In Shar Yashuv and the Mir there was a clear distinction between learning "bekiut" and learning "beiyun" (in depth)

While in high school --I was there during a vacation time. The assistant of the physics teacher told me an interesting idea about learning Physics [that is any Physics text]. He said you need to start at the beginning and go to the end. And go from the end to the beginning and to go from the middle outwards.

This I think is helpful when it comes to review. For example  lets say you learn in the way of Girsa גירסא [just saying the words and going on.] And lets say you have done that a few times with the same text book. But at some point you feel you need more review directly after learning some part of it. You do not want to wait until the second time around --by which time you have probably forgotten what you learnt. So you do review from the place you leave off and start towards the beginning.

[After all the sages did emphasize review  also besides the way of "Girsa"]


[In Shar Yashuv and the Mir there was a clear distinction between learning "bekiut" and learning "beiyun"  (in depth). The morning was for "beiyun" (in depth) and the afternoon for bekiut (fast).
In the Mir itself [in NY] the meaning of this was clear. The morning was to prepare for the class of the teachers. And the classes themselves were basically along the lines of Rav Haim of Brisk.

Bekiut just meant what it sounds like. Going through as much Gemara and Tosphot in order as possible. [So it was not exactly "Girsa"].

But for me I found myself somewhat lost in terms of the classes. So my morning hours were spent instead of preparing for the classes I learnt the Maharasha, Maharam and Pnei Yehoshua. [And what other commentaries I could find]]

But when I came to Physics I found the straight way of Girsa to be more effective. So what I think for people like me, it is best to do straight Girsa for a long time until you basically absorb the concepts by osmosis. And then to straight to concentrate on review.

Communism

You can see in Michael Huemer [Intuition-ists] and Dr Kelley Ross [the Kant-Fries School] that  they are not at all thrilled with Communism. Huemer even has a link to a whole web site of Communist crimes. Kelley Ross has a good intellectual defence of capitalism based on Kant's idea of individual autonomy. [That is a good defence and tightly woven into the structure of Kant's philosophy.]

Michael Humer has a particularly devastating critique on Communism.

[One of several essays of his that are masterpieces.]

On a separate note you can see the efforts of the USSR to change America into a communist socialist system in books that were based on the opened archives of the KGB and the GRU in the USSR. [See also the video of Bezmenov.]

And even though the communists made use of Hegel, they turned him upside down in order to do so. Hegel was the exact opposite of a Marxist.

To get a bigger picture of the penetration of communism into Western Civilization see Fire in the Minds of Men by Billington.

To see however the reasons for the rise of Lenin and Stalin it is useful to get a picture of Europe from 1876 until 1905. And then WWI.  They were confronting situations like the massacre of the goldmine workers in Russia. And also plenty of stuff that would not have been easy to answer with simple capitalism.
See Hobhouse who in spite of his critique of Socialism and in particular the Metaphysical State--agreed that straight laissez-faire capitalism had been tried in England and did not work.
Simply put if you look at the French Revolution and the history of Europe up until 1876 all you see is a big mess --all which started from the ideas of socialism of the French Revolution. But look after 1876 until 1918 you get an opposite picture.

Also Howard Bloom's the Lucifer Principle which is more or less a simple form of Hegel's super organism. Or as Blanshard puts it: No human good is possible without the state.

The religious world thinks of secular Jews as a problem

The religious world thinks of secular Jews as a problem.  A problem that needs to be solved delicately. [The religious need the money of secular Jews so they have to pretend to be "we are all one group". Along with the love bombing.]
The religious need that secular Jews  accept the leadership of the religious lunatics. But not to be equal to the frum [religious] but rather subservient.

To me it seems this is an unjustified attitude. I do not see the religious as being the super geniuses or moral giants they think they are.


The religious world seems to be sunk in a world of delusion of superiority. And that they attribute to the fact that they keep a few made up rituals that are not from the Torah at all.

[This is not meant as a critique on the authentic Litvak yeshivas [Brisk, Mir, Ponovitch, Shar Yashuv] where Torah is learned for its own sake.]

Bava Kama page 70 B

In Bava Kama page 70 B there is brought down that one who steals and then sells on Shabat does not have to pay the 4 and 5. [4 sheep in place of one sheep. 5 oxen in place of 1 ox.] Rav Papa said the sell and shabat came at once in case the buyer said throw your theft into my yard. The question the Gemara asks then is that that seems to be like R. Akiva who said קלוטה כמונחה דמיא an object that is thrown is like it is sitting. The Gemara answers it could be like the Sages [who disagree with R Akiva] also in the case the buyer said my yard will only acquire when the object lands.

In Gitin 78 a husband throws a divorce document at his wife from a roof top into her courtyard and it burns up before it hits the ground. She is divorced. The Gemara asks but the document was not in a guarded place? Rav Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel that is  a case where it got inside the walls of the yard. R. Aba asked Ula this seems to be like R. Yehuda Hanasi who said an object that is thrown is like it is sitting. Ula answered the sages who disagree with R Yehuda can agree with this since they can hold Shabat and acquiring are different to the sages.

Tosphot in Bava Kama asks on the statement there "It seems to be like R Akiva". He asks that even to R Akiva there is a problem since he also would said the object is not acquired until it gets inside the walls, but in terms of Shabat he would be liable right away as the object is above the walls. He answers the thief threw the object in through a window or side door. He then asks on the Gemara in Gitin why does it not ask "It seems to be like R Akiva?" [So what would the sages say?] Tosphot answers the case there is with walls while R Akiva hold the object is acquired even without walls.

The Maharsha, Maharam and Maharshal ask on this Tosphot that the start of Tosphot holds R Akiva would require walls and then says he would not.


I have not had a chance to take  a close look at these three comentaries,. But off hand it seems the end of Tosphot is dealing with the question why ask from R Yehuda. That is they are asking about the הווא אמינא. [What the Gemar is thinking at that point]. So to ask from R Yehuda the Gemara has tobe thinking R Akiva is different. While the beginning of Tosphot is going according to the idea there that the sages would make a difference between shabat and acquiring and that would presumably go for R Akiva also.

There is also a side question I thought of as I was looking at this subject. Lets say in fact that R Akiva does not require walls for acquiring as the Gemara thinks there at first. Then would not it make sense to drop the need for walls?

Next day: I did get a chance to glance at the Maharsha today and saw that he and the Maharam both answer the question on Tosphot in basically the same way as I did up above. And as for the second question. I was going to answer it that R. Akiva would not think that walls are sufficient since the divorce document needs to be in a guarded place before it can be valid. So even if walls would help for acquisition they would not help for the divorce. And today i saw that that is in fact what the Maharasha says right there.

Rav Nahman said not to be strict about anything.

Rav Nahman said not to be strict about anything. That is in terms of Jewish Law but also in terms of every day matters.

So for years I was not at all careful about carrying things in a public domain on Shabat. Sadly I can not learn Torah but I did get a chance to glance at a few pages in tractate Shabat and noticed that carrying is a big issue over there.

Even though you see the idea that a public domain in only where 600,000 people walk through  in Rashi and Tosphot and the Shulhan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo itself brings it. Still it does not seem to be in the Gemara itself. I even noticed in the Yerushalmi some incident where a sage accidental carried on Shabat said he would bring a sin offering when the Temple would be rebuilt.

How would that have been possible in Babylon? the Jewish cites there were minuscule. Just think about Rome at the peak of its power. It had about a million people.  How could small Jewish towns have had comparable numbers?

Creation ex nihilo [from nothing] comes up in the book of Rav Nahman of Breslov in in LeM vol 1 chapter 4.

The idea of Creation ex nihilo [from nothing] comes up in the book of Rav Nahman of Breslov in in LeM vol 1 chapter 4. So it is hard for me to figure out why some people think that the Torah and or Rav Nahman held by pantheism.

Torah that comes from the halls of delusion

In the LeM of Rav Nahman [Collections of Rav nahman] you find the idea of Torah that comes from the halls of delusion. That is in volume I. Chapter 245.

In the השמטות [left out parts] you also find this idea of Torah of the Sitra Achra [the Realm of Evil]

The basic idea there is that  there are Torah lessons which come from the kelipot [forces of evil].

That is to say --in order to merit to true and authentic Torah takes a great deal of self sacrifice in the service of God.

Not just people that cl;aim to be giving over Torah lessons, Rav Nahman finds highly suspect;-but also doing things which you think are good deeds ma very well not be good deeds. As the LeM starts out Vol I chapter 1 "the evil inclination is dressed in mitzvot" היצר הרע מתלבש במצוות