The Trouble is that Islam as a group has declared war on Israel and use daily any and all means to destroy it.

Americans' news feeds are overflowing with images of domestic scandals, protests in Turkey, and war in Syria. But the real story is Iran. By year's end, we may be confronted with a choice: Accept a nuclear-armed Iran, or support a military action to delay the program.



President Obama's policy on Iran has failed. Diplomacy has fizzled. And even The New York Times' news page and Obama's former advisors agree that sanctions aren’t working. And this is why Obama’s reaction to the recent Iranian election is so troubling.


My own feeling about Iran is I admit the hard line. It is not that i am in principle against Muslims.. I have known many fine and upright Muslims. Especially in the North of Israel. But also in the areas around Jerusalem i have had know many fine Muslims. I have nothing against them as people. And even as a religion my only complain against Mohammad as a highly immoral person. But i admit there were many great philosophers in th Islamic tradition. The Trouble is that Islam a s a group has declared war on Israel and use daily any and all means to destroy it.And their war on America is undeclared but real nevertheless.They will not launch a nuclear device against the USA At first. thy will try other means of stealth. Biological weapons, chemical weapons, forest fires, random attacks by knifes. Then when the timing is right they will go in for the kill..

Also I need to put together some kind of essay for the Internet about Musar of Israel Salanter and the problem that faced the Musar movement--There is no no second order ethics (I.e. no justification for ethics).  So they could have gone to the Medieval sources themselves for the issue of second order Ethics--like the Guide for the Perplexed. But instead went to the Kabalah of the Ari'zal. The Ari'zal's system is a powerful and amazing system but it is has two problems. No argument. No justification for statement that are laid down by Fiat-decree. Also I have another problem with the Ari'zal. He is based on the Zohar. I dislike the Zohar so much that yesterday as i was walking to the local synagogue I walked by a Zohar that was in the trash on the street and i did not even pick it up. It is not that I don't like what it says. But I dislike the fact that it is a forgery.

Also ethics is a big deal. The Musar movement approach to ethics is this: no one has had anything to say about ethics besides Jewish orthodox people. Muslims barely count and Christians are of course much worse as being idolaters. So the movement automatically cuts itself off from the basis of Musar: the books that were written during the Middle Ages by Muslim and Christian scholars.

In the view of the Musar movement (and Chasidut also) there has not been any legitimate thinking about morality outside the Jewish world. It is all just convention.

It would be difficult to support this contention by attention to the history of ethics.

Perhaps this will help:  Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Augustine, Maimonides, Aquinas, Hobbes, Butler, Hume, Kant, Bentham, Mill, Nietzsche, Hegel, Bradley, Sidgwick, Moore, Prichard.(4)

 I do not think anyone  with them would argue that Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Aquinas, Butler, Kant, Bentham, Mill, Bradley, Sidgwick, Moore, or Prichard--any one of them--thought that ethics was  convention.


On the other hand Musar is important. People need some sort of a moral guide through life. Many may think that they can get by without one but chances are that they are egoists and do have a principle which is guiding them. "If it makes me feel good, if it makes me happy, if I like it and can live with it then it is all right for me to do it." That may seem like an attractive principle by which we can make decisions until one starts to think about it. As a guide for all people that principle would lead and does lead to many conflicts.  

My impression of the original people that opposed secular education is that they were dealing with a situation in which their community supported them.


However he was a person that was respected by his community. and he was talking to people that could have sat in the local beit midrash and learned Torah and their father in laws would have supported them. They had little problem finding a wife or parnasah.

What would happen I wonder if suddenly the whole community returned against him? There can be such things. We know in the Torah of episodes of what you could call miracles of the Sitar Achra. We know many cases in which whole communities turned against Tzadikim. Moshe Rabbainu was not the first and not the last. [Korah seems safely far in the past but I know that he shows up even nowadays in rabbinical garb.

But let ups say for the sake of argument a tzadik would find himself with out a wife, with no parnasha wherever he would go in the Jewish world people would hound him out of town. Not just no one would hire him but they would actively try to bring blood libels of today the equal of sexual abuse libels against him.

I ask you --would not collage seem to him to be better option than what he had originally thought? It is not possible he would rethink his opinion?

In such a case a tzadik would think thus:
If A then B. A= the community is righteous. B I= am a wicked person.
I find A plausible. But I find B to be highly plausible. If I would accept A I would have to accept B. But B seems highly unlikely. Therefore I reject A. This is the type of Logical thinking a tzadik would do in such a case. Further he would reason further:I find not B to be the most plausible of all the propositions. Therefore not A

The problem of the Rambam.
The problem is that it looks like that if you take the Rambam together with the Gemara you get a different halachic decision than if you take him on his own.


This seems to be the problem that Reb Chaim Soloveitchik is coming to answer.
An example is the Rambam in laws of forbidden sexual relations. In the case a person jumps into a mikvah before his is dipped for the sake of avdut (slavery) then he becomes free- but only if he was bought from an Akum (gentile). The problem is that the Rambam says if he is bought from an Akum the Israel still has kinyan Haguf (possession of the body). To put in arbitrarily the distinction of a mikvah like the Kesef Mishna does does not seems very much like it according to the simple peshat in the Rambam. But Reb Chaim makes a distinction here that makes sense. If the Israel buys the Akum from himself he has Kinyan Haguf completely because the akum can sell himself. But buying from another Akim he buys the kinyan Haguf that gives him the right to dip the akum into the mikvah for the sake  of advut.

So the Rambam comes out exactly like he says. The simple peshat (explanation) in the Rambam is the true peshat (explanation) and yet it is accord with the Gemara also!

This is according to my basic impression that the Rambam wanted to be able to be read on his own without looking at the Gemara.


In spite of the fact that the Rambam wanted to be learned on his own still people that read the Rambam without the proper Gemara background have just enough knowledge of Halacha to mix everything up without knowing they are doing so. And it is easy reading. A million times easier than the Talmud. So people can pretend to understand and fake their way.
Perhaps the Rambam was addressing an audience of people that already had basic Gemara concepts. and could read Gemara simply and plainly as opposed to the general Baal teshuva today.

Motivations and world view are two intertwining issues.
People have some control over their motivations and this often depends on their world view.
When it comes to morality most philosophers are mostly interested in motivation. Schopenhauer thinks all motivations come under three headings: egoism, malice and compassion.
I there are more than just these three. And I think that they are to some degree subject to ones own choice.
But I also think that one can only follow a small number of principles. So while you might have open to you a number of principles or prime directives in your life, I do not think you can hop between them.



Each one of these people was apparently aware of the need to have a prime principle in ones life and also believed the choice of this prime directive is subject to choice. But they each choose a different prime directive not just for themselves but also to claim that thus and thus prime directive is the true one for all men.

This principle we find in political philosophy also. John Locke felt the protection of natural human rights is the proper Prime directive of government and that the way to protect peoples rights is by one main method-to protect their property from other people and from the government itself.  To Hegel and Marx, this is all ridiculous and they have another basic principle for government--"the State" which embodies the General Will. All individual interest is to be subjected to the State. This is now sadly the acting principle of the American government in direct opposition to the Constitution. [I don't want this to be a polemical peeve because I have not decided against Marx at all. Sometimes I feel in a situation the playground is occupied by bullies that a large degree of power granted to the State by Marx is important. 

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Classical Torah Theory is I believe a good system. I think it is clear that Classical Torah theory of people like Maimonides and Saadia Geon is advocating a morality that is logical, objective and humane.
This is however very different from Chareidi Jewish ethics of the modern era.
These two systems are so different it is not like comparing apples and oranges.

And I think the doctrine people believe in has a great influence on their actions

On the other hand I see Classical Torah theory as highly moral.


In response to this I recommend a return to learning Classical Torah Theory--starting with the Guide of The Rambam and the Emunot and Deot of Saadia Geon.
And when we find that our attitudes are different from those of the Rambam or Saadia Geon I suggest that the mistaken attitudes should be the ones to go.

The issue here is that the Conservative and Reform Movement have left the works of Musar and Medieval Jewish ethics in the hands of the Orthodox. This has given the Orthodox a monopoly in defining what Musar says. This was a bad mistake.

I would like to argue for a renewal of the idea of Israel Salanter about having a small Beit Midrash in every city for the sake of the study of Musar-Jewish Ethics.

But I am going to do this in such a roundabout way that it might not be obvious what I am advocating.



This one word made everything clear to me, but I realize it might not for people reading this blog.
So I will elaborate.

Classical Torah Theory as developed rigorously by Maimonides and the other Jewish thinkers of the Middles Ages is different in Orthodox Torah Theory. The area of difference is in Meta Ethics.

Orthodox Judaism today does not seem to have one theory of Morality but many. It slides between these theories seemingly almost at random.,- according to perceived interest of the group. The way it slides is by supposing that the many conflicting approaches do not conflict. But for lack of time I will not go into this right now.


 [To say things are good because God commands them means that mitzvot are arbitrary conventions established by God for no rhythm or reason. If so the Torah is not good. It is arbitrary]  Or because God is stronger than us and can punish  us if he wants to. Or that it is in our nature  But it is far from clear that we ought always to act in accordance with our nature. Suppose it were discovered that I (an aggressive male) am naturally adapted to fighting other people. I presume it will be granted that such a nature is possible--I could, for example, have naturally quick reflexes, physical strength, and an innate bloodlust; I might even have a naturally fearsome visage, suited to intimidating my opponents. Would it follow from this that I ought now to go out and attack people physically?





Now what I want to ask about this situation is, would Nazism be a good form of government, or would it still be bad? Surely this would be a case of establishing Halacha conventions according to which  Nazism  is good, if there were any such thing?  Yet here Nazism  would still be just as bad as it always was. The fact that something is generally practiced, obviously, does not make it right; that is why it always makes sense to doubt whether current practices are right. It always makes sense to try to establish better conventions, to find conventions good or bad, and so on, which it could not make sense if there were no possible standard of value independent of the conventions themselves.


On the other hand Classical Torah Theory as developed by Maimonides and Saadia Gaon [Ibn Ezra and many other Jewish thinkers from the Middle Ages] is very well grounded.
Their justification of Torah Morality is based on Aristotle and Plato. Saadia Gaon and Maimonides are from the Neo Platonic school (see chapters 3 and 4 from Emunot And Deot) and Ibn Ezra from  Platonism.
Whether in Plato or Aristotle Morality is objective and that is how the Medieval Thinkers understood the Torah to mean. as opposed to Orthodox Judaism today.  What I mean by  "objective" is that their truth does not depend on beliefs, feelings, or other attitudes of observers towards the things evaluated. This provides a reasonable interpretation of the notion of the objectivity of ethics. Assuming the correspondence theory of truth, this view entails values being 'part of reality' or 'part of objective reality.'

The issue here is that the Conservative and Reform Movement have left the works of Musar and Medieval Jewish ethics in the hands of the Orthodox. This has given the Orthodox a monopoly in defining what Musar says. This was a bad mistake.

But The Orthodox are right that morality in the area between man and man is not all what Torah is about.
There is the numinous aspect also. And in fact without this between God and Man aspect it is doubtful how far the moral aspect can go.
This is because as Israel Salanter noted many times we humans can only do good and act decently from a religious motivation., not from a moral motivation.