According to the Torah, a lesbian relationship is not a sin at all. A male homosexual act gets the death penalty if the act is done on purpose in front of two witnesses. You need a court of 23 judges that have the authentic ordination also. (That ordination does not exist anymore.)

A lesbian relationship is not sin. A male homosexual act is a sin. That means if the act is done in front of two witnesses and a warning is given that the act is a sin and receives the death penalty, then the penalty is given.

Situation two: If there are not two kosher witnesses, and the act was done on purpose there is nothing one can do but repent. Repentance means that one accepts upon himself not to repeat the act. This by definition brings Divine forgiveness.

Situation three: If the sin was done by accident [for example a man thought it was his wife in bed with him] then he must bring a sin offering. This can't be brought anywhere except in the Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, bringing a offering anywhere else is a sin on the same level as homosexuality. This is explicit in the Torah (Old Testament) itself. That means that at the time there was a movable Tabernacle, one could only bring offerings there. And to bring one elsewhere is a sin of "cutting off" (which is called karet כרת in Hebrew). Once the Temple was in Jerusalem, it can't be erected else as Nathan the prophet said to King David.

So nowadays we (Jews and Gentiles) can't bring a sin offering anywhere. However repentance is always open to every person and always helps. (Repentance is accepting on oneself not to repeat the sin and confession before God and feeling guilty about the sin.)
No matter what where the circumstance repentance always brings some measure of forgiveness.

[If not for the words of Nathan the prophet to King David, then we would be able to build another Temple anywhere in the world. The problem nowadays is that Nathan said the Temple Mount would be the only place God would rest his presence from then on. So we are kind of stuck.]

Appendix: Repentance is simply accepting on oneself not to do the sin that he did. How do we know this? From the law that if a person does kidushin [marries a woman] on condition that he is a perfect saint even if he is a perfect criminal she is considered married because of a doubt: he might have thought not to repeat his sins ever again at the time he made the marriage. So we learn that if he in fact did think to never repeat his sins he is in fact a perfect saint. That is repentance is that hard and that easy. It is a thought. But a thought with that much power and conviction that in fact one never repeats the sin. It has little to do with what most people think of as repentance. If you want to see proofs in the Torah for this I suggest reading the book Gates of Repentance by Rabanu Yona where he bring Biblical proof.

[But repentance is not enough except for missing a positive command. If one has transgressed a negative command, one needs Yom Kipur. If a negative command that has karet attached to it then also afflictions. If hilul hashem, then only death brings forgiveness. See Rabbainu Yona who brings this from the gemara ]

About Kabalah today

 Isaac Luria  had some amazing revelations, but his revelations weree based on his own perception of the divine realm. This is a different type of perception than the perception that the Torah was written by. This type of perception in most cases has to pass through the Intermediate Zone. This is what gives it its mixed results.

In any case I think Rav Shicks emphasis on unifications is wrong. I did this because I was attached to Rav Shick but today I think this emphasis is wrong. Though I agree learning the Ari [Isaac Luria] is important. However I do not recommend the Zohar. Even if the Ari used it as a jumping board for his revelations still I think it is not from the Rashbi. I admit it is just one word which convinces me of this  עם כל דא "although." This usage for "although" is an invention of the Ibn  Tibon family [עם כל זה]. It is not ancient Aramaic but a medieval invention. So what is it doing all over the Zohar? Answer: The Zohar was written by Moshe DeLeon.
If we would be talking about ancient Hebrew or Aramaic it would say אף על פי.

Allan Bloom: "Descartes' ego, in appearance invulnerable and godlike in its calm and isolation, turns out to be the tip of an iceberg floating in a fathomless and turbulent sea called the id, consciousness an epiphenomenon of the unconscious. Man is self, that
now seems clear. But what is self?
Our embraced psychology leaves us with this question."

I would like to suggest that this relates to the mind body problem. I don't think we need to come to the idea of the soul to understand the self. I think the soul can exist and that God can reward a person for good deeds in the next world. But I don't think you need the soul to understand the self.

So there are three domains of the mind: Biology, Human Psychology, Spiritual. Each interact. But it is not reductive. Each interacts in a chaotic way.
So even if there biological origins of some, still some spiritual free will will interact with it, and so will some aspect that is of human psychology but not spiritual. 

But this secular system of the USA can work only if the center core is based on the numinous sacred power of the Torah

But this secular system of the USA can work only if the center core is based on the numinous sacred power of the Torah. And the central core of the Torah is not the book itself but rather two central themes which permeate the entire Torah and form its own core and central value system--the coming of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and the building on the Temple in Jerusalem.

[I am looking at this post now a few years later and I thought to add that these two themes while certainly important are not the only ones in the Torah. Generally you can see that belief in God and no other gods is important. And in fact this later theme seems to be the hardest. After all idolatry can refer to worship of anything besides the the one true God the First Cause. So idolatry does not have to refer to wooden idols . but also to worship of dead people. And idolatry can be Jewish idolatry also.] 

A general Biblical approach to womanhood would be first of all not like the feminist movement. It would also include the idea of dipping in a natural body of water once a month. It would also include a day of rest, not on Sunday. It would go against socialism, as being opposed to "Thou shalt not covet."

It would  not be liberal with commandments. That is, it would not expand them beyond their actual definitions. But it would not contract them either. And it would assume that what God means to say in the Bible, is what it actually says.

We know that as a matter of fact, most of the commandments of the Bible were addressed to the Jewish people in the desert. But that does not preclude anyone from joining the club who wants to join. But if you join the club you have to obey the rules. You don't get to change them. Even Jews don't get to change them. The rules stay fixed like the Northern Star.

Just like in the Torah itself different weight should be given to different verses, also this applies to doctrines of Torah. [You would not put a sentence from Bilam like come curse Israel and put it on the same level as a verse that starts with "And God spoke to Moses saying..." Surely cursing Israel can't be on the same level as one of the Ten Commandments.--I hope not anyway. Though judging by the general attitude of the world towards the Jews it seems like most people consider Bilam's commandment to be authoritative.] The Torah itself has basic doctrines that disagree with Jewish theology which came after Torah. Also the Talmud has different doctrines that are different than those of Jewish thinkers which came later. The Rambam (Maimonides) also has a system of doctrines which is different from those that came after the Rambam. And as for myself I also have two sources of information which I hold from personally--Reason (the school of Leibniz) and Empirical evidence. (Not like John Locke. I don't think empirical evidence is the only source of knowledge. And I think it can be proved logically that it is not by simple counter examples.) Also I believe there is a third type of source of knowledge called faith
At any rate, ethical monotheism is certainly a belief of the Torah and in particular the doctrine that God is simple- not a composite. This incidentally is accepted by Christians also and is called "divine simplicity." However the Rambam has a few doctrines which are not from the Torah, nor from the Talmud. He expands the prohibition of idolatry to include the idea that God can be enclosed in body. This is certainly against the Talmud which has God clothing himself in a body to give a haircut to Sancheriv. It is also not the basic idea of idolatry of the Torah itself.
Also, in the Torah God does change his mind. According to the Rambam basing himself on Aristotle God can't change his mind. This simply is against the Torah. Point blank.
Another example is Job. The Talmud and the Rambam because of theological reasons can't accept basic premises of the Book of Job. The reason is that the book of Job goes against the book of Deuteronomy. But in the book of Job, the narrator makes it absolutely clear in the beginning that Job was innocent, and he was not being punished for any sin at all. This is an absolutely clear part of the narrative because without this the entire narrative falls apart. And in the end God says that Job was right and his friends theology was wrong. [This is also against Jewish tradition. His friends were saying the regular Jewish approach.]

Final note: Any system of human interaction, if brought to its extreme, will result in evil. finding bad things in the Talmud or Rambam does nothing to disprove the basic system.you can do the same thing with democracy. The problem with outreach in general is that it is based on the jelly bean argument. If you have only two jelly beans in a jar and you take out the red ones you are-left with the other one. An example of this type of argument is: since all gentiles are evil so the Torah is automatically right.

People in general need a moral compass. Reform Judaism seeing the abuses and problems of Jewish leadership, decided the most current up to date German philosophy of the 19th century was the way to go. The sad thing is the most up to date and popular German thinker was Hegel. (Later they added Freud who based himself on Nietzsche.) Reform Judaism could not have chosen a worse philosophy even if they had tried. 

Schopenhauer claims that facts about the physical world have no internal significance. In this point the Rambam surely disagrees. The Rambam holds learning Physics and Metaphysics (of Aristotle) is higher than learning Torah. The Ari ( Isaac Luria) also from also disagrees. He has a whole list of Divine names that are embodied in the physical universe. See the large Sidur of the Reshash [from the grandson of Shalom Sharabi] for the whole list. (That is besides the smaller list in the Eitz Chaim itself). Some of these Divine names are from the Eitz Chayim itself (The book, Tree of Life of Isaac Luria) but not all. This is common with Shalom Sharabi- to fill in missing gaps in the writings of the Arizal. [The Ramchal also does this like for the intentions of mincha for Shabat.]
In this world is hidden holiness; and even in the lowest regions in spirituality is hidden the highest holiness that comes from the hidden statement of creation. In the first statement of Creation there is no "He said"


To the Rambam when you learn Physics and MetaPhysics you directly fulfill the mitzvah of Love and fear of God. These are not means to come to fear of God or love, but direct fulfillment of the actual commandments.
You can see this in the beginning of the "Yad HaChazakah" and also in the Guide. All later Musar books quote the Rambam about this but seem innocent about what he was actually intending.

This is similar to the mitzvah of being attached to God Deuteronomy 13:5. The Sages ask how is this possible to fulfill. And they answer by marrying off ones daughter to a Torah scholar and doing business with a Torah scholar and  giving money to a Torah scholar.
The Rambam brings this statement as meaning that doing these things is an actual fulfillment of the commandment;- not just a means to come to attachment with God.


Where do you see that truth is in the ground? In physical matter? Why is it that the Rambam insists on seeing in facts about physics the highest truths? He probably saw it in a Midrash. God wanted to create Man. The angel of truth came and asked how can you create Man when he is full of lies? God took the angel of truth and threw him on the ground, as the verse says, "He threw truth to the ground." So we see truth is in the ground--i.e. Physics.

Some of the pluses about Gemara [Talmud] and some of the negatives.
The good things are an infinity, painstaking, rigorous, logical approach to the Bible. Of course no gentiles can see this because if they ever pick up the Gemara at all, it is a translation. Not that I am against translations. but -you really can't see the profundity of the Talmud without Tosphot [commentary on the side of the page of the Talmud] and the Maharsha [a later commentary located as an index in the back of the Talmud], and about a week of work on one Tosphot [comments on the side of page of the Talmud]. The only way to ever see this is to get to a point where you see some question on Tosphot that seems to make it make no sense, but then by faith you keep on plugging away until you reach the next level and see how Tosphot answered the question with some slight change of wording and was hinting to some great deep idea. Few people are aware of this in the Talmud, so they never understand its importance.

Another positive thing is that it does not try to derive morality from a small number of principles. This is a trap that all moral philosophers fell into for the last 2000 years, and there are plenty of counter examples to all of them.
Another great thing about Torah and the Talmud is that we can exercise a certain amount of control over how we are forming beliefs. It is up to us, for example, whether we believe whatever we hear on television, and we can choose to suspend judgment rather than accept conclusions according to a certain method.
Since we are primates, we need a way of getting through our desires and animal nature to perceive moral values. It does not happen automatically.



We need some method of forming beliefs that is systematically directed at the truth -- in other words, a method such that, in general, when you use it you will probably acquire a true belief rather than a false one. For if we don't apply such a method, then we will probably have false beliefs, and we don't want that,  for obvious reasons. E.g. something will happen to us when we leave this world. If it is true that there is a hell, then it is better for people not to end up there by doing things they think are good deeds like blowing up Jews or other such misinformed actions.] Now, it could be doubted whether there are any such methods.
And that is my complaint. The Talmud is fallible. It does automatically lead to true beliefs about moral values. It is good, but not perfect. And as a system, it can be abused by those willing to abuse it. Many fall into this trap of assuming their interests and ideas  are the interests and ideas of the Talmud.

In Praise of Racism. [In the Middle Ages this essay would be entitled "In Praise of Heresy."]

Game Theory and Stereotypes

Suppose that you could have some sort of “clairvoyant knowledge” of whether a person belonged to a murderous group. You could then avoid interactions with members of that group, say by remaining in a segregated community.
Clairvoyance, of course, unfortunately does not exist. But you could get a similar benefit by learning from the past experiences of other members of your group in interactions with other subgroups, especially if it’s encapsulated in easy-to-remember memes/sayings.

You know what that “collective wisdom based on past experiences” is called, right? Stereotypes. Drunken Irish, airhead blondes, violent blacks, etc.


Of course, in practice, even a community of convicted murderers doesn’t kill every new person they meet, the first time. But if there’s any risk at all that trusting others too much before they’ve earned that trust will result in you immediately “losing the game,” and if such crime statistics can in any way be validly associated with particular, identifiable subgroups, it follows immediately from that that the holding of valid stereotypes about those groups will be a superior survival strategy to simply trusting them until they betray you.

Observe:

Kirsten Brydum was traveling across the country with an Amtrak pass and an old bicycle. She was meeting with fellow Marxists around the country and campaigning for Obama. Fresh from protesting the RNC National Convention, she arrived in New Orleans by train. While bicycling around New Orleans’ all black 9th ward ghetto to campaign for Obama, she was shot in the head. Residents would not even call the police to notify them that a dead white girl was laying on the sidewalk. Her body laid in the streets for hours until a construction crew drove by and noticed her.

Even the New Orleans police issued a statement saying “robbery does not appear to be the motivation.” All evidence suggests that she was murdered simply because she was white.

That girl would still be alive today, if only she had believed the “racist” stereotypes about black violence.

I want to introduce a new type of Judaism that already many people keep but don't know that it is in fact a new branch. It's called "shomer mitvot" i.e. keeping the 613 mitzvot. This is different than Reform which does not hold from mitzvot. This is different than Orthodox which makes up mitzvot at random and ignores all real mitzvot. The importance of mitvot is that this is the actual idea of Torah of what is important.

 Pesach. The correct day is the 15th date from the new moon as the Torah says. that is April 5. Hillel the second never made any calendar. that is a made up myth to give support to the meton calendar which wee use which was adopted from the Greeks.
the so called Hebrew calendar was never sanctified by any beit din. (If it was then this question would be a debate between the Talmud in Sanhedrin and the Talmud is rosh hashanah.) But as it stands today the Hebrew calendar is a mistake.
Number two.\

the great thing about Shulchan Aruch that even I with all my critiques on it have to admit is that a person  that learns it generally has a good idea of halacha. While people that learn Rambam never seem to have the slightest idea of any halacha and don't even know what the very concept is.


Also it is important to understand the way the Torah is written. It was not meant to be taken literally. It is kabalistic. The apologetics to try to bring archaeological proofs to the exodus is wrong and unnecessary and also not true--and it goes against the very spirit that the Torah was written in.

Further it is important not to lie about these things. See the Ten Commandments and psalm 101:7 for further details.

I would only pray in a Reform Temple or a Conservative one. Ethical Monotheism. The energy and teachings of the Sitra Ahra (Dark Side) got totally entwined with religious Judaism.

Reform Judaism is right about Ethical Monotheism. This is first of all true. [One of the major goals of Torah is objective personal ethics as you can see in the Ten Commandments.] Also it is what the Torah is about.  But Reform is wrong in ignoring the Oral Law and the efforts of the  Sages to understand Divine Law. Also-It is bourgeois. They have no Gra, or his disciple Haim from Voloshin, or Rav Isaac Luria. No juice. No taste. The batteries need charging.

Reform  ignores the most important aspect of Torah,- the holy numinous aspect.

There are a few people in the context of Torah who discovered and  revealed parts of the divine reality contained in Torah. They were the Ramban (Nachmanides) and Ari (Isaac Luria), the Gra, Israel Salanter,
Also "social justice" is an 1840's invention of two Catholic priests meant to replace noble obligation (Noblesse oblige). It is not the main idea of the Torah, nor the Prophets, nor the Writings.[, תורה נביאים כתובים]  Social justice is the opposite of justice. Social justice is steal from the rich. This is based on the idea that the rich must have somehow gotten rich in some non proper way even if there is no evidence for this. Justice means don't steal; not from the rich and not from the poor. Simply don't steal. [I was in Temple Israel of Hollywood on Rosh Hashanah, and the talk was about "social justice". My mom was not impressed. She did not think Torah was all about "social justice". Rather, it is about Justice, -- not social justice. Still as a family we did go the Reform.]

In spite of this, I would only pray in a Reform Temple or a Conservative one. I would run from the "religious" like one runs from a charging leopard. That is just how frightened I am from them. (This is not irrational fear. It is fear based on personal experience and observation of what I see they do to people. They make a tremendous effort to make "baali teshuva" (to make people religious) and then destroy them systematically.) [But one does have to learn and keep Torah. To learn Torah you should take one page of Gemara and keep learning it day after day. That is read it from the beginning until the end with the Tosphot and Maharsha--every day the same page until something gives way and you understand its depths.  This is  the "in depth" session. besides that you need a fast session to get through the  Oral Law- Bavli, Yerushalmi, Tosefta, Sifri and Sifra. But you don't need to go anywhere near a religious synagogue, Heaven forbid!]

And it would not matter if the only mikvah in town was in an religious synagogue. I would still simply refuse to go anywhere near the religious. [I would go to the ocean.  When I was in the mountains there was a nearby stream which I dug deep into so it could be used for  mikvah.
The Sitra Achra (Realm of Evil) just got too much intertwined with "religious" Judaism until it is impossible to separate the two.

This fact is hidden to many religious  people - because they think their approach is based on Talmud and Halacha. They are unaware that it is not based on Halacha at all, but rather it takes a few  rituals to cover up what is really going on.

 What makes this almost impossible to know is that people today rarely every learn the books of the Shatz and his prophet Nathan from Gaza. But if you have had the sad experience of  reading those misguided books, then you can see right away how the most basic teachings of the Shatz are part and parcel of Religious Judaism today.

[If I was back at Beverly Hills I would not drive to Temple Israel in Hollywood on Shabat. I would stay home and learn Torah. But I would make an effort to be part of a Conservative, Re-constructionist or Reform Temple during the week. The trouble with driving is that it involves  fire. I learned that in a high school physics books about how the spark plug and the four- cylinder car engine works. If it would be just electricity, that would be allowed.]

In sum: Reform is right about some things, but wrong on others. My younger brother in fact goes to a Conservative shul. But there are things I think Conservative have also gotten a bit wrong. Personally, I just can't see anything as good as a straight normal Litvak yeshiva.




Appendix:
1) The major support of Reform and Conservative Judaism comes from Musar (Ethical) books of traditional Judaism.
I mean the major principle of Reform Judaism is what? That between man and your fellow-man comes before between Man and God. This is the exact principle of Musar.
 "You should walk in his ways, and keep his mitzvot."
The command to walk in his ways we know is the commandment "What is he? Kind. So you too be kind."
R. Haim Vital, the disciple of Isaac Luria, in chapters one and two of his Musar book Shaarei Kedusha makes the same point. And the great Yemenite Kabbalist, The Rashash (R. Shalom Sharabi), goes into this exact point in detail. He says the soul of a person is his character traits. The mitzvot are simple the clothing and food of the soul, but not the soul itself. [נפש השכלית]
Reb Haim Vital says, "One must be more careful to stay away from bad character traits than be keeping positive and negative commandments, because bad traits are very much worse that sins."
There is no clear connection between being religious and being a decent human being. It is clear from that that the religious world is not keeping Torah properly. Fanaticism is just a cover up for something that is not Torah.


2) The major problem with the religious is not so much in places where there is a strong Litvak yeshiva presence. For example in Brooklyn where the three major Litvak yeshivas are located {Haim Berlin, Mir, Torah VeDaat} even local shuls (synagogues) tend to be straight Torah oriented.
3) The main problem I see with the strictly religious  is the idea of a עיר הנדחת a city in which false gods are worshiped. The law is that the city is destroyed--everyone  and everything. The reason being that even the tzadikim inside the city acquiesced. That is they did not actively protest or simply leave. Only Rav Shach saw the problems and objected.




[I hope it is clear what I am saying. If I would have  A Litvak yeshiva in the area that would be one thing. But the religious world outside of that is very insane. And sadly to some degree the insanity has penetrated.]

Another problem with the religious is  the desire to rule others. They invariably ruin everything they touch. 

Another point is that prophet Jeremiah says חרפת עולם אתן להם (an everlasting shame) about Klal Israel. That means that almost any involvement with the religious be definition brings about involvement with the Dark Side. I thought I could avoid this problem by sticking with the most straight form of Torah--the Litvak Yeshiva, but there also (sadlly enough) the Sitra Ahra managed to find a way in.

At any rate I want to mention that in the USSR they had a system of physical education that I think should be used in the West

I had a P.E. in HS teacher that told me he wants to train us students to be fit at that time and not to depend on the idea that we would continue to exercise in collage. But clearly he believed that exercise should be a daily thing. Also I think there are two ages when the basic metabolism of the body changes--about 40 and then again at 55.
And I think the same applies the the mind.

At any rate I want to mention that in the USSR, they had a system of physical education that I think should be used in the West. On the radio at 7:00 A.M. they had a ten minute program of home exercise.
The reason I think this is important is because I think the West made a great mistake when it linked physical education to school. This almost guarantees that people that are out of school will stop.

Moral obligations (that is, the facts that we ought to act in certain ways) should be self-evident. But we need the holy Torah because though the principles of Torah should be self evident, most people allow considerations (of what social group they want to fit in with) to cloud their judgment about what is moral.

My basic contention is that the Torah is objective. As I am using the word "objective" to mean "not subjective" -i.e. not dependent on anyone's opinions or viewpoint. Further I want to contend that the Torah consists of principles, not laws.

And that the difference [between principles versus laws] is easily seen in today's society where you have collages giving out rule books about sexual conduct (to protect themselves from lawsuits) and theaters have to tell people not to talk during the show. This is because people have forgotten the basic principle--don't be inconsiderate.


Yosi Faur contends that the Rambam (Maimonides) discovered this objective aspect of Torah, and all his opponents were off the true path.

(My feeling is that the Rambam together with the other "Rishonim" (people from the Middle Ages that wrote either commentary on the Talmud or Halacha books) form a seamless whole.)

At first the Rambam seems to stand on his own, but then little bugs in the system start to creep in. It looks to me that Yosei Faur was trying to make out like that the Rambam/Maimonides found the absolute truth of the universe, and he writes very convincingly in this direction.

At first I was convinced by Yose Faur. But that is me. I find myself always between great charismatic leaders that are very convincing. It takes me a long time to step back and to try to consider things from a rational point of view.

After some time I looked at the original essay of Yosi Faur and I discovered what you can see in a lot of religious writing--they sound very convincing about subjects you know nothing about, but then when it gets to a subject you know something about their supposed genius falls apart. (But I admit this does not happen with the Rambam or Tosphot, or the Torah itself. For me the deeper I go into these things, the better they become.)

  But my claim is that no one person discovered the real Torah. And that true Torah observance is not person based, and not even text based, but rather God based.

  Also my final contention is that one should be like a hound dog with his nose to the ground. That is after one has read and learned Torah and the Talmud, then one should look at the individual questions that come before him. I.e. the big picture is not just too big, but distracting. People that learn Halacha (Law) or Kabalah forget how to be simple decent human beings.

 Moral obligations (that is, the facts that we ought to act in certain ways) should be  self-evident. But we need the holy Torah because though the principles of Torah should be self evident, most people allow considerations (of what social group they want to fit in with) to cloud their judgment about what is moral.

The problem with the American democracy is in its very essence. It is based on the empirical British school of thought begun by John Locke. And empiricism is wrong.

The problem with the American democracy is in its very essence. It is based on the empirical British school of thought begun by John Locke. And empiricism is wrong. Here, I will give a counter-examples to empiricism.

Nothing can be both entirely red and entirely green.

A naive empiricist might appeal to my experiences with colored objects: I have seen many colored objects, and none of them have ever been both red and green. One thing that makes this implausible as an explanation of how I know that nothing can be both red and green is the necessity of the judgment. Contrast the following two statements:

Nothing is both green and red.
Nothing is both green and a million miles long.
These are justified in completely different ways.

And there is a connection between the idea that all knowledge from from the senses and John Locke idea of a democracy. People are not blank slates. Not when they start and at no time. They have genes. And genes are not blank slates. And stuff is written on them. Sometimes really bad stuff.  Sometimes really great stuff. (All men are created equal comes from the idea of the tabula raca, empty slate. But the slate is not empty.)

My learning partner noticed this also. He thinks the direction the USA is going in is is almost the default position.You might say it gives license for people to follow their desires with no restraint. So why not take it all the way? What stopped this for so long was obviously the fact that people were believing in Torah. [Christians and Jews]. But take away that numinous core you have nothing to hold society together.



Charles Darwin and John Locke continue to exercise extraordinary influence from the grave. The former birthed a revolution in biology which has persisted to the present day, the latter fomented a revolution in political philosophy which reasserts itself in every contemporary iteration of “individual rights.” Darwin’s theory is widely taken to be the unifying theory in modern biology; apparently nothing in biology makes sense except in light of his view.

And Locke’s classical liberalism, developed in diverse ways, has had a profound influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States. Collectively, Darwin and Locke tell human beings where they have come from, what they are, and how they ought to live with each other. The combined legacies of these men could hardly be more powerful.

Yet  Darwinism and classical liberalism hold incompatible visions of morality, human nature, and individual autonomy.That means that basic biological science has as view of human nature that is in direct contradiction to the view of human nature as understand by John Locke.

Thus the American democracy can only work together with Torah. It can't hold together without Torah.

Dear Professor Michael Huemer,

Dear Professor Michael Huemer,
I have been reading you writings for a few years and i want to thank you for making public your ideas. I find your writing to be very impressive. My question for you is what do you think about the Kant-Fries school of Professor Kelley Ross. I know you have a some major critique on Kant's "thing in itself," but it seems to me that your thought on this issue runs parallel to the Kant-Fries school.

Your critique of Kant is something that the scholars from that school also deal with.

In fact, the one major difference that you seem to have with that school is that they believe in immediate nonintuitive knowledge, while you don't believe in any such knowledge. It seems to me that you believe that reason itself has the ability to perceive universals--but no universals are inherently known.

I also wonder what he thinks of Princeton school of philosophy. They seem to be doing some good work--but i did not include it in my letter.


The answer: "Thanks for your message. I have not studied the Kant-Fries school and thus have nothing useful to say about it.

I am not sure what you mean by "inherently known". Perhaps you are referring to innate ideas. In that case, I don't know whether there are innate ideas. That seems to be more a matter for cognitive psychologists than for philosophers to investigate.

I am also unsure what you have in mind by "immediate non-intuitive knowledge".

Sorry not to be of more help.

--
Prof. Michael Huemer"



Afterword: The school of thought of Michael Huemer begins with Prichard, and is called the "Intuitionists." 

I want to claim that forming beliefs based on non rational methods is in itself against the Torah.

I want to discuss the thesis that reason can know moral values, and moral values are objective. On the other hand by non rational considerations people can form non moral beliefs and think that their beliefs are moral. (A good example of this is Islam. In Islam people believe that it is a mitzvah to murder Jews or Christians as we see in this news: "Gunmen linked to Al Qaeda shot dead an American teacher in Yemen on Sunday, accusing him of Christian proselytizing." This shows that people can believe in things that are against reason.) This gives a great beginning to understand how God could create a covenant relationship with Israel.
This would not work very well to the Rambam (Maimonides) but I think this fits with Saadia Geon pretty well. And you can actually see this in the Gemara itself where mitzvot are assumed to have rational reasons that support them.

The problem is that the beliefs that people hold are determined by their self-interest, the synagogue they want to fit into, the self-image they want to maintain, and the desire to remain coherent with their past beliefs. People can deploy mechanisms to enable them to adopt and maintain their preferred beliefs, including giving a biased weighting of evidence; focusing their attention and energy on the arguments supporting their favored beliefs; collecting evidence only from sources they already agree with; and relying on subjective, speculative, and anecdotal claims as evidence for religious theories.

I want to claim that forming beliefs based on non rational methods is in itself against the Torah. This is at least implicit in the Rambam and the Сhovot Levavot (Duties of the Heart).
The Rambam considers the halacha process of the Talmud to be using reason to analyze and legal material that was received by tradition. The idea of the Geonim that the Talmud itself is received tradition he said was a very bad view--מְתֹעָב "disgusting" he called it.



Suppose I offer the opinion, "Colors are objective." What then is it that I am saying about colors? What I am saying is that colors are 'in the object.' In what object? In colored objects. What does "in" mean here? It means that a color - redness, say - is a property of the objects that are said to be red. That is, that the nature of those objects themselves and not anything else determines whether they are red or not. Hence, to say that morality is objective is to say that whether an action is right depends on the nature of that action; whether a person is good depends on the nature of that person; etc.

If one knows moral relativism to be true, then one cannot rationally believe any moral judgement. One cannot do so because in order to rationally believe something, the proposition must first be justified, and as a moral relativist you know that no moral proposition is true before you believe it, so you would not have any justification for accepting it.


So if moral values are objective, it is hard for me to imagine that the Torah would say to do otherwise. Rather we say we should keep Torah because it is good--it can't be measured against a standard of objective good. If it would be good by definition then saying "It is good" would be question begging. And this is how it is possible to analyze the Torah by reason as the Talmud does. Torah reveals what is good objectively, and the Talmud analyzes it. This leads to the type of understanding the Rambam had of Torah --a strong correlation between Torah and reason.
The sad thing about the lack of gentile understanding of the Talmud, is that it creates a situation in which they can't understand  the Bible either because they don't know how to learn it with rigorous logic.

 It seems to me that natural law [as some understand it] is not the same thing as the morality that we can perceive by reason. Natural law seems to imply that one who nature is to murder ought to murder since it is part of his nature. But the morality that can be perceived by reason says no.

Now you might complain to me that religious people are often not moral. That is because morality and spirituality are two separate areas of value. Each is perceivable of reason but they are two separate areas. 

Race correlates to a high degree with failure to pay rent.

But as far as I can tell, people think that discrimination is rampant in the housing market. It probably is, but not the way that is usually assumed. Namely, it is likely that race correlates to a high degree with failure to pay rent, among other things. Most landlords that I know of would rent to anyone who would pay the rent on time, and not damage the property. But if they know that there is a correlation between race and lower landlord earnings, they will indeed "discriminate." And THIS kind of discrimination does not get competed away. But is it at all plausible to you that landlords would discriminate in the malicious sense to any important degree if this correlation were illusory? Moreover, do you think it at all plausible that landlords would SYSTEMATICALLY overrate the magnitude of the correlation?

The truths of Being and Value, Bloom's "humanizing questions."

Why learning Torah and Talmud is important? The truths of Being and Value, Bloom's "humanizing questions.

Though I think orthodox Judaism is highly problematic I do agree with a basic premise of the system. That Torah and Talmud are important. Divine Law is important. Torah is important because it is Divinely inspired. Talmud is important because it is a rigorous logical understanding of Torah. Rambam is important because you need a logical basis for faith. Without that basis you end up with hasidut which rejects the philosophy of the Rambam. Systems without a logical and moral basis often end up badly. My impression of Hasidut is that the first mitzvah is fraud. The first thought when a chasid wakes up in the morning is how can he fool some gullible reform Jew into giving him a lot of money.

But a new magnet for intellectuals is emerging: radical Islam. It's not that intellectuals are likely to embrace radical Islam themselves anytime soon - for one thing, the requirement of believing in God would deter many of them. But what they can do is obstruct efforts to combat radical Islam and terrorism, undermine support for Israel, stress the "legitimate grievances" of radical Islamists, and lend moral support to the "legitimacy" of radical Islamic movements.


Most people have a tendency to forgive excesses committed in the name of some cause they support. They either regard them as unfortunate misdeeds by aberrant individuals, or as necessary evils in the name of some higher good. That is, of course, if they admit them at all. Very few things were more bizarre than the spectacle of free-love advocates in the Sixties extolling the virtues of Marxism
Denying the mass murders of Marxist regimes is on exactly the same intellectual level as denying the Holocaust,
To quote Allen bloom, "Positivism and ordinary language analysis have long dominated, although they are on the decline and evidently being replaced by nothing. These are simply methods of a sort, and they repel students who come with the humanizing questions. Professors of these schools simply would not and could not talk about anything important, and they themselves do not represent a philosophic life for the students. [p.378, boldface added]
Neither a living presence nor the mere inertial continuation of classics speaks well for the state of academic philosophy. What was the worst about all this stuff was the aim of much of it to justify why the philosophers involved were no longer seriously interested in metaphysics or ethics -- the truths of Being and Value, Bloom's "humanizing questions." If metaphysics and ethics are either meaningless or just not matters of knowledge, then philosophy doesn't have to worry about them.

In his late period [I might say, even in his late period, ed.], Wittgenstein, like Carnap, continued to pursue his former positivist aim of showing that metaphysical sentences are nonsense.

I knew the head of the Lev Tahor movement (the Taliban women) in Safed.

I knew the head of the Lev Tahor movement (the Taliban women) in Safed. (His name then was Erez Shelomo Halberns). He is magnetic and charismatic is a very high degree. He was a disciple of Rav Shelmo Shick. Rav Shick stayed in the home of Erez every time he came to Safed and showed him great warmth. Erez at the time was trying to create a synagogue  on the name of  Nachman of Uman in Safed--but this did not succeed. Later Abraham Traceman tried to start a building project, "Breslov City" in Safed and even spent a few thousand dollars to have an architect draw up the building plans.[he also had a phone bill for about a thousand dollars trying to coordinate this project with Rav shick who was in New York at the time.] This also did not succeed. The major problem was the Breslov community did not want competition and did a lot of very dirty tricks to stop the establishing of alternative Breslov community in Safed. One example is that when Erez managed to get permission to start a Breslov synagogue he and put a Breslov sign on it. People from the Breslov community pulled down the sign and beat him up to an inch of his life and he spent a few days in the local hospital (Ziv). There were many more events like this. The major issue here was money. The Breslov in Safed were making millions of dollars in regular trips to the USA by representing themselves as the true Breslov community in Israel. They did not want any competition.
Erez eventually left Rav Shick and that is where the history in the article starts.
But it is important to note that everything that was written in the newspaper Haaretz about the period that I know something about was all wrong. It makes me wonder if this is their standard of accuracy?

Breslov in Safed tended to very non kosher tactics. They wagged a kind of silent war against anyone connected with Rav Shick. This included me. They had clever ways of waging war against me. After all they thought I could not know who was harassing my family and me. And they knew that there was nothing I could do to protect my family from, their types of harassment.

Eventually most of the leading Breslov people in Israel have woken up to the threat of the Breslov in Safed. They have publicly signed a public statement against them.
Though I have certain difference of opinion with Rav Shick I still highly respect him. Learning Torah and keeping the plain Shulchan Aruch is the fundamental aspect of his teaching and at the core of what he actually does.--not just says. And frankly I have a hard time disagreeing with this. My basic complaint against Rav Shick and the general frum [Orthodox] approach is not that this approach is wrong,- but that it could be and should be better and more human and less totalitarian. But it would be better for me to have wings also. That does not mean I should complain about airplanes.



Erez (Halberns), incidentally, tried opening a Breslov Synagogue all over Safed. Every few weeks he would take me along to some person who had offered to him a building to start a synagogue. Once we were at the major of Safed. Other times we were at some home owner [in Canaan, North Safed] that happened to have a synagogue on his property. Somehow Breslov in Safed had spies that were keeping track of Erez. So what would happen would be we would be offered help and the deal be sealed with a handshake [which has the status of a contract in Halacha]. Then the Breslov people would come and tell slander to the person. Then the next time Erez would go there he would be thrown out. (I was usually not present at the occasions on which he was thrown out. I was invited usually just for the initial meetings)
Incidentally, Rav Shick absolutely loved Erez. He definitely was setting him up as his prime disciple in Israel after Nissan David Kivak. I was definitely at the bottom of the barrel. Rav Shick (you could say) did not like me. I could never figure out why. [I think I probably rubbed him the wrong way because of my free thinking. This free thinking has annoyed everyone  in the religious world, and in fact broke my once chance at real shiduch.  The religious like followers, not thinkers.]


At any rate, back to Rav Shick. As a final note I must say that when I was at a speech from Rav Shick and he would talk about Faith--I would feel the whole world light up. He definitely had this power to convey this to people. I assume it was from the Intermediate Zone which is from the Side of Holiness but is still mixed with some Sitra Achra. Hey, but that is just my opinion.

Concerning the Divine Presence. My basic feeling about it is that when one fulfills the basic path of Torah, then  there is some type of aspect of the Divine Presence that seems to descend on people. But the drawbacks to this are first --that it is like I said often mixed with the "Intermediate zone" depending on the spiritual vessels of the person.  Holiness does not in any way imply right opinions or intelligence of even good character. And also even when it is pure Divine spirit, well she is simply hard to take. Most people if they would have a glimpse of the Divine presence for even a second would never ask for it again. It sears and fries the soul.

Marx embraced the Labor Theory of Value (LTV). This theory holds that the price of
a good will be proportional to the amount of labor that was necessary to produce the
good.
How important is the LTV to Marx’s overall philosophy? The answer is that it is
crucial to his critique of capitalism. Central to that critique is his claim that, in a capitalist
system, the workers are ‘exploited’ by the capitalists (businessmen). If one accepts the
LTV, then Marx’s argument for the theory of exploitation is persuasive. But if one rejects
the LTV, then the argument collapses.

of economic theories LTV was the worst to pick.

We know that Marx’s general economic theory is false, because he made a number of testable predictions which are now known to be false. For instance, the middle class did not shrink and disappear as he predicted; nor did the upper class
shrink as he predicted; nor do we see wages set, in capitalist countries, anywhere near subsistence level; nor has the rate of profit fallen as he predicted; and nor have capitalist economies collapsed because of their internal ‘contradictions’ as he predicted. But, on
a theoretical level, what is wrong with the LTV and the argument for it that we
summarized above? This can be understood in terms of the standard modern theory of
value.


Of philosophers, Rousseau and Hegel were also the worst to pick for other reasons.

The diehards who also say that the totalitarian police state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary: the rejection of civil society. This goes back to Rousseau -- helping to explain the Terror of the French Revolution. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes incautiously reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication. [Rousseau held that "civil society" was simply a conspiracy by the rich to guarantee their plunder.]


Marx went around picking the worst aspects of few systems of thought and making a cholent out of them--but a cholent that was and is a powerful social glue. It tells the poor they can steal from the rich and feel good about it. The thing here is that America does not have an social glue. It is becoming unraveled. So while it is important to notice that communism is a highly evil system, this still leaves the question open of what could be better. The principles of John Locke that America is founded on, are currently ignored in the USA. I would say we are at a time of crisis in Western civilization.

The next issue (also related to freedom): the very important debate between James Madison and Thoma Jefferson and the Bill of Rights. This little piece of history is of vast importance because it tells the story of the Bill of Rights in a compelling way. Without this story, idiotic people can think they have the rights to have all their needs taken care of without having to lift a finger,- as is the situation today in the USA. If people would know the story behind the Bill of Rights I don't think things would have decayed so much.



The Republicans have become shy of being accused of being "mean" if they are not willing to hand out free stuff to "needy," i.e. politically noisy, constituencies. In these circumstances, the conservative plurality is rendered disproportionately ineffective, and the power of the left enhanced

An appalling and shameless burst of authoritarianism can be found in The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice, by Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy [Oxford University Press, 2002]. Nagel and Murphy (on the Law Faculty -- a terrifying thought -- at New York University) not only reaffirm the thesis of Sunstein and Holmes that rights do not exist without the state and taxes, but they proceed to the logical conclusion that people simply have no right to their property, savings, and income, i.e. to the fruit of their own labor, "in any morally meaningful sense."

"Rights," (benefits) which serve to enslave or steal from others -- are claims of forced labor (violating the 13th Amendment as "involuntary servitude") against others -- are today mostly what people scream about when they demand their "rights."

A "right to a job" means that somebody else must be required to provide the job. A "right to medical care" means that somebody else, doctors and nurses, must be required to provide that care. These kinds of rights thus will either effect "involuntary servitude" on the part of employers, doctors, nurses, etc.,\\
As Brian Caplan put it: Free government money is a key foundation of long-term male unemployment and out-of-wedlock births. Reduce or eliminate that free government money, and you start a virtuous cycle of working class self-improvement. Males would be a lot more likely to find and hold a job. Women would be a lot more likely to focus on men's industry and dependability instead of aggressiveness and machismo.

some interesting comments on an article in Yahoo about: Racial divide runs deep in U.S. schools, study finds

Racial divide runs deep in U.S. schools, study finds

Comments:
When I was in college there weren't any blacks in my calculus courses, organic chemistry. Physics. None, nadda, zero! Plenty of blacks on campus but they were apparently working on other degrees that didn't involve any of the natural sciences, math or engineering

There were Whites, Asians, Indians and Hispanics.

Comment:
So it is the choice of the school to offer calculus and physics, not whitey keeping the minorities down. Go to your school boards and demand the courses to prepare students for college and quit blaming the system. You don't like it, change it.
Comment:
Oh good GRIEF!!! Here we go again. If a black kid gets kicked out of school, it's for BEING BAD, not for BEING BLACK. It's always whiteys fault that blacks are bad, commit crimes more, won't work, etc etc. Sick of it already.

Comment:
What an incredibly biased article. Maybe there's a reason behind the high rates of suspension. Black and Hispanic children are more likely to turn to the "hip hop" culture and cause trouble. I graduated in 03, am Hispanic, was in Gifted courses, and am now in the Air Force.

My comment: Many Hispanics have a work ethic that could would put most people to shame.
When I was in Collage, there was this one girl from Cuba that was really smart and a real hard worker. She had a FULL load of courses and still she got top grade in the classes we shared (Mathematics Physics etc.)

Green Techlet?

I agree Rav Shach was Gadol and I also agree that Rav Ovadia Yoseph is extremely smart. But the place where I would look for greatness in Torah --the Lithuanian Gedolim are not. Read a bit what they have written and you will see for yourself. However, I admit they can learn. That much I will grant to you. But does this level of learning justify the changing the halacha from one "must not" take money for learning Torah to one "must". Or changing the halacha to fight in a war of protecting the Jewish people-- milchemet mizvah (war of obligation)--in which you draft even a bride out of her bride-chamber. All the more so in this case in which learning Torah is not a petur (permission to refrain) from doing even the smallest mitzvah--much less this greatest of all mitvot.
[however I do admit that Torah Scholars do not have to go out to fix the wall of a walled city with everyone else. This is a true halacha in the Talmud. But serving in the Israel defense Force is in the category of protecting the Jewish people for which purpose one drafts even a bride at the minute of her chupa. I might mention in this context that learning Torah is not a petur from any mitzvah. If asked to do a mitzvah even the smallest mitzvah it is never a answer to say ''I am busy learning.'' This is simple Shulchan Aruch. All the more so for the greatest of all mitzvot-serving in IDF.


But I do admit Litvaks (Lithuanians) learn better than Religious Zionists. I still remember that stupid article in the main publication of Dati Leumi (Religious Zionist publication) arguing for techelt thread that was green!
What is wrong with this: Absorption of light. Water doesn't look blue; it is blue. It absorbs in the infrared and enough in the visible range that red wavelengths are absorbed before blue. So the farther away something is under water, the bluer it looks. Also the fuzzier and fainter because even clear water has suspended particles to scatter light. The deeper you go in the ocean, the bluer the scene gets (because red light from the surface is absorbed) and the darker.

divorce

divorce


In the Torah there are very specific instructions as for the get process. One is that the husband can't be forced (except in certain specific cases). In Eastern Europe there was a famous case (sorry I forget the name of the Rav--later note--R. Elchanan Spector of Kovno) of a husband being tricked into giving the get by promises and this was deemed to be forced.
However the Rema does mention in a teshuva different situations in which the husband can be forced. He does mention the question of danger. But he says playing cards or being mechalel shabat does not come into that category.
The next question is the money issue. This woman will almost certainly go to court to ask for half his assets and the court will in all likelihood grant this to her.
using a get as a weapon is not right I agree but using the power and might of the state as a weapon to steal from her husband is also not right.
This is stealing since the Torah does not grant to her half of her husband's assets so she is using the power to the state to steal. And stealing is forbidden according the Torah. Also there is a further question of the child but in this case the woman might be right for having the child with her. In general girls are with the mother and boys at a certain age with the father according to Torah law.
The next most pressing question here is rebelious wife (moredet). Simply put: the basic din of a rebellious wife is that she loses the ketubah plus the fruit of property she brought into the marriage (nichsai zon barzel and melug). In this case however she will surely try to steal most of his property. Why no rabbi thinks that stealing is a problem is a mystery to me.
And there the further question of why he does not want to go to a kangaroo court that he already knows what the verdict will be. I can't answer that question. especially when he know that what a beit din decides is in general not what the Torah says so it ha no din of a beit din.

my notes on renitzins husband:
Adam ZurMar 6, 2012 12:52 AM

I have a little thing I have thought about Gitin (Divorce) for a long time. It is the date. The sages established the date as from the time the present government began its reign. Counting from a different date makes the get not kosher. An example would be counting from the time of the beit hamikdash (from its building or destruction or from the time of a different government). These are all ways to posel a get. And though the present form is well established for along time,- but hey, so was the form of the get in the time of Rabbainu Tam established. That did not stop him from changing it. (Though I might not accept it, I would be very interested to know what R. Ovadiah Joseph would have to say about this. I don't always accept his conclusions but his halachic reasoning is very brilliant in general.)
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The Rebbetzin's HusbandMar 6, 2012 07:23 PM

Adam-
That's why we write למנין שאנו מונין. See Nachlas Shivah on Kesuvos, Siman 12, where he stresses this.
Reply

Adam ZurMar 7, 2012 02:33 AM

Thank you. That answers my question.
(At least according to Tosphot. But Tosphot always goes according to the opinion that when the reason for a law is null then the law is null. So along with tosphot (in gitin)and your answer this answers the question fully. My main question was really according to the Rambam. But at this point it seems like nit picking since i always go by tosphot anyway.
ReplyDelete

Adam ZurMar 7, 2012 06:26 AM

I was also wondering about the issue of the fact that the husband appoints someone to write the get. I remember that the Tiferet Israel brings this question in the his booklet on Nashim. But I was wondering if there are other people that deal with this question. (To be clear: why does shlichut help in this case?)

In America you can go to jail for protecting yourself. The case of Jay Rodney Lewis.

in America you can go to jail for protecting yourself
The result of liberal agenda. The liberal stance on crime is part of a broader view that the way to protect the rights of all is to protect the rights of the obnoxious. After all, if you protect the free speech rights Islamic terrorists surely you've built a wall big and strong enough to protect the free speech rights of all.

The only problem is, what happens when the activities of the sociopath degrade the rights of others? Protecting the rights of the obnoxious protects only the rights of the obnoxious.

Read this: Lewis, a Kansas native, moved to West Des Moines in fall 2010 to take a job in an Internal Revenue Service call center.

A former security guard and law enforcement officer, Lewis also is a hunter and gun collector and came to Iowa with a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Police reports and court records say Lewis’ troubles began shortly before midnight on Oct. 29. Lewis was headed home in his blue Ford Mustang, south on 11th Street toward Regency Woods Apartments in West Des Moines, when he came upon a Ford Taurus driven by James Scott Ludwick, 35.

Ludwick, a former soldier and convicted felon, was driving four people home from a Halloween party. Documents say Ludwick slowed; Lewis passed him. Ludwick sped up, and the cars raced down 11th Street until they came to Regency Woods. They collided when Lewis, in front and on the right, started to turn left.

Lewis said Ludwick and a passenger, Justin Lossner, got out of the Taurus and began punching the Mustang’s windows.

They backed off when Lewis pulled out his .380-caliber pistol. But they came back.

Lewis said he was outside his car, evaluating its damage, when he caught Ludwick and Lossner trying to sneak up on him from two different directions.

The recording of a 911 call made by Lewis begins with Lewis yelling at the two to “just stay where you are. Get back! Get back! I’m going to start shooting!”

There are exchanges of profanities while Lewis explains the situation to a police dispatcher. Then, “Get away from me. Get away from me!” And a bang.

911 call: Jay Rodney Lewis reports assault, shooting attacker

Ludwick was shot, Lewis said, when Ludwick turned away as if to retreat, then spun back and charged. Records say the bullet hit Ludwick in his chest above the right pectoral muscle, then tore through his right bicep.

Jurors found Lewis’ actions entirely appropriate.

“He gave them fair warning,” jury forewoman Nancy Alberts said. “Normally, anybody that would pull a gun on someone, you would think that they would stop. ... That wasn’t the case here. You could clearly hear on the 911 call where he warned Mr. Ludwick.”

Appendix:
He was in jail for four months and was found innocent by a jury.
But he lost his job and is now homeless.  All for protecting himself.

common sense

Common sense is a large topic. I tend to agree with Ann Rand on this topic that a trend in philosophy trickles down to everything else. . (E.g. With Rousseau's Anti-Reason Anti-Enlightenment ) Here also the general trend of Western philosophy was to look at anything that was common sense as being by definition not possible.
In American and English thought only the counter intuitive is considered true.

This is a sad development in philosophy starting from David Hume and continuing in the Anglo British school. I would welcome a return to common sense in the world.
Hume starts out with a simple mistake that has plagued philosophy since his time. He asks for a idea that is not based on the senses. He says if one could find such an idea it would disprove him. Then he finds this idea. Then he says it is meaningless instead of admitting his mistake.
That is not his only mistake.There is also his completely arbitrary claim that reason does nothing but perceive  contradictions. Where he gets this from is simple. He saw Euclid and was impressed so he decided philosophy had to follow the same path. In any case his claim is stupid and arbitrary.It is true that Euclid builds his system by means of simple axioms and then uses reason to perceive contradictions --but also he uses reason to build up claims and ideas that are ot based on simply perceiving contradictions. So Hume did not even understand Euclid.

On a separate topic here is an essay about another issue that Hume got confused in; http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/PSEUDOSC/Hume.htm

The problem the Baal Teshuva movement.

The problem with Kiruv and the Baal Teshuva movement.
It had a great idea in the beginning of teaching people to learn and keep Torah. And this is I admit a great thing.

The problem with Kiruv note 1 and the Baal Teshuva movement. The movement the movement to convert Reform and Conservative young college students into  by inviting them to Sabbath meals and show them an idealized picture of what Torah is about. The words "Baal Teshuva" means newly religious.] had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter.

Until they did.

Revolutions are always like this: at first all men are brothers, and anything is possible, and then, if you're lucky, the romance of that heady moment ripens into a relationship, instead of a breakup, an abusive marriage, or a murder-suicide. The Baal Teshuva movement had its golden age.

Part of what all Baali Teshuva  had in common was they against: the current "System," (the whole thing evolved out of the 1960's mentality) and the principle of insatiable greed that made it run, as well as the emotional and economic problems that accompanied it.

The "System" that damages people, and its devastation was on display as never before in the early 1960's.
And then came people -- the psychologically fragile, the marginal, the greedy and cruel -- some of them endlessly needy and with a huge capacity for disruption. Others who had wanted to experience a Jewish society on a grand scale found themselves trying to solve parnasa ( money) problems by using the Torah and by fraud pretending to be teaching the ancient wisdom of the Talmud (which is great).
The fraud  is what I think destroyed the beauty of it all--but it might be the very system itself that is particularly open for abuse--very much like communism


And then there was the violence. The main modus operandi can best be described by Odysseus: "We went into villages and killed all the men and took the women and children". This is done not by violence, but rather stealth and cunning. Kiruv depended on the naivety of women, and teachers play the part of righteous sages. Then the woman comes to ask advice from the teacher about her husband. the answer for was to find out the level of observance of the husband. If it is more than the accepted amount, then they tell the woman the husband is a lunatic "meshuga." If the level of observance is less, then the husband is a heretic (apikorus). This way the woman and and her children become part of the community and the husband is discarded like trash. This was almost never do this with malicious intent but just by instinct.

Next is Aish and the different Kiruv  groups. In essence, debating today has become a rhetorical tool used to control questions through obfuscation. This is why debating, is very much a root cause of propelling our anti secular knowledge forward to the next level of insipidity. This was not the case in previous epochs. Not long ago people actually presented evidence supplied by history, data, facts, and used demonstrable proofs to demonstrate the validity of arguments. There seems little use in debating in groups like Aish that do not retain respect for truth. Ironically, debating the virtue and merits of truth, moral goodness or the nature of the good life is rarely something that those who sincerely practice such things feel compelled to do.
 Rav Shach wrote what he thought about Kiruv-- and it was harsh.
There is no board of review or  a process to decide integrity. And since there is no overseeing or checking for integrity, there is no integrity.

This is the problem with empowering people that have no sense of justice. It is the reason Reb Israel Salanter started the Musar movement. Without a sense of justice, what is the point? Just the opposite. Teaching people Torah when they are unjust just gives ammunition to bad people. Thus the teachers of think they are righteous because they suppose they are bringing people to Torah, but they themselves are unjust. The whole thing has become an Animal Farm with all the Orwellian nightmares associated with it.



(note 3) bringing them into orthodoxy enforces what every  schizoid tendencies.

I like Spinoza very much. If he had proved his point about pantheism I would probably not be knocking the different groups of chasidim that preach pantheism

I like Spinoza very much. If he had proved his point about pantheism I would probably not be knocking the different groups of chasidim that preach pantheism and also say that what they are teaching is authentic Judaism. But personally to me it does not seem that Spinoza proved his point. Several of the things that he writes right at the beginning are of interest. He uses Descartes' idea of a clear idea as being evidence that it is true. (I only wish this were so. I have a clear idea that I have a million dollars!)(Of course Descartes was mathematician, so in that context this idea makes sense but as a general rule it does not). Next Spinoza puts a restraint on substance that also is not intuitive and to me makes no sense; i.e. that no substance can effect another substance in any way. Next most of the proofs do not prove what he is saying and he uses many terms that he does not define. While I admit his work is admirable and an amazing attempt to create a rigorous philosophy as for me I think I will stick with the Rambam. I also appreciate that he does not claim to be teaching authentic Judaism as opposed to chasidut which also teaches pantheism (or panetheism)and yet teaches that it is authentic Judaism. In any case, pantheism is not the faith of the Torah.

This is the philosophy part. Also, Arizal does not agree with pantheism. To the Arial (and the Zohar), only Azilut is godliness, not the lower worlds. Also the Zimzum has nothing to do with pantheism. To use the issue of the Zimzum was a smoke screen made up by chasidim to try to show why the Gra put Chasidim (or rather "the disciples of the Magid from Metzritch") in cherem. but the Gra does not mention the zimum. Also it is not relevant. Hashem might have condensed his light or Himself and still everything might not be godliness; i.e. it could be he condensed his light or himself. Then he sent down his light into the empty space and made the lower worlds. That still does not mean that the lower world are Divine. It is simply irrelevant. And in fact, anyway it says in many places in the beginning of the Eitz Chayim that Hashem condensed Himself.
To sum this up simply the faith of the Torah is monotheism. This goes for the Rambam and Saadia Geon and the Arizal. The principle of creation something from nothing is the basis for Torah as the Rambam also holds. Something from nothing does not mean something from ain sof (infinity). So for chasidim to present pantheism as kabalah or as Judaism is not right.

Monotheism was a revolution. It was different from what came before it in that God is transcendent, and that he is not subject to a meta divine realm. Nature is not God. He is totally "other."


It is common in pagan religions for there to be  a fluid boundary between the divine, the human, and the natural worlds. They blur into one another. The distinction between them is soft.  So there's no real distinction between the worship of gods and the worship or people . Also because humans also emerge ultimately from this primordial realm there's a confusion of the boundary between the divine and the human that's common in pagan religion. These are all characteristics of Hasidim.

(1) Important to indicate the values that the Torah is trying to tell us. I need a list. First on the list is Monotheism, that God is transcendent. That His Will is absolute and not subject to any Meta-Divine realm, nor to any tzadik or any rituals. The basic values of Torah are the values that cults change and do so in a tricky way by emphasizing rituals and clothing, and thus are able to present themselves as authentic Jews while their basic principles of Pantheism  are in direct contradiction to Torah.


(2) Next you need to show how the  spiritual power of chasidic leaders comes from the meme or the super-organism that is possessing them and not from holiness. This spiritual power comes hurt people that oppose them but it is not from the side of holiness. the power of the super organism gives to chasidim the power to hurt people --but not to help. This is just a general consequence of the war of the gods that is taking place nowadays after the fall of simple monotheism.
The absence of the realization of the active power of God has given rise to polytheism in new forms like groups in which the old gods are replaced by people or corpses.

God created the world with two opposite sets of value--form and content

God created the world with two opposite sets of value--form and content. As you approach God you are getting closer to content with no form. The Talmud occupies an area that is between pure content with no form, and the mode of justice. However there are other areas of value.
Where these areas of value intersect that is the halacha. So to come to a true final halacha would require not just a source in Talmud but also a way of dealing with the questions raised by John Locke and Hobbes about the nature of civil society and justice in itself. Since no one since the time of the Rambam has had the stature to be able to deal with these questions in any coherent way I consider the entire area of religious law to be in what is called "civil society"--that is an area free from cohesion. The purpose of government in my view is to protect society from outer and inner threats of crime. In a word you could say I am a Jeffersonian , but it would be more  accurate to say I derive my views from Kant  and John Locke.

The Rambam's theory about Avraham Avinu (Abraham) from the Guide needs more attention. It is so starkly different than what people think the Rambam (Maimonides) said that it would be laughed at. You have to actually see it inside to even believe the Rambam could write it.
But here in this blog I have already written about the Rambam's approach to Avraham.
It is clearly a natural law theory but it has great subtlety.
The first thing I want to mention here however is not to explain the natural law theory of Maimonides but to explain what it is not. Philosophy has gone so far astray in the last hundred years that it is important to explain what Reason does not say.
First of all a wicked tradition in philosophy starting from Hume is like this. It makes a statement that seems to be reasonable at first like "No a priori knowledge can be gained by observation." It then it finds something that in fact looks like a priori knowledge gained by observation, and then claims that therefore it can't be a priori knowledge. This is so stupid it surprises me that people have been taken in by this for 400 years.
This is not called reason, and is not reasonable at all.
Also, the empirical school of thought that knowledge needs to be based on observation and justified by observation is also not reasonable.
This has been dealt with elsewhere but let me just mention that if Empiricism were true you could not know that something can't be blue and green in the same place at the same time.

But this could possibly make a problem for the very foundations of American Democracy (which i do believe in) which is founded on the principles of John Locke who was an empiricist.
It might not because his philosophy of empiricism might not be related to his philosophy of politics. But I don't know this. And after all is said and done there is something lacking in substance in American society. The America I once knew and loved is long gone. The principles of the Founding Fathers are nowadays a joke for the Democratic party and even for the Republicans. Limited government is nowadays a joke.

One thing you can say about the Talmud--even though i also don't like the fanatics but you have to admit very few people who learn Talmud are taken in by the lies of the democrats.
to quote Kelly Ross on the Democrates:
Who hate almost everything about America, including the very ideas of limited government, individual rights, private property, self-defense, free enterprise, free speech, etc. A history of slavery, sexism, and homophobia naturally discredits everything about America and its history -- but these are only minor idiosyncrasies in Islâmic fundamentalism, which of course is fully redeemed by its hatred of America (and, well, Jews). Any Democrats who do not agree with attitudes like these, it is time for you (especially if you are Jewish) to get out of that Party. If you don't believe that the Party involves attitudes like these, it is time to get wised up.

Concerning Iran

Concerning Iran, I want to mention:

Most pacifists react to this issue by simply pretending that it doesn't exist,- that Muslims either never deliberately choose violence, that violence always stems from earlier violence, poverty, or injustice, or that if people do deliberately choose violence, it's in rare cases that are not really of great importance. But history abounds with Muslims who have deliberately chosen violence. The ease with which Muslims from non-violent backgrounds have been induced to commit atrocities shows how easy it can be for the violent to recruit assistants

How do we respond to people who have opted for violence?
Appeasement merely reinforces the conviction that violence gets results. Moreover, it provides gratification by reinforcing the feeling of dominance. When confronting people who have already opted for violence, non-violence has a very good chance of perpetuating the cycle of violence. Retaliatory force, on the other hand, makes the results of violence a lot less simple, a lot less effective in getting results, and a lot less gratifying.