Property Damages

I wanted to mention a few of the problems that exist between the Rambam (Maimonides) and the Talmud on the issue that is brought in Bava Kama page 19.
 However since it occurs to me that some people might read this blog that would like a bit of introduction let me begin with the basic ideas.

We know from the holy Torah [Exodus 22 and 23] that there are several kinds of damages that one is responsible for. Many of them are stated explicitly in the verse from the holy Torah itself. One explicit kind of damage is when ones animal damages another persons animal or vessels or person.This is an open verse.
Besides this there are other many other types. But here I want to concentrate on this one type.
What happens I ask if ones animal kicks stones up while walking and by that damages someones property?

If in a public domain the owner has no responsibility. If in the domain of the nizak [the person that received damage to his property] then he pays half damage.


So far so good.

Now what happens if ones animal has a string attached to it? This is not exactly a case of kicking stones. But it is also not the usual type of damage.


Let's take the case the string has an owner; and the owner did not hide the string or bury it. The Rambam says  the owner of the string pays half damage.

This sounds simple, does it not? But it is not. It seems to be in direct contradiction to the Talmud in  many ways.
How can I even begin to count the ways?

Maybe for the sake of everyone reading this I ought just to say over the actual statement of the Talmud so you can see for yourselves the problems.

The Mishna gives a case of a chicken that has string attached to its foot is kicking up a fuss. And it says the obligation for damage is 1/2.

Rav Huna said that is when the string got tied to the chicken by itself. [the chicken was in someones yards and the string was lying on the ground and it got attached to the chicken.] But if someone tied the string to it then the obligation is full damages. The Talmud here asks on Rav Huna. Who is obligated to pay?It cant be the owner of the string  because if he hide it it is not his fault. If he left it out then he should pay full damages.

So it must be it is the owner of the chicken and it is a case when the chicken was flying around--so it is is a case of kicking stones. And Rav Huna was talking about completely different case. He was referring to a string that has no owner.

At this point i think you can see how different this is from the Rambam. If you want to see a way of looking at the Talmud here that follows the logic of the Talmud you can take a look at the Rosh [Rabbainu Asher]. But that is not going to rescue us.
So let me see if I can at least try to enunciate some of the problems. First the obligation of the owner of the string the Rambam says is because of the type of damage called  "Hole" which means digging  a hole in public domain or in the domain of the Nizak [person that received damage]. But hole is obligated for damage persons if  and animals not vessels. And why is the owner of the chicken not obligated here? Just because the string has an owner why does that take away responsibility from the owner of the chicken? What about the person that tied the string? Why is he not obligated? Is he not the principle source of damage? [Actually that last statement might not be true, for when the string has an owner it looks like the Gemara itself is considering the owner to be responsible. Not the one who tied the string.]

There is some support for the Rambam that idolatry means worship of a mediator. This is because ancient idolatry never involved a divine creator.

Idolatry was simply the idea that certain beings had control over certain aspects of the world. On the other hand these agents were not mediators.

So today when you find that people worship a corpse they can claim that they are not doing idolatry because they are not claiming that the corpse created the world. On the other hand it does seem that they are claiming that the corpse  is a mediator between them and God. That at least comes under the definition of idolatry to the Rambam.

But worse than this it seems they might be considering the corpse to have control over certain aspects of their lives. This would seem to be idolatry according to all opinions.


My feeling is to check from where the Rambam gets his idea of the mediator and that would seem to be Saadia Geon.

From the Talmud itself we have no source material on this subject. At best from the Talmud we have Shituf. That is like when people, would worship G-d  along with the Baal. They thought God had control over heaven and the Baal over the earth. So they worshiped both together.  That is Shituf. ="Joining." That is not the same as a mediator

Why are people irrational about Politics?

For my opinion concerning Israel and the situation today concerning the war between the Palestinians and Israel I would suggest to people to read the essay of Michael Huemer on why people are irrational about politics (http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/irrationality.htm) and also the essay of Kelly Ross considering fundamentalist Islam on his site .[http://www.friesian.com/afghan.htm#fascism]

But just for the record let me say that I think Israel has a right to protect herself. Furthermore in  a state of war I don't think they need to warn individual combatants. If fact I think the best think would be to drop the semantics and call it what it is: "War" (not conflict) and then let the rules of war apply. Obviously the Palestinians have no problem with targeting civilian populations. So this is war therefor Israel should do what one does in war. --take out its enemies. Period.


If Mexico was lobbing bombs on Los Angeles I don't think the USA would take long to respond with devastating force. That is exactly what Israel should do right now.

The only reason do not want Israel to respond is they like the idea of Jews being killed. 

People come to Uman to escape .

Of course other people come to Uman for the normal reason of praying by the grave of a tzadik in the hope that in his merit ones prayers will be answered.

But I did not want address this issue here. The first issue seems to me to be more interesting.
What you see is people that want to keep the Holy Torah but can't stand to be near any orthodox rabbi under any circumstances what so ever.
Personally I can relate to this feeling. But I am not sure of what kind of conclusion to draw from it.

I have a kind of sensitivity to numinous areas of value.

 is Breslov the same area of value as Torah?


 Now that does not mean I am asking: Is Breslov a different area of value as music is different? Rather I mean to ask if it is an area that we would think should be the same as Torah, but maybe is not? 

Or perhaps what some people in Breslov might say is the area of value of Torah and Mitzvot simply according to the Talmud the real area of value of Torah?  I know this sounds terribly insulting towards Breslov but still I think this is a question that needs to be asked.

Now with this type of philosophical analysis I think we can come up with proper answer.
A path of intensified numinousity of the Torah  people do tend to askew  into something that is not Torah. That does not mean it is a bad approach. It just means they did not understand his approach.

 Also, I wanted to address the problem that it can be hard to find a place to learn Torah. I.e. even if one is interested in Torah sometimes the local synagogue might have an approach that is highly divergent from Torah and still call it Torah.
[And there can be degrees of this kind of problem.]

 At any rate, my solution to this problem is to get yourself just one volume of Talmud plus some of the works of what is called Musar. Musar tends to limit how far astray people can go in their world views. I mean to say that without Musar, one can say the Torah means almost anything he imagines it to mean. One could find support for any conceivable world view. Musar tends to limit the range of possible world views one can claim for the Torah.

Rosh Hashanah in Uman.

  Nachman from Breslov.  Uman on Rosh Hashanah?.

Reb Nachman never said to come to his grave for Rosh Hashanah. If he would have do you not think that Reb Nathan would have written it down? He only said to come to his grave and say the ten Psalms. And he brought two witnesses to make sure that this could never be misunderstood. But he never did any such thing concerning Rosh Hashanah. He said to come to him on Rosh Hashanah when he was alive. He never said anything concerning his grave.



First let me make it clear that I did take a lot of time a effort to understand the opinion of Bava Sali concerning this issue. Clearly he had a very high opinion of  Nachman. What he apparently did not like were the small groups of cults of people that use his ideas to make up a new Torah. But  that did not diminish his respect for Rav Nachman himself. towards the end of his life he related a dream he had of his son coming to him from Gan Eden telling him how  Nachman was telling a Torah lesson to  the tzadikim [saints].

The minimum we can learn from this story is that Bava Sali did in fact have a positive opinion of Rav Nachman.

Reb Moshe [Feinstein] we also know did write a haskama [endorsement] on the petek of Israel Odesser.

Though this does not tell us anything about the petak [letter] again it is a clear piece of evidence that Reb Moshe also had a very good opinion of Rav Nachman.[especially if you see the actual word that Reb Moshe wrote.]

[And Rav Ovadia Joseph said it is allowed to come to Uman for Rosh Hashana. Rav Shach said no.]

What needs to be looked into here is the fact that some people do tie themselves with  Nachman.

According to the Nefesh Hachaim that is idolatry  My view of this is that one can do everything R. Nachman said and he or she should just be careful not to fall into idolatry.

I think that Rav Nachman came to help people keep Torah.
However there is a opinion that seems to be a basic belief in Breslov that one cant get close to God without going through Rav Nachman. This would be easy to dismiss if it was just Breslov. But they bring it from a statement of Rav Nachman himself in the Chayee Moharan. however if you look there at the actual Yiddish statement that Rav Nachman said you will see he said no such thing. Rather this: "There is something that comes into the world, that when it has come one can't get close to God without it." He did not say it was a tzadik or even a physical thing. Perhaps he meant it is some kind of spiritual dimension? see the Yiddish right on the page and you will see what I mean.

Philosophy at its best is vertical.

Philosophy at its best is vertical.
To explain what this means let me give an example. Take the Pre Socratics. The whole progression of thought from Parmenides until Plato was one long answer to the question of Parmenides, "How is change possible?"

In this case people today have had to look at the vertical progression of ideas and not concentrate overly much on any one particular philosopher. But in academic philosophy today even at its best almost has to take one particular philosopher and concentrate on him or at best on the small range of commentaries on him.

Sometimes this results in high quality work. You can find courses and books in Israel on Aristotle or Nietzsche or books devoted to Hegel which are of great quality.

But what is lacking here is the vertical chain of ideas.

To understand philosophy today you have to start with Spinoza and Leibniz and not learn them alone but also Locke and Hume. Only then can you get a good grasp on the debate between them and then you can see how Kant answers this debate in a very elegant way. But then to understand Kant you have several branches and side paths that lead nowhere. You need a strong sense of direction and also a highly developed analytical sense to be able to tell when post Kant thinkers doing their normal thing of circular logic.
You need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff also as in Frege.

It also is helpful to know Math and Physics in order to see when people talking in pseudo Physics terms to sound profound but in fact have no idea what they are talking about.
In fact you could say the major problem in philosophy today is that they suffer from physics envy.
  
The problem with Linguistic Analytic Philosophy or Post modernism is that once one has touched it he  can never regain his sanity ever again.


What Kelly Ross is good at is the big picture or the vertical line of thought . Also he felt under no pressure to get a job fast but took his time to digest what people were saying. So he could pinpoint the fallacious in Hume and later thinkers even while making note of their valid ideas.

So what comes out is that we get  a train of thought that starts with the argument between the empirical school and the rationalists until Kant. Then we see Kant's answer to this debate.
But we also see that his solution was a bit too much ad hoc. So we come to Hegel that Reason by some process gets into the dinge an sich