How to learn Talmud-

  Soncino Talmuds are excellent.
Also you might want to get a large Hebrew English dictionary and a Jastrow (for Aramaic). This is just for a general introduction. The minimum level of learning everyone needs to get to in Talmud is to read and understand every Tosphot on the page and to be able to see the obvious questions.


The secret of Tosphot is that in every Tosphot there is some place that on the surface seems problematic. It is either a phrase or an idea that Tosphot introduces that seems to be out of place. It is in these spots that Tosphot plants the deepest ideas. (I learned to spot these areas when I learned with Rav Naphtali Yeger in Far Rockaway. Later when in the Mirrer Yeshiva in NY, I discovered that most people are not aware of the deeper aspects of Tosphot, but there there still was very high level of learning. But every person can discover this for himself if he is willing to spend the time on a Tosphot that is required. For people like me that is a lot of time. Like a week usually.)

Also, it is important to know that on every tractate there are one or two major akhronim (later authorities written after 1520) which are very important to learn. (Though I do knock the so called later authorities, but I am not referring to people that wrote on the Talmud itself. When I knock acharonim (later authorities), I am referring usually to people that wrote on halacha (like modern day pseudo halacha books). I would never dream of disparaging people like Rav Shach, R. Akiva Eiger or the Pnei Yehoshua (פני יהושע).

As for the Hidushei Ha'Rambam (חידושי הרמב''ם) of Rav Haim Soloveitchik, (commonly called חידושי רב חיים)-- it was the path of Reb Shmuel Berenbaum (of the Mir in New York). But this path has a great danger to it. It is easily misused by people that don't understand the Gemara itself. Quoting Reb Soloveitchik, or making up principles (yesodot) along his lines, provides an easy way for sounding like one knows how to learn (i.e. understand the Gemara). It is like giving a weapon into the hands of children.




So to learn Gemara you need to take just one Tosphot and learn it until you can answer these basic questions: What is Rashi saying? What is the Ri (R. Isaac) saying? Why does the Ri (R. Isaac Hazaken) disagree with Rashi. This is called learning. Most people skip this step. They think by jumping into questions of Reb Haim Soloveitchik that they can sound profound without understanding the basic page of the Talmud. And by skipping this step they are skipping something important for our day and age. Because inside of Tosphot  is a whole sub-layer which does not get revealed until you start noticing small questions inside the Tosphot. This layer is something that people during the Middle Ages learned how to include in their writings without openly saying so.

If you have gotten to that step, the next step depends on faith. If you understand Tosphot, then you believe that there is a whole sub-level inside of Tosphot that you are missing. And you keep working and repeating the same Tosphot day after day. At some point you start noticing things that you did not notice before, and a whole sub-level opens up. [This last step can be really frustrating. Sometimes it happens when you notice that there are lots variables flying around in the Gemara that Tosphot is not mentioning but they make a difference when it comes to understanding Tosphot. But sometimes no. This last step is hard because there is no way to predict how long you have to keep on reviewing one Tosphot until something that seems simple you see starts to becomes complex.] If you absolutely can't spend this type of time on it, then at least learn the Maharsha and the Pnei Yehoshua (or the major akhron on that tractate. Like for Yevamot go to the Arukh LaNer.)-and then go on. (That is incidentally how I did it. I admit to get through Shas I could never have spent this kind of time on every Tosphot. But if one is not exposed to this type of learning at a young age, he never discovers this depth inside the Talmud. That is why at least some time has to be spent with people that can do this deep learning inside of Tosphot. The sad thing is they are hard to find. )


[If I could do so today I would have a separate session in  Rav Shach's Avi Ezri word for word until I have finished the whole set. But  in those early days, I was driven to finish Shas with the more basic people-the Maharsha and the early akhronim. And, I admit, I did not finish Shas with all those people. I got married and moved to Israel, and so the only tractates I did with most Tosphot and Maharasha were Ketubot, Yevamot and Shabbat.] [For example, on Nedarim there was ידות נדרים and for Ketubot and Yevamot I used the Aruch LaNer ערוך לנר. There is usually one major akhron [later book] for every tractate.]



Ketubot was basically done with the Maharaha, Tosphot, Pnei Yehoshua. Towards the end, I did a lot of Tosphot HaRosh because he would basically quote Tospohot, but with small differences. These small differences were a great help for me to understand Tophot, and the difference between Tosphot and the Rosh. I don't recommend this because it is just characteristic of my own mentality that I need some other commentary to put any commentary into perspective. This happens to me all the time. I can't understand Tosphot until I do the Maharsha. Then I can't understand the Maharsha until I do the Pnei Yehoshua etc.



[Traditional learning means to "calculate the sugia." This is very different that the Reb Haim path of finding yesodot (foundational ideas). Yesodot/foundations are ideas that the argument between people depend on. You find this in the Gemara itself quite a lot--when it asks what is the סברא logic behind  certain idea.]

Summary:

There are two approaches to Talmud. One began with R. Haim Soloveitchik. I must say that I did not learn this way personally. I heard countless lessons along the lines of Reb Haim. But when I got back to my shtender (seat), I plowed through the Talmud with the Tosphot and Maharsha and the early akhronim (like the Pnei Yehoshua). Sometimes I would go over and over a Pnei Yeshoshua about ten or more times until I got it.
But even this way could not be called traditional. The traditional way of learning was different. The principles were these: (1) Learn Tosphot. (2) It is forbidden to add any so called "principles"("yesodot") to make Tosphot make sense. He wrote it to make sense on its own. If you have to add outside concepts, then you don't understand it.  (3) There is a point that you get to when you understand Tosphot that something comes up almost by magic. Some thought or question. It is that magical point that is called "learning." For me it is very hard to get to that point.
The way of Reb Hayim was different. He did add "yesodot" or principles, but from elsewhere in the Talmud itself. And he did it in a way that does fit.

 If one  wants to learn the best halakha book, the Tur with the Beit Yoseph is the best thing out there.


For Reform and Conservative Jews that don't have time for this, but still need a basic introduction, I suggest as I mentioned above to take one page of Talmud and do it with the Tosphot. After that you need to find the people on the page from this selection: Akiva Eiger, Reb Haim Soloveitchik [from Brisk], Rav Shach. This will give a good basic introduction to what learning Gemara means. Of all the above, probably Rav Shach's book, the Avi Ezri, shows in the most basic simple way possible what it means to learn Talmud. [I don't agree with skipping Tosphot. Not for anyone, and especially not for Reform Jews who have limited time to spend on learning Torah.]


[I also believe Physics is important but I do not have an system for it except what the Sages already wrote לעולם ליגרס אדם עא''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר "One should say the words in order and go on even though he forgets and even though he does not even understand what he is saying." And it has been noted before that learning Talmud with ethics (Musar) is important, for otherwise the whole point is lost and in fact has a bad effect. For the whole purpose here is to gain good character and compassion and fear of God. When Talmud is learned together with Musar, it has the above named effects. Without Musar it not only lacks this effects but causes the opposite traits. So I am definitely on board the idea of the Lithuanian Musar Yeshiva.]
Ideas in Talmud, Ideas in Shas    Ideas in Tractate Bava Metzia, chapters 8 and 9 [For some reason you can not preview this book but you can download it.]

In these two books I am pointing to a new direction which I think learning Talmud ought to go. That is to concentrate on  Tosphot. I feel Tosphot is simply ignored way too much. Or that people simply skip over something troubling inside of Tosphot without realizing the depths of what he is saying.
I would like to correct that. And in these two books I show the way to do this  a little bit. But I highly regret I have not had time to write similar books on all of Shas. But I hope people will come after me that will continue this great work.



There is one basic yeshiva edition which is called the "Vilna Shas" It has no English and is the standard kind that they learn in all Litvak (Lithuanian) yeshivas like Haim Berlin.  There are all kinds of modern editions which are no good. You have to be sure to get the right kind of thing.

I should mention my approach does emphasize Tosphot. Yet there is a whole other world of Reb Haim of Brisk (Soloveitchik) up until Rav Shakh that emphasizes the Rambam, but is based on preliminary knowledge of Tosphot. It is perfectly legitimate, and the best representation of the school is Rav Shakh's Avi Ezri  which I think ought to be learned straight.


[I might mention that my first reaction when I encounter a hard Tosphot is to look at the Maharsha. Also having a learning partner with a high IQ is helpful. Without either of these two aids, I really do not know what to do. The best bet  is just to review the Tosphot every day without worrying about it too much. Just run through it. Maybe eventually it will make sense. In my two books on Gemara you will notice  answers to questions brought up by my learning partner, but that is only because I had a learning partner. On my own I admit it is hard to even see what the issues are inside of Tosphot  to even begin to think about them.]

My idea of Talmudic law is thus: the x axis is Talmudic material. The y axis is Natural Law (natural law as I see it is with a goal of human flourishing, and this means Democracy as in the concepts of John Locke and Thomas Jefferson of limited government). The z axis is spirituality.
There will be at least one point where they intersect. There might be several of these points and in fact all the points of intersection can form a curve. Now in theory, the halacha might be anywhere in which all three intersect. However I suggest that there will be a cusp point where all three functions are maximized.
But now that we have come this far I want to go further and suggest that these three axis are not enough to accommodate all values. (See the polynomic theory of value.) In practice you want each value to have its own axis and then to maximize the function. E.g. you want the God axis to be the z axis and justice to be the y one and beauty the x axis and so on for other modes of value.

Electricity on Shabat

On the subject of Electricity on Shabat: if you invent elaborate enough evasions, you can make any idea at all work.
What happened is no one cares about the Chazon Ish but forbidding electricity on Shabat is a good way to de-legitimize Reform Jews.

Orthodox Judaism encountered, and failed, its first great test of whether it had the qualities a truly religious person is supposed to have: humility, and respect for the truth. (Sorry the first great test was Charles Darwin. No sorry the first one was the Rambam. At least that test the Jewish people passed well enough. Though his philosophy is not taken seriously by any Jewish group, at least he is accepted as part of the cannon.)


But I can understand why someone would want to be strict like the Chazon Ish just from faith that he knew what he was talking about (faith in the wise), but personally I have never been able to make any sense out of that particular place where he says using electricity is binyan בנין.
(It fits with the Gemara but it introduces an outside principle not implicit in the Gemara-- plus it is against all the Rishonim. Given enough ad-hoc postulates, it is possible to make any theory, no matter how bizarre, work.)


I once thought the Chazon Ish had some support from an argument in Kelim between the Rambam and Raavd. But subsequent thought convinced me that neither the Rambam or Raavad gave him any support.
And the problem is in fact greater than this. The problem is that in the Chazon Ish most of the time he is absolutely brilliant. But then sometimes out of the blue he writes stuff that just makes  no sense.

Reb Shelomo Zalman Aurbach  spent a lot of time in his book trying to disprove  the Chazon Ish, but then put in some statement at the end to make it politically correct--(not for halacha he wrote)

The best reason to forbid electricity I could ever come up with to say that electricity should be forbidden is in the fact the basic act of work of lighting a fire is when it is in order to make coal [as was done in the Tabernacles], so that a light bulb would be forbidden by מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה  work done not for its own sake. If electricity was fire then this would in fact be forbidden. The problem really comes from the fact that electricity is not fire

Rebitzin's husband: Adam,
What do you mean, don't quote R' Shlomo Zalman? Of course in Meorei Esh he attempts to completely disprove previous halachic understandings of electricity, including that of the Chazon Ish. However, what do you mean that his psak forbidding electricity was to be "politically correct"? He forbids on a Torah level an incandescent light-bulb as you mention, and forbids ALL other electrical devices because of minhag. I am pretty confident that just as he davened maariv every night, he did not use electricity on shabbat.




Me: True he also noticed that particular Rambam about the burning coal. If that is what he is standing on then you are right-a light bulb is forbidden according to that Rambam.

Later I heard Rav Shach [Menachem Eliezer Shach] discusses this and in particular brings that Rambam about the coal. But I don't have his book.  In the meantime I did a little work on "work that is not necessary for its purpose" concerning coals. This area of investigation is totally separate from the making vessels or building aspect on things and here I admit that I did not finish. The reason being that we were in the middle of that Tosphot in Yoma, [You know which one. The biggest Tosphot in Shas, page 34.] and then I saw the Rabbi Akiva Eiger who tries to prove the opinion of the Aruch. At that point I gave up and decided to go to Sanhedrin. I admit there is still plenty of work to do on this issue but so far I have not seen a thing which would indicate any problem about electricity.
I must have written on some blog some of the issue that came up in those days. The main area of investigation at this point seems to the page in Tractate Kritut and the Reb Chaim Halevi Soloveitchik.
The major point that comes up is that burning of a fire is liable when one's intension is to make coals. And this seems to be the case no matter how you look at מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה.
That is to say there is an argument how to understand this basic concept. But no matter turning on an electric light is not going to be considered needed for its sake in any case.
So since we go by Rabbi Shimon this at least is not liable. And the Rambam that thinks it is liable is because he does not decide like Rabbi Shimon.

But so far all we have is an electric light which is far anyway from electricity in general

The higher root of sex.

higher root of sex. Freud insisted in seeing animal urges in all higher human aspirations. And he had to do this because the teleology of Aristotle had been rejected by science for many years and Freud wanted his steam engine model of human psychology to be respected as a science. But this resulted in the amazing failure of psychology to see goals and principles in human beings. And in the Orthodox Jewish frum world the attitude towards sex comes from the Puritans--also no insight.



Many people thought by psychology they would reach sexual happiness. This was the sexual revolution. Instead it left people with all the same problem but no way to even begin to understand from where those problems come from. So immediately after the sexual revolution came the extreme vilification of sex by the Feminist movement with an explicit understanding by therapists and psychologists that all men are sexual abusers and most men (expect of course psychologists and therapists) were all child abusers.
As opposed to all this stupidity and wickedness, the approach of the Torah is special and amazing and refreshing --that sex is powerful and holy but needs to be directed towards marriage. Because sex is the most powerful force in the universe and the most holy. It is like a atomic reactor. When it is running alright then there is a great energy and power. But when things get off track --then the result is nothing less than total disaster.

My approach to sex was based on the ideas of Rav Yaakov Emden in his Sidur.

Sexuality is the center of life. Not reducing it to the basement of the human being deserves study.


 And it is not simple. Mainly you need a Neo Platonic idea of the world in the first place which people don't have anymore.

You need a concept that sex between a man and his wife does great corrections in the higher worlds and the more holiness in that relationship the more corrections are done. If done with attachment with God, sex is the highest divine service. But if a person is not attached in his soul to God, then sex  loses its holiness. So according to the degree sex is removed from this standard, that is the degree it loses it holiness and becomes a tool of the Sitra Achra, [the Dark Realm].

My approach to sex was based on the ideas of Yaakov Emden in his Sidur. That is to sanctify oneself before the act and during. Especially when conception is possible. [Read the Sidur, I do not want to be a spoiler, but the main idea there was when conception is possible it it must be after the exact  middle of the night and only on Friday night. That is when holy souls come into the world.] That is you have to calculate the exact middle of the night of Friday night and go  to the mikvah or a river or lake and pray to merit to bring in holy souls into the world.
[The way to go into a cold river is to take off your shoes first and dip you feet into the water.Then draw out your feet. Then the pants, and to go into the water up to your waist. Then leave the water. At that point the body knows that you are going into cold water so it automatically begins to send the blood into the inner region of the thighs, and the outer areas become used to the cold. Only then do you take off your coat and shirt and go into the water only once [as the Rambam said.] Also your feet need to be not on the snow or cold ground, but on a towel or other piece of clothing.

Franz Rosenzweig

Franz Rosenzweig seemed to me to be over influenced by Hegel. Yet on the other hand I understand the need for Reform Judaism to have some book to base their movement on besides the Guide for the Perplexed and after all the Star of Redemption is a deep book. But that still does not make it a great book or a book you you base a meme on. This is why reform Judaism flounders. But in their need for a modern Jewish thinker they are not alone.
The problem really is that after the Rambam there has not been a Jewish philosopher of his stature. [i would perhaps suggest Leonard Nelson.--the neo Friesian. See kelley ross' web site for information ]

Love

I want to mention few words about my parents

Their relationship had the effect on me that I was permanently effected by this rose colored picture of reality. Things may be hard,  but they retain this rosy soft color for me. I believe love, marriage, and having children as the greatest privilege a man or woman can have. This image in my mind was definitely painted by my parents.

Beyond this was also Mom's and Dad's introducing me to amazing aspects of the world--Torah, Einstein, the Mount Palomar Observatory, Cal Tech, Mozart. [I went with my Dad to the yearly Alumni day at Cal Tech.] [My Dad gave me the Magic Flute by Mozart for a Hanukkah present.]

 Also he brought me to his laboratory in TRW where he was the chief scientist working on laser communication for the SDI, (i.e the Star Wars) Strategic Defense Initiative for NASA.

(My Dad was working on laser communication in connection with SDI (Star Wars). He was the head of the team that developed it. He was the head of the engineering team that made the infrared night vision at Monmouth, NJ.)

Incidentally, he was the first to create a camera that could detect infra red waves --i.e. he made the first night vision device for the USA Army. [There was a write up about it in Life magazine. His sister told my brother that my grandmother would have given ten years of her life just to see my Dad's picture in Life magazine. Life magazine July 26. Pages 24-26 ] Later he made the camera for the U-2 spy plane. [Later note. I am not sure, but it looks to me that the reason his name is not mentioned in connection with the U-2 is from what my brother told me there were two teams, and the camera from the other team was the one they used on the U-2 most often. My dad's camera was used less often. It was extremely sharp but bulky.  ] Incidentally, almost all the scientists that created the devices that make the American military the top in the world were all created by Jewish and German scientists. Frankly speaking they were mostly Jewish. In the lab where my Dad created the infrared telescope, there were 50 Jews and one German. (From what I can tell without the Jewish input into American technology, America would not be a first world power.) (All the Jews were fired after McCarty held a press conference there; except for the two top scientists, my Dad and a friend, Marcus. But they were brought back shortly after that. But that was the reason my Dad and Berny Marcus moved to California.) Also I might mention, my Dad was a Captain in the US Air Force during World War Two, and later worked for the Army on many secret projects which I still know nothing about.) Their attitude towards us children and their tolerance and wisdom in guiding us was amazing. We sure gave them hell with our own stubbornness and the atmosphere of the times that rewarded subordination against parents --and yet we must remember that they were not superhuman. They had no good information about how to raise children or how to act in society. Everything they did was intuitive. But their combination of tolerance but firm guidance was amazing.

In short their approach was "to be a mensch." That is a decent human being. That was their idea of what Torah is about. It is  a kind of balance between obligation between man and God and between man and his fellow man. You could say it was their way of keeping the Ten Commandments, but that in itself nowadays has become subject to debate. But if one tries to keep the Ten Commandments simply and plainly that just about approximates as closely as possible the approach of my parents.--As in: Don't lie. Don't cheat. Honor your parents, Belief in God, etc.

On Shabat we went to Temple Israel in Hollywood and that is where I had my bar mitzvah. Jewish education was very important to my parents. I remember that we also went sometimes to Mount Sinai conservative synagogue.
Their approach towards Torah was one of balance.  That is it is good to keep Torah but with balance.תורה עם דרך ארץ. Torah with a vocation. [But Torah with Dereck Eretz means more than just a vocation. It means the whole spectrum of being a "mensch."]

The way I try to live this dream is by a kind of balance between learning the Oral Law Gemara, Rashi Tosphot, along with Physics, and outdoor skills.

After High School I went to Shar Yashuv [a yeshiva in N.Y.] and then to the Mir in NY and then to the Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Mainly I am trying to walk in the way my parents taught to me. Torah and Dereck Eretz. The kinds of learning were very different. Shar Yashuv concentrated on לחשבן את הסוגיה to calculate the sugia. They were open about that. The Mir however was more interested in global issues as you would see in the book of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik.[However each Rosh Yeshiva at the Mir had his own set of ideas he would give over in each lesson. The only one however that wrote his ideas down was the Sukat David.] In any case, in my own learning I try to combine both approaches.

I feel that after the 60's when academic standards and requirements were lowered because of affirmative action that the result was that a humanities degree and a social science degree are worthless.

I feel that after the 60's when academic standards and requirements were lowered because of affirmative action that the result was that a humanities degree and a social science degree are worthless. (I have to say there are Achronim that I respect like the Aruch Hashulchan and the actual commentaries on the page of Shuclan Aruch. Achronim (later authorities after Yoseph Karo) written on the Shas (Talmud) like the Maharsha are the exception here. They tend to be very good.)
(The scam of the insane religious world  is that it is built on the Achronim or later authorities that simply ignore anything in Talmud or first authorities that seems to them to be not strict or fanatic enough. This used to have the name of Maharil'ism but now you could call it Mishna Brura'ism.)

So the Gemara has great validity in the realm of value. But what value structure is implicit in the Gemara itself?


And this affects the very future of Democracy. For the modern world is a result of a small handful of thinkers starting with Machiavelli up until John Locke. Yet this Enlightenment project has come to a crisis of no content inside the human being.\
 Freud to saw all higher aspects of a human being as coming from his basement (Id).

My basic approach is to accept John Locke in the political sphere and inside of political society I put civil society. And civil society needs a spiritual backbone which I consider to be Torah and Talmud. But this would not give the Talmud authority in the political realm. For the realm of freedom is the thing in itself--the core of individual.
 
The result of the Enlightenment thinkers is that wonder of the world,-- the U.S.A. But this wonder of the ages has become under siege. It values are no longer treasured. Freedom is seen as sham. Human rights has become a mercenary tool to deprive others of their rights to their own property and freedoms.

.
  Democracy is no longer in danger because of the Soviet Union. It is now in danger from within. The rot has spread so deeply that some leaders of the free world are conspiring to make it no longer free.

I say that only the Torah can't hold up democracy any more. But when Torah becomes a tool of oppression then where can we go for help?

  This is where Reb Nachman becomes essential. Reb Nachman is the only thinker that sees the source of value and authority in the individual. In fact the only path to God in the thought of Reb Nachman is by the aspect of "one was Abraham."
RN said: "Abraham served God only by this aspect that he thought in his own mind that he is alone in the world with God and he did not look on any obstacles from people discouraging him."
And this is where Reb Nachman adds the key words--"and similarly any person that wants to come to God can do so only in this manner --of thinking he is alone and not paying attention to those who try to prevent him."

Rosh Hashana in Uman

I want to suggest that Hobbes and John Locke were correct about human rights. This is an essential aspect of natural law (Avrahamic law in the conceptual scheme of the Rambam). But there are many problems in John Locke. The most obvious one is that there is no social contract!! (Kelley Ross used the word "implied" (i.e. implied social contract in order to answer this question.)
But the attack on the Enlightenment starting in Rousseau and reaching it intellectual low in Marx I disagree with.
I suggest the Rambam saw all of this before it happened. and suggested Divine law as a higher category than natural law--but that you need the natural law for it to be based on [otherwise what looks like Divine law maybe be the based on communion with the spirit that pervades the universe (chasidut)--not with communion with the Creator of the universe.]
And we find that even divine law depends on natural law dorshin taama dekra. (which in one place the Rambam says is the even for a Law of the written Torah (deurita din) if the reason does not apply then the law does not apply.)
This is to say in politics I agree with John Locke and I place the emphasis on freedom--not equality like the school of Marx and Rousseau. In fact I say that equality is not a ideal at all and contrary to reason. And this can be proved logically.
But I am seeing Democracy implode on itself just like Aristotle foresaw that it would. I think that Democracy can't be held up without The Torah to back in up in private life.

Rosh Hashanah in Uman

terrorism

September 11

September 11

What is lacking here is the recognition that faithful, religious, believing Muslims (not fanatics--rather simply believers in the simple meaning of the Koran) attacked the Jewish people and America and Western civilization. Moses already had an answer for that. "Call to them for peace; and if they don't accept people, then give it to them over the head." (or something like that)

After Pearl Harbour not only did we defeat Japan and Germany, with no quarter given, but went on to crush and obliterate the ideologies that drove them. The result is a decent and democratic Germany and Japan, never again to return to their self-destructive ideologies.

IN opposition to this, the actual response after 9/11 has been weak and self-defeating. The result is that Islam is empowered worldwide, and more so in America. What else can one expect when the immediate response of Pres Bush after 9/11 was to visit a mosque and proclaim that Islam is a religion of peace.

A way of seeing the hidden nature of reality.
This starts with Huygens principle (Huygens proposed that every point to which a luminous disturbance reaches becomes a source of a spherical wave) and a vector potential (that is something that you take its derivative and you get a vector field) called A which is the potential that you derive the Maxwell equations from.
The next step is to look at the scattering of a wave of an electron acts when it interacts with another electron. (This is by the Born approximation).
Then you have to see how this scattering is described by a Green's function.
(The Green's function is something you put into an integral--like a kernel to make the integral come out to be a solution of a non homogeneous differential equation.
It sounds mysterious but in fact most people are probably already familiar with in in the regular context of integral equations in which there is a function you put inside the integral to make the equation come out just right.


)

So you see that when you are looking at an electron that is in close contact with another then you are really looking at a very small part of the actual infinite electron wave.
This was suggested by David Bohm to show how reality might have higher layers.
This seems to be born out by string theory. the only real rival to strings was the GUTs but the fact that the blue and red light from that super nova a few years ago arrived at the same time showed that all GUT s are wrong. This left String Theory the only person still standing in the ring. (Its projective aspect is a refinement of David Bohm idea of noticing how the Green's function takes a little piece of the infinite electron wave.)


I mean to say that the Mind body solution is very trivialized nowadays because people in general don't understand the problem and therefore think they have solutions when they in fact do not.
The mind body problem comes from five basic facts that are all very hard to deny and yet they contradict.
Personally i think the one fact that might be the weak link in the chain may be the fact that mental states do not seem derivable from physical states. Kindness, opinions, love do not seem to be properties of atoms.
I suggest that since the first one cell organism at some point seems to have swallowed a bacteria which became its nucleus that we can see a mental state coming from the characteristics of atoms. Ie the larger call wanted to eat the smaller bacteria and it could not because of the defenses of the bacteria and so the bacteria became a nucleus inside the cell.
This would push back the mind body problem to God the creator of the laws of physics and of matter and energy himself. i.e. it dissolves the mind body problem and simply says that mind states are derivable from physical states and the only mystery remains God himself.

Accusing Richard Feynman of being anti women.

Richard Feynman wrote, I received a long letter from a feminist group. I was accused of being anti-woman because of two stories: the first was a discussion of the subtleties of velocity, and involved a woman driver being stopped by a cop. There's a discussion about how fast she was going, and I had her raise valid objections to the cop's definitions of velocity. The letter said I was making the woman look stupid.
The other story they objected to was told by the great astronomer Arthur Eddington, who had just figured out that the stars get their power from burning hydrogen in a nuclear reaction producing helium. He recounted how, on the night after his discovery, he was sitting on a bench with his girlfriend. She said, "Look how pretty the stars shine!" To which he replied, "Yes, and right now, I'm the only man in the world who knows how they shine." He was describing a kind of wonderful loneliness you have when you make a discovery.
The letter claimed that I was saying a woman is incapable of understanding nuclear reactions.
I figured there was no point in trying to answer their accusations in detail, so I wrote a short letter back to them: "Don't bug me, man!"
Needless to say, that didn't work too well. Another letter came: "Your response to our letter of September 29th is unsatisfactory ..."—blah, blah, blah. This letter warned that if I didn't get the publisher to revise the things they objected to, there would be trouble.
I ignored the letter and forgot about it.
A year or so later, the American Association of Physics Teachers awarded me a prize for writing those books, and asked me to speak at their meeting in San Francisco. My sister, Joan, lived in Palo Alto—an hour's drive away—so I stayed with her the night before and we went to the meeting together.
As we approached the lecture hall, we found people standing there giving out handbills to everybody going in. We each took one, and glanced at it. At the top it said, "A PROTEST." Then it showed excerpts from the letters they sent me, and my response (in full). It concluded in large letters: "FEYNMAN SEXIST PIG!"
Joan stopped suddenly and rushed back: "These are interesting," she said to the protester. "I'd like some more of them!"
When she caught up with me, she said, "Gee whiz, Richard; what did you do?"
I told her what had happened as we walked into the hall.
At the front of the hall, near the stage, were two prominent women in the American Association of Physics Teachers. One was in charge of women's affairs for the organization, and the other way Fay Ajzenberg, a professor of physics I knew, from Pennsylvania. They saw me coming down towards the stage accompanied by this woman with a fistful of handbills, talking to me. Fay walked up to her and said, "Do you realize that Professor Feynman has a sister that he encouraged to go into physics, and that she has a Ph.D. in physics?"
"Of course I do," said Joan. "I'm that sister!"
Fay and her associate explained to me that the protesters were a group—led by a man, ironically—who were always disrupting meetings in Berkeley. "We'll sit on either side of you to show our solidarity, and just before you speak, I'll get up and say something to quiet the protesters," Fay said.
Because there was another talk before mine, I had time to think of something to say. I thanked Fay but declined her offer.
As soon as I got up to speak, half a dozen protesters marched down to the front of the lecture hall and paraded right below the stage, holding their picket signs high, chanting, "Feynman sexist pig! Feynman sexist pig!"
I began my talk by telling the protesters, "I'm sorry that my short answer to your letter brought you here unnecessarily. There are more serious places to direct one's attention towards improving the status of women in physics than these relatively trivial mistakes—if that's what you want to call them—in a textbook. But perhaps, after all, it's good that you came. For women do indeed suffer from prejudice and discrimination in physics, and your presence here today serves to remind us of these difficulties and the need to remedy them."
The protesters looked at one another. Their picket signs began to come slowly down, like sails in a dying wind.
I continued: "Even though the American Association of Physics Teachers has given me an award for teaching, I must confess I don't now how to teach. Therefore, I have nothing to say about teaching. Instead, I would like to talk about something that will be especially interesting to the women in the audience: I would like to talk about the structure of the proton."
The protesters put their picket signs down and walked off. My hosts told me later that the man and his group of protesters had never been defeated so easily....
After my talk, some of the protesters came up to press me about the woman-driver story. "Why did it have to be a woman driver?" they said. "You are implying that all women are bad drivers."
"But the woman makes the cop look bad," I said. "Why aren't you concerned about the cop?"
"That's what you expect from cops!" one of the protesters said. "They're all pigs!"
"But you should be concerned," I said. "I forgot to say in the story that the cop was a woman!"