the Arab world the impression of a people at bay. A dangerous people, to be sure, since it is an open secret that Israel has nuclear weapons, but the way things are going, there are many Arabs, and certainly many Palestinians, who would settle for a great deal of mutual destruction if only Israel itself could be wiped out. This is the very stuff of the apocalypse.

Since I wrote the last paragraph in 2002, Israel has gone a long way towards just such a hermetic division. A wall is being constructed dividing Israel from Palestinian territory. This already seems to be largely effective in ending the infiltration of suicide bombers into Israel. However, it also encompasses more than pre-1967 Israel, including some West Bank settlements and strategic positions. This was vigorously protested by the Palestinian Authority and ruled illegal by the International Court in the Hague. On the other hand, Ariel Sharon removed Israeli settlements from Gaza, despite fierce resistance and protest from Israeli settlers. The wall implies that many West Bank settlements will be removed like the ones in Gaza. On Jerusalem, however, there seems to be no compromise contemplated. The wall will exclude some but include other majority Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, including the Old City.

The somber lesson of it all, however, is that collective rights easily produce large scale conflicts that often can be resolved only by force. With individual rights, conflicts are much smaller and can be addressed by the laws of property and contract. Where force is used in the large conflicts, it means war. Where force is used in the small conflicts, it is simply called "crime" -- or "self-defense," depending on the circumstances. The irony of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the Palestinians, who would benefit the most from principles of individual rights, especially property rights, are politically in the camp of those who are the most hostile, not just to individual rights, but to the civilization and countries that are the originators and principal exemplars of such rights. After the modest hopes of the "Arab Spring" in 2011, it looks like the success of the radicals is making all of this much worse, not better. What Talleyrand said of one of Napoleon's judicial murders, we might now say of Palestinian and Islamic terrorism: "It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake.""

The subject of idolatry and the adjacent subject of one who tries to convince another person to do idolatry.

Normally, you would say these are two completely different subjects right?

But in fact they seem to be related in some kind of mysterious way.
First in Sanhedrin page 61a we find the Talmud saying that there is a contradiction between two Mishnas-- one on page 60b and the other on page 67a. The first Mishna says doing idolatry is liable. The other says saying, "Let's go do idolatry is liable." The Talmud says there seems to be a contradiction. Because according to the first Mishna it seems just saying to do idolatry would not be liable. Why would this be a contradiction?
What I mean is this: the Mishna is listing things one is liable for. It goes through a list. One is idolatry and then you get other things in later Mishnas that one is liable for, and then it brings the idea of convincing others to do idolatry. Clearly in the view of the Mishna these are two different subjects.



Furthermore the later Mishna is clearly talking about one who tries to convert  another to idolatry "Meisit U Madiach"; so why does it include "I will go and serve."

I.e. it says these are liable: One who says, "I will go and serve," "Let's go and serve," "I will go and bow," Let's go and bow," "I will go and sacrifice," "Lets go and sacrifice." Why does, "I will go and serve" have anything to be liable for?

On the subject of idolatry my learning partner and I discussed the opinion of the Rambam (Maimonides) that many mitzvoth of the Torah are to make a fence around idolatry and to wean people from it. This is in the Guide for the Perplexed.
The Ramban (Nachmanides) disagrees with this idea of the Rambam. And it was in the Ramban that my learning partner first discovered the idea of the Rambam --when the Ramban brought it in order to disagree.







The last question for today is the difference between when one tries to seduce a single person and trying to seduce two people. With one -person you give him a second chance. You take him to a place where you have hidden two witnesses and ask him to repeat what he said. And you answer, “How can we abandon the God of our fathers and worship other gods?” If he agrees to your objection you let him go. But in the case when he says to two people "let's do idolatry" they take him to court immediately and you don't give him a second chance.

Now what constitutes idolatry? Maimonides says that worship of an intermediary is the real essence of idolatry. But I have been having trouble understanding this idea of the Rambam for some time. Because we do find in the Torah that Avimelech was commanded by God to go to Abraham to ask him to pray for him.
So we do find in the Torah the idea of an intermediary but we don't find that one can worship an intermediary.

A pressing problem today is the ease of genetically engineering and manipulation of viruses and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. These two thing together make the world we live in a dangerous place. For Muslims there is no such thing as  a deterrent. And deterrent (mutually assured destruction) was the only thing in the past that kept the world safe. How do you deter someone who is set on doing a suicide bombing of innocents?
 Islam provides good justification for murder of innocents --the promise of reward in the next world for anyone dying in jihad against infidels.

While religious fever is a normal human trait, but a religious Jew has other things on his mind than Jihad. A person that is Jewish and gets somewhat fanatic, will spend all day long learning Torah or go to Uman for Rosh Hashanah. A Christian who becomes fanatic will spend his or her time in some soup kitchen. A Muslim who becomes fanatic blows up Jews and Christians. There is no parity here. Islam is a religion of peace only for Muslims that do not believe it. It is a religion of war for the Muslims that do believe in it and for their victims.

And today with the ease of manipulation of viruses, Jihad against the West becomes more of a practical possibility for Muslims in a fairly easy way.

My recommendation would be to send in a few Jesuits. In fact that might be the only practical advice I could give. I was thinking if perhaps to send in a few Mirrer Yeshiva students but that seems less practical. Thought it might be desirable. After all the best option would be to teach them Torah. But Jesuits have had traditionally more success in that direction.