Idolatry is by all accounts the central issue in the Torah. I think it is perhaps because some people have never finished reading the Old Testament [Tenach] in Hebrew that they are not aware of this fact.

But as you go through the Old Testament you notice that this is the most essential theme. I admit that keeping all the mitzvot comes in a close second but this is clearly what all the prophets considered the most essential aspect of the Torah. For this reason you would think that people would spend more time in clarifying exactly what is idolatry. After being involved in Breslov for a good number of years it started occurring to me to attempt to bring some clarity to this issue.


I want to first of all suggestion that (1) Idolatry has a close connection with spirituality.
(2) Also I want to suggest that it is easy to become an object of idolatry. Anyone can do so with one word. ("Serve me," Rabbi Mei says is liable for idolatry. Sanhedrin 61a)
(3) Also I want to defend the  thesis of the Rambam [Maimonides] that worship of a mediator is also in the category of idolatry by means of an idea of Reb Chaim from Voloshin [in his book the Nefesh Hachaim]

First the ways of doing idolatry are five. Four are not according to its way: pouring, burning, sacrifice, bowing, and one according to its way. [Sanhedrin 60b].
Second of all, no god needs to be considered to be a world creator..No god ever was. [  For example Zeus was the god of lightning.] [Brahama the creator is himself created  by Brahman. And Brahman is not a creator but a former of the world from his own substance.]Even those that were world formers had always found preexisting substance.. The gods were not immortal. The Norse gods could die.
To be considered a god all one needed was power over some aspect of the world like healing or giving birth to children etc.

So it seems possible to say that coming to a navi [prophet] for a blessing could be in this category. All one needs to do is to think that he has some kind of spiritual power over some aspect of the world like giving blessings for children or healing. And then doing the service that is special for him as perhaps in giving to him charity.

Yet we do find in the Torah people coming to a  navi (prophet) for blessings. Avimelech was commanded by God to go to Avraham and ask him for a prayer.
 It looks that the Torah is thinking that a mediator is OK. If one thinks the being has powers in himself that is idolatry but if he is only a pipeline to God that is OK.

This presents a problem to the Rambam who says a mediator is also idolatry.

The answer to this is in the Nefesh HaChaim by the disciple of the Geon from Villna. He considers that when a person attaches himself to the divine spirit in a tzadik that is idolatry. This is how the Rambam would answer our objection that when the Torah says to go to a Navi or prophet for blessing it does not mean that one attaches himself to the spirit of that prophet. That is that the idea of idolatry is a kind of spiritual connection with some being besides God.

The other people besides the Rambam that do not seem to think that a mediator is a problem are thinking of idolatry more along the lines of the Talmud itself that is means accepting some being as ones god.

Based on the above analysis I think we can see the reason that some people have considered Chasidut as problematic and others have thought it  very important. This seems to be dependent whether you go with the Rambam or other opinions.

I think there is no chance that older Hasidim will change their world view. I think they will continue in older  theology in which the tzadik is the central figure. But every day new people get involved in Chasidut and my hope is they they will understand that a tzadik is not the central aspect of Torah, but rather God.

I have been trying to understand the subject of Musar for a while.
One of my motivations was that there is a connection between fear of God and length of days.
So I asked someone to bring a few books of Musar which I was reading for a while.
I still am not sure how to evaluate the whole subject.
The good things are that it gives a basically consistent world view of the meaning  Torah and Life and the universe. And having a consistent world view are important in order that a person should not do evil.

The reason is simple. If the evil inclination can get an inconsistent world view into a person that has conflicting principles then anything can be justified.

Or if the Satan can get an evil world view into a person then even if the person is good hearted , his actions will be evil.


On the other hand I did notice that books of Musar written under the influence of Kabalah tend to become a bit fanatic.

My learning partner suggested that  what is called today orthodox Judaism has a lineage that comes directly from the Ramban (Moshe ben Nachman) and not from the Rambam and Saadia Geon.

Musar is traditionally divided between the Rishonim or the classical books, and then later achronim,  and then the actual books of the disciples of Israel Salanter. But I think a better division is between kabalah based books and Rambam based books.

I feel the world is headed towards catastrophe. My feeling about what to do is to learn Torah. 
I am not making this up. In fact I heard from Reb Shmuel Berenbaum this idea countless of times. It is certainly not what you would hear from Breslov people that I started hanging out with after only a few years at the Mir.

In Breslov prayer and coming to Uman for Rosh HaShannah are considered as the cure alls. But at the Mir it was definitely learning Torah.

I would like to defend the basic idea of the Mir. But before I do I want to explain what the idea of learning Torah is. The simplest way of explaining this is to quote from Maimonides: "Just like there is not validity in the concept of adding or subtracting from the written Torah so is there no validity in the concept of adding or subtraction from the Oral Torah."

I.e. at the Mir the idea of learning Torah was highly limited to the actual content of the Oral and written Torah. Things that were written after the Talmud bavli only had legitimacy in so far as they were accurate explanations of the Talmud Bavli. Rishonim might be called second level Torah. Torah but not actual first level Torah.





Musar could also be considered second level Torah because it explains the basic world view of the Talmud.
But one problem I have with Musar is in fact in a the area of world view issues.


I think it is very important to have a world view that is consistent with reality and also has no internal inconsistencies.  So while Musar as a whole does give a basic world view based on Torah and Talmud still there are areas which it gets too frum (religious).

Idolatry is   highly relevant issue nowadays especially in the world of Hasidut. It is a surprise for me that this issue is not studied more in depth. 




In the Nefesh Hachaim of Reb Chaim from Voloshin we find the idea of attaching oneself to the divine spirit inside of another human being is idolatry. This is also a helpful idea and might give us an idea of some problems we find in Chasidim today. But again it is not the kind of definition I am looking for.


I have gotten into the habit of looking at original sources to decide any issue. And I think this is helpful here also. So I went to the Talmud in Sanhedrin page 60b to learn what the ancient Jewish sages thought about idolatry.
There we find in the mishna a difference between serving an idol according to it way and not according to its way. The Mishna says serving an idol or even not according to its way is idolatry if it is one of four kinds of serve--sacrifice or a service that was in the temple in Jerusalem and also bowing.

My point today in this essay is that when the Talmud comes along to discover the reason for this mishna it brings a braita [outside teaching] that is hard to understand.

So now I come to my point.
The Braita gets sacrifice from "he sacrificed." It gets other kinds of service that were done in the temple in Jerusalem from "only to God alone." Then it gets bowing from "and he will bow".

So far everything looks good.

But then it wants to take out kissing or hugging or anything that is not one of these four types. It does this by invoking the rule anything that was in a category and has been mention specifically, has been mentioned to tell us not about itself alone but the whole category.
Sacrifice has gone out to tell us when it is not according to it way he is only liable if it is avodat panim[inner service --serve that was done in the temple]



Now the way this looks [at least from rashi ] is that it is referring to the verse he went and served which means all kinds of service [according to its way or not]. But this can't be so.
The verse,"He will sacrifice," tells us nothing about service according to the way of idolatry.

The Braita has to mean that he will sacrifice has come been singled out for mention out of the category of "only for God alone".
Just to give the reader a little context I should mention that there are plenty of issues in the rashi here as you can see in the Maharam from Lublin. And the Gemara on the next page also goes deeply into problems that this Braita poses. One could easily spend a good year on these two pages of Gemara. But I wanted to focus here on this problem that apparently no one else has mentioned.

 Reform Judaism tends to take a fairly loose idea of prohibitions of the Torah.
My own parents were Reform Jews and there is a lot of good there and I saw a lot of holiness and light in my home. [Maybe I should qualify that. My parents went to a reform shul but I think their ideas were a lot close to Torah Judaism. In our home there was a tremendous respect for Torah Judaism. It was just between being a World War Two captain fighting  in the USAF and working for the Space program and Star War at TRW my Dad did not have a lot of time ]



However my parents were born before 1960's during times in America when religious issues were just not that interesting. The most pressing issues in the USA for Jews was being Loyal to Torah and also doing honest work to raise good families. For American Jews there was little doubt that the USA represented the most fair and just society possible. But later on times have show that there are problems inherent in the American system (by which I am fairly alarmed) and religious issues are not possible to ignore, and it is likely that  we all need to observe the laws of the Torah a lot more than Reform Judaism dictates, but also to be careful not to fall into the trap of religious fanaticism.

At any rate one issue I think deserves a lot more attention than it gets is that of idolatry. Reform does not concern itself with this because they think religious tolerance is an ideal of the Torah. That is simply not true.
I should mention that Chanukah was not a holiday of religious tolerance but rather it was a celebration of the successful overturn of an idol.



I think Christians do not want to deal with the subject from the Talmudic point of view for several reasons. One is that there is the issue of the mediator which is problematic to them. Also they clearly feel that they are not allowed to learn Talmud. It comes at least in the minds of Protestants under the list of prohibited books. That means they don't have much in the way of source information to decide what is considered idolatry. So they tend to claim that things like baseball cards or addictions are idolatry.
Hindu people do not see idolatry as a problem in the first place. In fact I get the impression that they think it is a good thing. See the Sutras for some examples.

Idolatry is the central issue of the Torah. So it is in everyone’s interest to get an idea of what is and what it is not.
Now I should admit that am just beginning to look into this subject myself. But I want to say that I think I have hit a gold mine. It is page 60b and 61a in the Talmud Tractate Sanhedrin.

what is great is that you get good idea of what idolatry is about without it being mixed up with side issues.

 While if you ask almost anyone on the street nowadays they will have their own pet peeves about what idolatry involves.  Almost anything someone does not like will end up being called an idol.

  But before I go, I just want to say that I think any being besides the One First Cause that is worshiped in order to get closer to that being or to receive some good from that being would be considered an idol. Worship in this case means any one of four types of service, sacrifice, burning incense, bowing down, pouring libations, or service which is unique to that idol. And I think this whole subject has to do with numinous reality. Serving a customer in a restaurant would not be considered idolatry.

Now I admit that some things people like to call idolatry today might in fact be so. But before we go around making accusations, we need first to get a good grasp of what the actual definition of the thing is.

[Bava Kama 19, Rambam Hilchot Nizkei Mamon 2:9]




It seems clear that Maimonides and Tosphot are agree in principle about the case of a hen with a string attached to its leg and a pail gets caught in the string an breaks. It really bothers me to say this but in spite of the fact that the Migdol Oz tries to defend the Rambam by saying he is like Rashi I think it is crystal clear that this can't be true.

You find a movement started by Reb Chaim Solovietckik to try to give answers to the question why does the Rambam decide like he does.
The major personalities in this movement were Reb Chaim himself, Reb Baruch Ber Lebovitz, Reb Shimon Shkop, Rav Elazar Menachem Shach ( of Ponovith in Bnei Brak in the 1980's).
Rav Sach wrote the Achiezer on the Rambam and that was the last of this massive effort to understand the Rambam that I am aware of. 






You can see what I am saying if you read between the lines. When Reb Chaim wants to deal with the Rambam in how he decides the law about something not intended on Shabat he ignores the answer of the Magid Mishna --almost as if to say that it is not worth serious consideration. [Which indeed it is not. I wrote about this elsewhere.]

Here is the basic issue in short. We have a debate between Rabbi Nathan and the sages about the case of a ox pushing another ox into a pit in Bava Kama 53a. To R. Natan what you can't get from the owner of the ox you get from the owner of the pit. In our case in Bava Kama 19a we have a hen with a string attached and a bucket that gets tangled in the string and breaks. To the Rambam when the  string has an owner, he alone pays not the owner of the chicken. Clearly the Rambam holds the difference is when the string has an owner he alone is responsible, and the case of the ox and pit is different because there both owners are responsible. Exactly like Tosphot-- Not like Rashi there who says that even though the owner of the pit pays, it is a {kenas} penalty and not that he is really responsible.
Also let me add something I have mentioned before this. Why if the string has an owner that he alone is obligated" why could not both people be obligated like in the case of R. Natan? Answer because in the case of  a change like flying or a string attached there can't be more that one half damage. This principle you see in Tosphot and the Rambam both. It is the reason Topshot gives for why the Gemara rejected its original approach to Rav Huna. [Not like Rashi!] And this is the only possible reason the Rambam could have to saying the owner of the hen is not responsible in the case when the string has an owner!


It seems to me that there should be some effort to understand the opinion of Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed also. 

The idea is that it is easy from the perspective of Jewish law to slip into idolatry. One does not need to claim to be a creator of the universe. There is not on record any god that was a creator of the universe. The closest you get is Brahma but him himself was created from Brahaman, so he does not count . And Brahman is not a creator. he is the universe.

So to be an idol is not as hard as people think.  And it is fairly easy for a person to become an idol. all he needs to do is to say one word "Evduni"{"serve me"} [Sanhedrin 61a]. To R Meir just by that one word alone he is considered "mesit umadiach" one to tries to convince someone else to serve an idol.

I have been gaining some clarity about idolatry

I do not claim to have understood the subject but just by doing a tiny drop of the Gemara [Talmud] in Sanhedrin [60b] the whole subject is getting a lot clearer for me.

(This is I think a good idea for people in general whenever they are confused about any issue. Read the part of Talmud that relates to that issue.)
I see now that there are two completely separate issue concerning idolatry. One is what is service to an idol and the other is what brings something into the category of being an idol.

The first subject is highly based on verses of the Torah. The basic approach is this [from the Talmud 60b]: "He will go an serve false gods" [Deuteronomy in Parshat shoftim] applies to all service [i.e. whether that is the way of that idol or not]. Then we find another verse "he will serve and he will sacrifice." "He will sacrifice" was already in the category of "he will serve" so it comes out of that category to that which is not the particular service of that idol  to  teach about the whole category that serve that is not unique to that idol has to be like one of three inner services that were done in the holy temple in Jerusalem. Then there is a third verse "he will serve and bow down." “Bow down” can’t be adding anything because we already limited everything by means of the word sacrifice. so ''he will bow down'' cant be telling us anything except that it is in the category of service even when it is not the way of that idol. [note 1]

Sorry if this is not clear but I am anyway in the middle of this subject and I admit that it is not very clear to me. There is a lot to talk about here. You can see this for yourself if you look at the Tosphot on the page and then the Maharsha.

But even though all this is not very clear to me still it does come out of this discussion an important point. That if something is not an idol it is not forbidden to bow down to it.  What is fascinating here is the fact that the instant something comes into the category of an idol, a whole new set of laws begins to apply to it.

So my question here is what brings something into the category of being an idol? [This seems to be the subject of Tractate Idolatry on the question of statues that are put up in honor of kings.]
And here also I am just staring to look at this. But one thing is clear. An idol or god is not a world creator.

For example we do not find that Zeus created the world. He had certain powers over certain aspects of the world. But that fact does not make him any less a god. Worshiping Zeus is still idolatry even if one does not consider him to have created the world.. Either sacrificing to him or even saying you are my god or doing a service to him that is the particular service of Zeus is still forbidden. Or if one serves Zeus in order that Zeus should bring him closer to God that is still forbidden.

I should perhaps mention that I am aware of the major types of idolatry that exist. I studies Greek mythology and the Iliad and Odyssey Euripides Sophocles and etc for years. I also learned Latin for about three years.
The Large and small Edas. Buddhism and Hinduism. And much more. So i have some idea of what idolatry is about. Though I know that each one of these areas of interest is vast. But still from the small amount of knowledge I have about them I can say that most gods are not world creators. Most of the time they find preexistent substances to make the world from.
Even Brahama is created and is emanated from Brahman. Brahman is not a world creator but his is the universe.

Clearly one does not have to be world creator to be a god.

So what makes one a god? This is relevant because the instant something becomes a god it is forbidden to have almost anything to do with it.



I mean to say that for example bowing down to people we find all the time in the Torah. During the middle ages the common way for men greeting each other was by a slight bow. Women would curtsy. This is not forbidden. But doing such a thing to a god would be forbidden. So what makes something a god?

Now this question should be considered different from what the Talmud is dealing with in Tractate Avodah Zara about how to tell which statues are idols and which are not. In that Gemara we find that rabbi Meir considers all statues to be forbidden to use because he is has a general opinion that we forbid a majority because of a minority.
 But all that part of the Gemara deals with either the sigh that something already an idol or that if one does worship it that it becomes and idol. But still something can be an idol before one worships it.

Now we can see the answer to our problem in Maimonides. The way to see the answer is to notice what Maimonides says about a mediator. He says to worship a mediator in order that he should bring one closer to God or to receive some kind of blessing from God is considered idolatry. So now we see what is going on. . To worship an entity with any of the types of service that were done in the Temple of with any kind of serve that is specifically for that entity in order to receive some blessing or to bring one closer to God is idolatry.

This all came up yesterday when I was talking with some Breslov Hasidim in Uman.

  The in the actual discussion after I mentioned the idea that a god does not have to be world creator to be an idol we got into the related subject of pantheism.  Now we know that the belief system of the Torah is Monotheism and that of Advaita Vedanta is pantheism. So in theory there should not be any ambiguity that when a person wants to be following the Torah that he is accepting a monotheistic kind of belief system. But for some reason the basic philosophy of Advaita Vedanta has become the dominant theology of a most Hasidim along with belief in the importance of Jewish rituals. But that is not the same as belief in the Torah. note 2]







[note 1] Like if you say have the set of all colors and also blue. why did you mention blue?the way we understand the Torah when there is a situation like this is to say the Torah mentioned blue to tell us something unique about the set of all colors. 
so when the Torah says he will serve and he will sacrifice it tells us something new.that service that is not the particular way of the idol has to be like a serve done in the Temple. Later the gemara will ask on this conclusion and ask that we could say just the opposite. But that I leave for another time.


 

I want to start a Musar Movement II [Jewish Ethics].

This was to be a side topic today. The most important thing I wanted to discuss was that I found what I believe to be a possible answer for the Rambam concerning the Talmud Bava Kama page 19B. But I think I will have to put that on another blog because I think the idea of Musar for the general public is more of immediate concern.

So concerning the Musar Movement II let me first state why I think Musar Movement I is not sufficient.

The problem with  Musar Movement I as it exists today is that it became frum [religious]. The main issue are, "Be frum, learn Torah all day, don't go to university, be a good part of the chareidi world," and all that is somehow supposed to be related to fear of God or fixing of bad character traits. Musar today does not seem to have any connection with fixing of bad character or at all; and fear of God it seems to define as  frumkeit [being extra strict in ritual most of which are not from the Talmud and are not halacha]. This alone would have to put a damper on any enthusiasm for Musar for any reasonable person.

My suggestions are these. Musar first of all should be based on the original texts that R Israel Salanter wanted to be the basis of Musar Chovot Levavot, Orchot Tzadikim, MesilatYesharim, Sefer Hamidot,Sefer HaYasher of Rabbainu Tam (and a few other basic Ethical works from the Middle Ages).

But I also wanted to add a philosophical angle to this whole project.

My basic reasoning is that Musar depends a lot on metaphysics. Now most of the Metaphysics in Musar you don't see in the original set. [Notable exception the beginning of the Chovot Levavot ] But as you go on in time and kabalah gets more to be a part of the Musar books you see more and more metaphysics being thrown in. Yet we know from Kant that metaphysics is a problem.

Kant is not an issue that can be ignored. If you accept him then metaphysics is impossible. You can just choose some pre Kant approach like the Kabalah and go your merry way.

Musar II would also have to include books related to world view issues like the Emunot Vedeot of Saadia Geon. Because you can't separate character traits from world view. They are highly interconnected.


[There is a tendency that you find in the book of Job, "Is not your fear your stupidity?"Fear of God is often coupled with not very smart doctrines. Musar as it exist today is a good example. Most Musar books that are published in the Orthodox Jewish would today are incredibly stupid.
Musar has certainly decayed from the time of Israel Salanter. This has to be changed.]

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

In order to understand the Talmudic tractate about idolatry [called Avoda Zara] it seems to me to be necessary to get an idea of what idolatry is.
 It seems to me to be necessary to understand what was going on in lets say Athens at the time when people really believed in idols.

This would not refer to the philosophers who probably thought most of what was going on in the temples of the gods was ridiculous.

Now for people who were not specifically devoted to one god or the other it clearly was a benefit to have the Pantheon in Athens so that an average businessman on his way to work could make a quick detour to the Pantheon and offer scarifies to all the gods or at least the major ones, (and specifically the one that he thought might have some power over his future transactions).

But of course, there were people that were devotes of a particular god. They would spend as much time  possible in the temple of that god and would do as much services to that god as possible. E.g., devotes of Dionysus would go around in groups in a state of ecstasy and frenzy and do damage as they would go around the city and countryside. (Wine was of benefit to help them get into a state of frenzy.) 

Devotees of Venus would have other services they thought would be pleasing to Venus. But that would not stop them from offering sacrifices to propitiate other gods also.

The major experience of idolatry was not fear of retribution. The god that one was devoted to provided  the meaning of life and of the universe and everything else.


Nowadays that science and philosophy have pushed the realm of religion into the background, we are not aware of how much the gods were a major source of the very meaning of life for the ancients.

The Talmud itself does not deal with any of this. It is interested solely in the laws relevant to the statutes of the gods. The reason is that the religion of the Talmud is monotheism. The underlying assumption of monotheism is that there is a First Cause of everything that exists and that this First Cause provides the meaning of everything that exits. He made it all for some purpose.

Nowadays, we do not find devotes of Dionysus or Venus. People do try to get into states of frenzy and do seek physical pleasures that one might associate with Venus but without being devotes of Venus. But we do find modern substitutes that can provide people with the same kind of experiences  that devotes of the gods had.

There are several major examples but certainly the cult the Gra ut into excommunication would be a good example. Graves of tzadikim [saints] also for that matter. [note 1] The kind of frenzy of Left Wing Politics seems to be also a good example.

[note 1] For the sake of clarity I think it is good to learn the books of a tzadik and to follow his teachings. I think one can do so and should do so without crossing the line into idolatry. But in spite of that there are people would do cross the line.

In fact I think after seeing some of the problems there are in the world of orthodox Judaism that at the very least we can say his understanding of Torah is deep and profound. 

Almost invariably when I was in Israel and I would just mention the name "Bava Sali", the person I was talking to would launch into a story of how he had some problem in his personal life that could not be solved no matter how much he tried, and then he went to Bava Sali for a blessing and the problem was solved. It mattered little if the person himself was religious or not. Just that they needed as much faith as necessary to make the trip to Netivot. [A city in Southern Israel.]

 But the curious thing about this was that between him and his community there was a kind of equilibrium. He himself was a super "separation from this world" type of guy while his community in Morocco were simple working Jews. [More or less religious.]

I have a few observations to make about the whole Bava Sali thing.
I would like to go into his conception of what Normal Torah observance involves and how applicable it is to other people, or even perhaps to gentiles. Also I would like to go into the question that the whole thing seems to have reached an impasse. There are lost more issues but these seem to me to be the more relevant right now.


First of all it seems to me that Bava Sali gives a good explanation of what Torah is supposed to be about. No shtick. That is no games. To him keeping Torah meant keeping Torah in the most simple basic way possible.  [note 1 ] People will always try to claim that Bava Sali supported their particular cult but this is universally not true if you dig into the actual facts. Straight Torah observance would be what defined the Bava Sali path. No beliefs in any person would be considered important or helpful in any way. Only keeping Torah personally. [note 3]  

On the other hand the Bava Sali thing has lost its momentum. The closest of the people to him Chareidi in way very different from the Sefardi tradition. Some people have used the aura of Bava Sali for gain. [note 2]

In spite of the difficulties of the Bava Sali thing, it still provide a rich domain of information about Torah and what it means to keep Torah simply with no games.

The Talmud tends to have a wider idea of what Torah is about than what you see in Maimonides. For example we find Hillel II said there would not be a messiah (ever) because the King of Israel Chizkia fulfilled that role.  And in the Gemara that discuss the opinion of Hillel we do not find anyone accusing him of being an apikorus or heretic. Now we know that the belief in a future messiah is one of the thirteen main principles of faith that the Rambam derives from the Talmud. And it is a clear principle to him that anyone that denies or even does not believe in any one of those thirteen principles is a heretic and not even considered Jewish.

This I do not mean as a question because it is clear that there are other opinions in the Talmud that hold belief in a future messiah is important to the degree that the Rambam stated. And all the Rambam did here is to decide the law as is his usual custom.

My point here is really meant for Reform and Conservative Jews to realize that not only is the Talmud important for them to learn but that it also represents a world view of Torah that is closer to their own understanding of Torah than Orthodox Judaism. This is in spite of the fact that the Orthodox do try to represent their position as being supported in the Talmud. Most often this is simply not the case.

On the other hand there are positions in Maimonides that are closer to Reform Judaism than what seems to be so in the Talmud. Secular studies in Natural Science would be the most famous example.
In a highly ironic way I discovered the position of several medieval authorities concerning secular studies  when I was trying to find Chizuk [encouragement] about just sitting and learning Torah all day.
This happened when I started learning Musar (Ethics) and discovered a good amount of the medieval Jewish authorities were basically saying to go out and get a job and do not use the Torah to make money and also to learn secular subjects. This was the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear from Musar (Ethics) books.
[I thought that sitting and learning Torah was the ultimate goal. 
 
On the other hand we all should learn Torah and do mitzvot as much as possible. And the Reform are wrong for trying to redefine mitzvot into social activism. That is intellectual dishonesty. Mitzvot are mitzvot and averot are averot [sin is sin] You don't get to redefine these things according to your sexual or intellectual orientation. 

There was something unique about Bava Sali [Israel Abuchatzaira] that that can't be attributed to just the fact of his emphasizing doing Torah and mitzvoth or to his miracles. Miracles we know are a dime a dozen. People in every religion take the miracle workers of that religion to be proofs of that religion. But they are not proof of anything because of several reasons. They can be from the sitra achra. Even when they are from the side of holiness still anyone doing certain kinds of service like fasting and general separation from the pleasures of this world tend to gain some kind of spiritual power. Furthermore miracles happen to everyone and have no bearing on the holiness of any individual

In spite of all this there was something really unusualness about Bava Sali.

What I mean to say by this is I want to bring out the idea that there is an essential contradiction between the idea of human perfection as represented by Bava Sali w and the idea of human perfection as represented by my parents and by Albert Einstein, Newton, and Aristotle.


Now we know outside of the miracles of Bava Sali there was by him a essential emphasis of simple and plain old Shulchan Aruch. Neither for him or for others was there any idea of specific things to emphasize. It was just simple keep Torah. [For the general public reading this blog I think the best idea of how to get an idea of what it means to keep Torah in the ideal sense you should find a sefer hachinuch.]


But There was a very different idea of human perfection as emphasized by people like Einstein.

And in between that were my parents that represented the human n perfection in terms of mentchlichkeit.[untranslatable Yiddish meaning basically human decency].

What I mean to point out here is that each of these paths has pit falls and even actual flaws for most people. But what we can do is to try to focus on certain points that are in each path and try to emulate and stick to these basic points as best we can with Balance and common sense.


I would like to point out that the basic path of Torah and mitzvot is a little subtle.Even with the Rambam writing it simply and bava sali showing a good modern example of how to do it --it still is subtle. The problem as Bava Sali said himself all paths are dangerous. That is one can try to do Torah in the most simple ways that would seem to be obvious and yet find himself in situations in which not just he finds the world that he has placed himself in is predatory but also finds himself doing more objective evil than when he was not trying to keep Torah at all.

Some people think the kabala is independent of Plato but that assumption is not only wrong but also tends to create  a kind of weird bubble type of world that people that study kabalah live in. And this bubble world tends to detract from the positive things that people can gain from the thought of Isaac Luria .

It is also know that he sometimes touches on themes from scholastic thought from the middle ages.

None of this is news to anyone.

Mainly it looks roughly parallel. But  the creation is ex nihilo. We know that this is not compatible with Plotinus but rather comes from the Rambam and Saadia Geon. While it is true that Plotinus is not compatible with pantheism but neither is he compatible with creation ex nihilo


So while Kabalah of the Ari [Isaac Luria is pretty straightforward Plotinus in a highly developed mystical form] but seems to be moving in the direction of the Rambam.

OK that is the end of this subject.
Now I just wanted to point out a  one example we have a theme that pops up about tying oneself to the intellect that is contained in everything. This is straight from Plotinus. 

At any rate, one important reason to support the State of Israel is simple. We Jews have taken the trouble to get out of everyone's way. We are not asking for anyone's kindness. We simply ask people not to attack us. And when people do attack us we claim the right to defend ourselves. There is nothing inherent in Torah that should prove objectionable to any gentiles of Christian or Muslim faith. However it is clear that some Muslims hate us because of their religion, not ours. [Not all Muslims but the radical type.] And some Muslims do see Israel as a beachhead for Western encroachment. And that it is. We are bringing the Ship of Democracy and Human Rights  throughout the Middle East. This is something Muslims ought to welcome. [And I am sure many do welcome us, but are quite about their beliefs.]

the world view of mainstream [Ashkenazic] Torah.

Hashkafa is the word used for the world view of mainstream [Ashkenazic] Torah.

It has to do with principles of faith for sure but it is much wider than that. It means in essence the philosophy of Torah and the word in itself implies that the Torah in fact has it own unique philosophy. We however do find that people carry into the Torah their own philosophies that they pick up elsewhere, and then claim that their philosophy is that of the Torah.- but this is not intellectually honest.


For me personally one of the advantages that I gained by learning Musar [ethical books of Torah written during the Middle Ages] is that it introduced me to the Philosophy of the Torah in a straightforward way before I had heard any alternative variations.

But Musar does this job in a soft way and only indirectly.

Recently in the process of learning Tractate Adodah Zara it seemed relevant to open up the Ramam concerning the actual principles of Torah as he explains them in Hilchot Teshuva [there he goes into greater depth than he does in the famous commentary to the Mishna in Chapter Cheleck in Sanhedrin].

Aristotle: that everything has  four causes. One is  purpose. And this purpose is close to intellect inside of everything. This refers to a well known idea that was developed in the Middle Ages.
 There are the four causes of everything  one of which is the teleological cause. And we know that the major characteristic of Aristotle is to develop  independent ideas from many different angles and then to weave them together. So the intellect in everything which in this case will refer to the Platonic idea is related to the purpose of the thing.



The purposes of all things are related to each other. They all come together like a function from a space to one point. That one point is the next world, the delight of the world to come. [Actually it is there is a hierarchy of arrows, that map from one space to another until you get to the last and final purpose.

 Rambam in the laws of Teshuva where he goes into some depth about what heresy is. Associating any  kind of physicality to God is one kind of problem that is identified in the Rambam. Also there is the problem of a mediator which the Rambam includes in the types of minut [heresy]. And there is no question the Rambam takes these things very seriously.

]

There are two ideas of what Torah is about. One is radical monotheism and the other is that of a document that is meant to lead people towards pure Monotheism. 

So the question is according to the Torah are all intermediate steps not kosher at all or is it possible that there is some justification of going to a tzadik for a blessing?  This is really a rather large issue and it would take a lot more than this quick note to deal with it thoroughly.

The idea of leading people towards Monotheism seems to be clear in Maimonides [in the Guide] when he gives reasons for mitzvot. 

This comes up nowadays when going to even Lithuanian Gedolim  seems to be commonplace and the issue seems to be surrounding the idea of an intermediary.

And it felt strange. I felt like I was opening up myself towards compromising the basic Monotheism of the Torah. I mean I was raised in home that was not particularly religious but the Torah was very important in our home and when I started learning Torah on a more intense basis I did not expect that my monotheism would be compromised.

Nowadays it seems to me that Orthodox Judaism is highly compromised concerning this issue [of Monotheism]. It does not seem to matter which group it is. While it is admirable the strict devotion to the Torah and Talmud that is claimed by the Orthodox, but that does not seem to provide an adequate excuse for diluting the most basic and essential message of the Torah

 I think it is possible to divide Breslov into two basic groups.

This would not be along the regular lines of who is the leader of that individual group. But the major issue would be concerning the problem of worship of a human being. I have been wondering for a long time where is Breslov located concerning this question. 

Yet a random sampling of people that come to his synagogue in Uman will show that many are pantheist and many also have crossed the line.  It is for this reason that I have decided that it is high time to take a closer look at the Talmud tractate Avodah Zara--Idolatry to see where the line can be drawn exactly.

I think that also it is possible to say that some groups of Hasidut do tend to blur the line between respect of a human being and worship of a human being.
However I do not mean to knock the more radical type of Breslov from the standpoint of strict adherence to the Law of the Torah.

But there is a much more serious issue that I was thinking about that relates to the interface between Strict Torah law and type of free society that Jews have gotten used to in the USA and in Israel. It is kind of a luxury to be striving for more strictness and more Torah when we have the benefit of a free society around us. 


Regardless of this it is clear that we need divine law and some counter balance to secular society. But make an ideal to undermine free and open society while enjoying its benefits seems to me to be problematic.

Tying oneself spiritually to a tzadik [i.e. saint]

Tying oneself spiritually to a tzadik [i.e. saint]. It occurs to me that I might have written about this in the past in light of the idea of Reb Chaim from Voloshin [the disciple of the Gra] that this type of thing is idolatry.


What bothers me is that the way this is understood by some people is to change the focus of Torah from being around God to being around a person. 


But I see this at least as a flaw in the system that should be openly corrected --that is it should be stated publicly that  the purpose of serve towards God is to do God's will and not to be tied to a tzadik.

learning Torah is the highest mitzvah

 In the older type of Torah system it was considered that learning Torah is the highest mitzvah and that as much time one needed to spend on a vocation was acceptable but not desirable.

Now the Rambam is probably the best support of Torah of all. He is highly rigorous but leans towards Aristotle.
So between the Rambam the Ramchal  there is fairly strong basis for Torah.
So the lack of a basis is not what is bothering me.  Torah has great intellectual and moral validity, but it does require some effort to discover what it is and how to live in accordance with it.

what idolatry involves.

I think that people are not very well aware of what idolatry involves. And recently I have thought that it might be a good idea to look at Tractate Idolatry [Avodah Zarah] in the Talmud to get a better idea of what it involves.
In spite of the fact that it does tend to be a confusing issue at least I think we can see some of the things that are either sufficient or necessary conditions for some act to be considered idolatry.
First any one of the four major types of service that people do towards an idol is idolatry. They are offering incense, bowing, slaughtering an animal as a sacrifice, or offering blood. Sometimes you hear religious people accusing some other religious group of doing idolatry, but that is a complaint that does need to be defended.


But there is more to it than that. The basic definition is accepting some other being as ones god besides God--[the first cause]. [This might not be a necessary condition. Doing one of the four services before an idol is alone enough to convict a person of idolatry. Accepting some other being besides God [the First Cause] as ones personal god would have to be considered a sufficient condition, not a necessary condition.]

One issue that makes the whole subject more complicated is that if one serves an idol with the type of service that's specified for that idol that is also idolatry.
I should mention that the Malbim discusses the fact that Nebuchadnezzar wanted to bow down to Daniel as an idol and the discussion that Jeremiah had with Yochanan ben Kareach in this regard.

It so happened that Jews in Egypt were telling Jeremiah that from the time that they had stopped offering incense to the Queen of Heaven that they began to have troubles. Jeremiah said to them that their troubles stemmed from doing idolatry, not from ceasing to do idolatry. Further he said if they do not stop they will be destroyed. [In the Tenach the issue that seems to bother God the most is idolatry. This certainly has to be the top on the list of the big No No's. Though it is true that in general keeping all of the mitzvot is also high on the list but this has to take the cake. You do not see racism on the list of No No's at all. Nor Homophobia. Rather you could say that homosexuality is rather frowned upon as being sodomy. Islam-phobia would probably be considered  a mitzvah.]

The thing that they were telling Jeremiah was [according to the Malbim] that they did not accept the queen of Heaven as their god, and that they were good orthodox Jews and believed all the thirteen principles of the rambam. They were just offering incense as a segulah [lucky charm].

Now I have discussed idolatry many times on my different blogs. And I have decided that it is time for me to do some serious work in Tractate Idolatry [Avodah Zarah] in order to get some kind of clarity about these issues. Idolatry is one of those terms that it is easy to throw around and accuse people you don't like of doing. It used to be a term that was an extreme insult. Nowadays racist has taken its place. But even so it is an important subject to understand.
Some people it seems are not even aware that they might be doing idolatry. On occasion you see this complaint leveled by Christians against some kind of practice like working too hard or making an idol out of some movie star.  But worshiping a movie star is not one of the four [avodot] types of serve one renders to an idol. They do seem blissfully unaware that serving a human being as god might very well come under the basic definition of idolatry. (Aquinas was aware of this issue and being the great thinker that he was did try to resolve it honestly. Protestants however seem unaware of the issue at all.) But of course this could apply across the board. Sometimes you do see people that seem to get close to crossing the line separating simple admiration and desire to emulate towards idolatry. 

 For further research I hope to do the two major areas in Avodah Zara which deal with these issues. The beginning of chapter three and four. It is surprising that this issue has not received more attention.
When people act and treat their rabbi as a god is that idolatry? I would think so. So even if I think that going to Uman is important, but I think people need to be very careful not to cross the line between being with a tzadik on Rosh Hashana which is good and doing things that might be considered as crossing a fine line.

So in conclusion I think it is safe to say that the four services do not depend on thought or attitude. Once one has done them he is guilty of idolatry. He can't say he did not accept the idol as a god. It is only in the sufficient condition of accepting a different god as one's god is where thought is relevant. So now we can see that offering incense to the queen of heaven was considered as idolatry even if they did not accept her as their god.

Children and teenagers in the USA are given radical left wing socialist induction lessons from kindergarten until the end of high school.

 Children and teenagers in the USA are given radical left wing socialist induction lessons from kindergarten until the end of high school.

This is the basic approach of all public schools in the USA. Yet at home children are given a set of Judeo- Christian values. But these Judeo-Christian values are not compatible with the wave of indoctrination they get in public school. And even if children would like to defend the values they get at home the fact is that Judeo- Christian values are hard to defend. Even Aquinas left a basic question he was unable to resolve and other questions that he could not resolve very well.


The difficulty this presents is that after 12 years of indoctrination you can’t expect people to vote in any way other than the way that reflects their basic socialist values. What is the surprise? No wonder Republicans have trouble.

I could suggest that everyone should start to learn Gemara, Rashi, and Tosphot [Talmud]--but to do so I would have to explain in what way this can provide a solution for the American dilemma and set of problems.
This might need a little more time than I have right now.
But I think I can give a basic introduction into the idea. I might not be able to finish but let me begin.
Human history is divided into three parts. Period one has in it three part Pre Socratics, Plato, and neo Plato, This period deals with how is change possible.

Period two is the Middle Ages. This deals more religious issues but issues which also relate to philosophy. The two issues are free will and divine simplicity. Here also there was leading up period and then the peak in Moshe Ben Maimon [or Aquinas depending on who you ask].

The modern period dealt with two issues also the mind body problem, and the debate between the rationalists and the empiricists.--How is knowledge possible? This went up until Kant. Then we had the post Kant period. Here also were three parts pre Kant, Kant and post Kant. [Also politics became an issue in this period.]

Now a new period is starting. I can't predicate the question that is going to seize the interest of mankind for the next thousand years. But I can say that people are going to need and anchor of rationality and moral value--the very thing you get when you learn the Torah together with the Gemara, Rashi, and Tosphot.

I can imagine that one major question will deal with the interface between Divine law in the Torah and how it relates to the natural law and natural rights. This is a continuation of Medieval thought but with the modern advent of the USA the fact of natural rights will become important as it relates to divine law. 


[note 1]

Another important aspect of the Talmud which I did not mention but which is relevant is because of the problem with the theory political authority.  I did mention in the essay that one question that will arise in the future is the interface between political authority and Divine authority abut what needs to be pointed out here is the fact that John Locke's ideas of natural rights really have no empirical basis. It is not just that Habermas and others have noted the problems with the theoretical basis of the Constitution of the USA and the more obvious problems with the total lack of intellectual justification for Marxist doctrine. It is that a new theory of political justification is necessary.  Habermas blew John Rawls theory out of the water but that still leaves us with need to defend or modify the system of John Locke.  In short: Divine Law is back. You just can't get around it.

Gaon from Villna

We find that world view issues were important to Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. It is not just that he wrote the Guide for the Perplexed to  answer questions concerning, well, world view issues, but that these ideas pop up often in all of his writings.

 But when you try to get into the Rambam [Maimonides] you find several pitfalls.

One obvious one is Jose Faur. While his devotion to the cause of the Rambam is admirable but  his knowledge and understanding of the Rishonim [medieval authorities] is ziltch and when he attacks the other  Rishonim based on his lack of knowledge it come out looking like he went of a bit much into the "Sefardi pride" trap.

I think it is a true thing that the best way to learn the Rambam is in conjunction with the regular normal Rishonim like Topshpot and not to make a fetish out of him. [This is the way Ashkenazim have always learned the Rambam and Reb Ovadia Joseph also for that matter.]

On the other hand it is a good idea for people to start the task of understanding the Rambam in world view issues a little better. 

 I need to mention here that the Rambam had children and descendants that continued to be the rav roshi [chief rabbi] in Cairo for many generations. And a lot of them wrote books along the lines of the Rambam. So even if they are not the last word on what the Rambam was thinking, still they are instructive to give some hints about his path.

One curious issue that does come up in the Guide and in the book of the Rambam's son [Avraham ben Moshe] was the issue of pantheism.

You can guess why the Guide for the Perplexed is the most unpopular book in the world for Hasidim. You certainly do not want people finding out that the Rambam did not think that Torah belief and pantheism or panetheism were compatible.

In fact I once went through a book concerning the Gaon from Villna and it was clear form reading the actual documents of his time that the Hasidim were using a sophisticated strategy to  convert Jews to another religion. They were holding on to Jewish ritual even more strongly than normal religious Jews. This gave them the ability to substitute Jewish beliefs with pantheism. And they also learned how to use seemly sincere acts of kindness to promote their movement.

 The original Guide that you used to see hanging out in the frum world [you know the one with the commentary of Joseph Albo and someone else.  It is a very difficult book but it rewards the effort. 

There is a great book on the Rambam by David Hartman which is the best modern commentary on the Rambam that I have ever seen.