It seems to me that Islam is idolatry.

This is an idea about idolatry and  then a little bit at the end about my idea of Islam.
But I should make it clear that this is only my tirade against Islam, not against Arabs or Iranians. It is their evil murderous religion that is the problem. Not the people.



Introduction: We all know that idolatry is forbidden. The question is if one serves an idol in more than one of the four services [burning, sacrifice, pouring, bowing]. Does he bring a sin offering for each service? [The sin offering for doing idolatry is in the book of Numbers 15. ]
R. Zakei said no, and R Yochanan said yes.
(Sanhedrin 62a)

R. Aba wanted to say this depends on an argument between R. Natan and R. Yosi. (R Yochanan like R. Yosi that all the acts are just one act. )
R. Natan asked why is "fire"(לא תבערו אש בכל מושבותיכם ביום השבת) mentioned concerning the Sabbath day? Are not 39 types of work forbidden? (That is: any type of work that was done to build the tabernacle in the desert before Israel entered into the Land of Israel is called ''work'' in the Torah. This is because the Torah says not to do the work of building the tabernacle on Sabbath. It is a simple deduction that therefore the types of work that went into building the tabernacle would be considered work by the Torah. If they are not considered work when it comes to the Sabbath then why would the Torah forbid doing them on the Sabbath? So now we have a simple and easy measure of what is considered work on the Sabbath.)
R. Natan  answered, it is to divide. (That means to say that if one forgets about several types of work and does them on the Sabbath day, then he brings a sin offering for each type of work.)
How does he know this? It is because of a general principle that anything that was inside of a category and then was mentioned specifically comes to tell us something about the entire category.

R. Josi says the reason fire was mentioned by itself to tell us it is only a prohibition. [That means to say doing work on Shabat is one of the most severe sins in the Torah. If done on purpose it gets the death penalty, if done in front of two witnesses, and also a warning was issued right before he did it and he acknowledged the warning. That is, to get a death penalty in the Torah, one really has to be trying hard to get it.] If the sin was done by accident then he brings a sin offering (a she goat or she sheep.) One can't bring a sin offering for playing cards on the Sabbath.  Sins are well defined in the Torah. We find some people don't like what the Torah considers a sin and thus they try to redefine what a sin is.  But that is not the Torah approach.
At any rate, the idea of R. Yosi here is that fire is only a normal prohibition, not the death penalty.

My question here is on R Yosi. Does not he agree with the principle that what ever was in a category and has gone out to be mentioned specifically come to teach us about the entire category?
[I could have said my question in a second but in case some people might be looking at this blog that do no know much gemara I thought to give a brief introduction to my question.]
Now I wanted to mention that this is not the first time this kind of thing has come up. We find the same thing about bowing to an idol. There too the Gemara says it comes to teach about itself alone. But there I don't ask my question because though it is true "bowing" was in a general category of idolatry, still there is another verse that also come out--the verse about sacrifice. And if "bowing" was to teach us about idolatry, then "sacrifice" would not have had to be mentioned. So instead we say "sacrifice" tells us about the whole category--to forbid all types of service that were done in the temple in Jerusalem and then we are stuck with "bowing" that can't tell us anything except about itself. So I am not bothered with "bowing." It is only about "fire" that I am asking this question.

At any rate my learning partner suggest that perhaps the reason R Yosi uses the "fire" for itself alone is he had nothing else he could do with it. He already had division of work from the verse in Leviticus 4:2. And he thought that this is the reason why even "bowing" is used for itself alone;-- because after we have "sacrifice" (זובח לאלהים יחרם) coming to tell us division of services, then we can't use "bowing" for anything else.
Actually I think that I get 0.5 credit for this idea. Because my learning partner suggest this is the reason we use bowing for itself alone. But I think it was I that decided we could use the same reason for fire. (I am not 100% sure that it was I but I remember arguing this way. So I think it was I that came up with it.)
Even so it seems to me to be a cop out. After all if it was in the category then it did not need to be mentioned.So what in the world could it possibly means "It comes to teach about itself?"At least about bowing it makes some sense because we can have an act of idolatry that does not get the death penalty. so maybe we did need to hear this about bowing. But fire? Why mention it? To tell us it is a mere prohibition. Fine so tell us that about the entire category!!!
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My impression is that idolatry has more to do with numinosity than with statues. This I saw a  few times in Rashi where he defines "accepting another god as ones god" as meaning intending it for godliness. מכוויין לאלהות
For this reason, it seems to me that Islam is idolatry because they are not intending the God of Israel. While on the other hand we see Christians going through a mediator, still their intension is to the God of Israel. I means to focus on what is the source of numinosity. And that source is determinate.

Even though I have not worked it out completely I think we can see that idolatry has two parts to it. One is serve towards a idol and the other is accepting the godliness or spiritual power from any being besides God.
I must have written about this before. But Let me just say that the Gemara does not deal with the idea of a mediator at all. On the contrary. When Abyee is brining his proof that  one that does idolatry from fear or love without accepting the godliness of the idol he brings the idea that when one bows to a house of idols and thinks it is a synagogue that he is not liable because his heart is towards heaven. And a statute also--he says if he does not accept its godliness it is nothing. So Abyee and Rava are definitely thinking about accepting of godliness as one factor here.  I mean to say that accepting the godliness of some person or object to Abyee is obviously liable. It is just that he says more cases are also liable. But since the very god of Islam is not the god of Israel and the numinous aspect of it is clearly different than the God of Israel that means the god of Islam is a false god.
That means we would have to treat Muslims as idolaters and not accord to them freedom of religion until they curse the god of Islam.

I should mention that we don't want to expand the definition of idolatry to anything we don't like. You have to remember that idolatry is something  that requires the death penalty. It is an act that if done in front of two witnesses get the electric chair. So we don't want to make up our own definitions. This is something the Torah says to the court that they must give the death penalty for. It is not an option to forgive.
For example let's say you love your wife. And perhaps sadly enough maybe you love her more than God.
Maybe she means more to you than going to heaven. Maybe being married and having children is the total meaning of your life. That is not idolatry.  Idolatry has to be an act of worshiping some god other than God by one of the four acts, sacrifice, bowing, pouring, burning. There has to be the kind of numinousity involved with it that is involved in religious worship.

Now of course worship of a human being can be idolatry. But it is not the same thing as love. It has to be the kind of worship that people do to actual physical idols

Trust in God without any effort.

 Trust in God without any effort. From where does this come? Navardok (Joseph Yozel Horvitz) claims this comes from the Ramban [Nachmanides]. But no one seems to know from which Ramban. My learning partner today mentioned a certain Ramban on a totally different subject that might be related. The idea is the the name of God in the Torah "El Shadai" tells us that there is a level of Divine intervention that goes beyond the way of nature. I did not mention this to him but it did occur to me that this might be what Navardok was all about. That is when one trust in God then God sends his help even beyond the way of nature.
This he also brings from the Gra in a somewhat more explicit statement and from the Chovot Levavot also.

The actual statement of the Gra is based on a story in the Talmud. Raba Bar Bar Chana did not know what the verse means "Throw in God your burden and he will take care of you." the verse uses this strange word יהבך.
One day he was lifting his burden and a strange walked over and said to him give me your burden יהבך and I will lift it for you.
The Gra said that it is not the idea that the stranger knew the meaning of the word. Rather Raba did not understand what trust is supposed to be. Is one supposed to trust in God but still do effort, or is one supposed to trust in God with no effort. He thought surely one should do effort. But then he saw that one it is decreed that help will come to a person then that help will come no matter what. Even to the degree that people will ask to help you.
 My suggestion is that there is an aspect of ontological undecidability about this. For certainly we are supposed to do our job in this world. If we can show that the Torah requires us to work then that would be what we are supposed to do without any relation to the question of having our needs met. And certainly it is easy to show the Torah does require us to work. As the sages said as a covenant was established for Torah so was a covenant established for work. כמו  שיש ברית כרותה על התורה כמו כן יש ברית כרותה על המלאכה
And what one finds is people do use the Torah to make money -which is forbidden- and then hide behind the claim that they are trusting.
So there is some hidden aspect to this whole question.
I wanted to add the fact that the Gra saw this in an Agadah {stories in the Talmud or outside the Talmud like in Midrash Raba} is significant because the Gra held the deepest secrets of the Torah are contained in the Agadah.
Appendix:
 I wanted to add that being prepared and learning survival skills is a regular part of what one should learn. It is like Torah itself that one does because one is required to do it--not for benefit in this or the next world. Survival skills and self reliance are simply a part of "the way of the world" (Derech Eretz) that comes before Torah.

Elijah from Vilnius

The Vilna Geon, Eliyahu from Vilna, had an idea about Kabalah and also concerning the state of the world today. He said good and evil are mixed together. For this reason he warned about practical Kabalah.
But you see this in a lot of areas. The example that occurred to me today in with  a great thinker in analytic philosophy, Quine. He came up with this great idea of "alpha -1". That is the first uncountable infinity minus 1. I forget where this idea came up but it is a very important tool. But that was in a subject he was good at. When it comes to other areas of Kantian thought he had some ideas that were not so great.

When you dig you find great thinkers that had their share of really bad ideas. And this goes against the grain of human beings. W all want to find some nice package deal. But we can't. Every great person we find ends up having as many bad and sometimes really destructive ideas as tremendous great and beneficial ideas.

to finish Shas [Talmud]

1) A not so well known idea  is to finish Shas [Talmud]. To be qualified to have an opinion about anything in Torah, he first need to have finished Shas. That means to have gone once through the Babylonian Talmud in its original language. But this idea of finishing Shas came up so much in  NY, that I forget the entire context. Yet  I was very frustrated by the fact they they took sometimes a full two weeks to go through a single page of Gemara. Yet years later I began to see why they took so much time on one page. Because today it seems to me that unless one learns what it means "to learn" (Gemara) when one is at the ripe age of eighteen, then he will never learn it. I have tried to explain to people what it means to be able to learn but I feel like a dog barking up the wrong tree. Even on this blog I have a whole essay but I don't think I have explained it properly. It is not knowing a lot of Gemara. And it is not knowing a lot of commentaries. It is like playing the violin. I can't explain what it is but I can teach it and I can tell if someone knows what it is or not.

That being said I want to say that there is a point to finishing Shas also. Or what I would rather say --to finishing the Oral Law That is to finish Shas with Tosphot and the Maharsha,  the Yerushalmi, the Sifra and Sifri and the Tosephta.
 Most of the people that I knew that could learn were in NY . I think a good number of them did in fact finish the Talmud. Reb Shmuel Berenabum definitely did. But the main way they did this was by devoting the afternoon to fact learning. In Israel it was hard to tell who really could learn or not.It is not like the violin that you can hear. One thing seems certain -- that Rav Elazar Shach of Ponovicth could definitely learn. You just need to see his book the Avi Ezri.

So what I am suggesting to people is that no matter how much or little time you have to learn, I think you should divide it into two parts. One a fast session. Say the words and go on. If you don't understand at first eventually it will sink in. and the other is an in depth session.


2) You can already tell however that there is more to say than what I have written. I also meant to point out to laymen what it means to learn Torah and what it means to be an expert in Torah. This is something everyone needs to know. It means to have finished Shas and to have a basic grasp of what one has learned.
It is not to be called rabbi or have ordination from some fraud. In fact today anyone called rabbi is almost guaranteed to be a fraud. People that learn Torah for its own sake never get ordination and consider it to be a scam.

3) Also the Gra has an idea that to learn Kabalah it is first necessary to have finished Shas. 
So on one hand he is not against Kabalah. But on the other hand he does have this idea that one needs some kind of spiritual preparation for it. Otherwise it is damaging. The Ari himself has such an idea. and he says one that learns kabalah without knowing Shas and Poskim [Medieval halacha authorities]--it kills him spiritually.[That statement of the Ari is not well known because it does not appear in the introduction to the Eitz Haim but rather in the three books of the Ari on the very end of Deuteronomy.]

I was barely able to get thorough any of this in my first few years in Mir Yeshiva and Shar Yashuv. Since then I have made little progress. I was only due to the grace of God that he sent to me an amazing learning partner, David Bronson, with whom I did a drop more of learning and then wrote my two books of Bava Metzia and Shas. But I am sad that I do not seem to be able to make any more progress.

My suggestion is to learn Torah and to combine Torah with trust in God

I think the world is in great danger.  Some of the issues are known to people because of the threats of war.
But I think the lack of a consensus about what human beings are about and ought to be about is also at the root of these problems.

My suggestion is to learn Torah and  to combine Torah with trust in God.

But trust in God does not mean that you assume things will work out the way you want.
As far as that goes I think along the lines of God, Job, and Schopenhauer. I want to seperate the problem of Theodicy from the subject of trust. The idea of trust in this context is what Joseph Yozel Horvitz said in his book the Madragat HaAdam. "One does not need any cause. Rather what is decreed on a person will come without any cause at all." [What is decreed will happen. If you want something that you think has not been decreed then you could do something like learn Torah or so something you think will affect the heavenly court. But working for it physically is unlikely to affect the decisions of the heavenly court.]
 The Gra said that one that learns Torah from a person that is learning for money, that is damaging to him, and he will lose all the Torah he learns, and also all the Torah he has already learned.

One thing Schopenhauer was right about that Freud picked up, the centrality of sex.

One thing Schopenhauer was right about that Freud picked up, the centrality of sex.
So I wanted to relate a story of  that relates to this. There was a girl (the daughter of a good king) that some evil king desired. And with the amount of resources at the bidding of a king he was able to convince her to be his wife.
Then he had a dream that she would kill him. He did not know what to do. To keep her at his side was too dangerous. To send her away was even more dangerous. To kill her he did not want to do after all the effort he had spent on getting her. In the meantime the love between them got cold. And she too began to hate him. She ran away. He sent people to search for her and she was found by a palace of water. Everything there was made of water, the roof and furniture, etc. She could not go in because clearly anyone going into this palace would drown. The king came with his army to capture her. When she saw this she decided to risk going into the palace even the risk of drowning. When the king saw this at that point he was so frustrated he said they should shoot her rather than let her escape. And he and his army ran after her, and they were all drowned.
She had been hit by ten arrows smeared with poison. But she managed to get into the inner part of the palace and there she laid, sick and wounded.
And who can heal her? Only one who can get into the palace, and take out the arrows and sing the right songs that bring healing.

And that is the reason after one has done something wrong sexually he or she should go to  a natural body of water and say these ten psalms from Biblical book of Psalms 16, 32,41, 42, 59, 77, 90, 105, 137, 150. These psalms contain the ten songs that can heal the daughter of the good king.

The idea here is that everything people do has significance. That is to say materialism is wrong. There are aspects of the world that are not material. Plato called them universals. An example is the number two. This is not something you can bump into as you walk down the street. Nevertheless  it exists. Yellow is another example of a universal. We know yellow exists, because yellow is a color. The truth that yellow is a color depends on yellow existing. Therefore yellow exists. Morality is also a universal like yellow. Even though it is not material. And sexuality is the center of all human relationships. If anything humans do has a moral sub-layer to it it most certainly is sex.

1) I wanted to bring the argument between Rashi and Tosphot about "learning Torah lishma."
(Let me just clarify. "Learning Torah lishma" means not for an side purpose. It is learning Torah for its own sake. It is opposed to learning Torah either for money or honor.)

The issue that comes up between Rashi and Tosphot is the statement, "Forever one should do a mitzvah even not for its own sake, because from that one will come to do it for its own sake." That is opposed to the other statement, "When one learns Torah not for its own sake, it is better he should have been aborted. "
Rashi makes a difference between learning for honor and learning to argue.

Tosphot (and clearly the Rambam and the son of the Rambam in his Musar book) reject this distinction.
But I wanted to say that just because someone is accepting charity to learn Torah does not mean they are learning for money.
They might very well love the Torah, and not be able to find any way of learning it without that context.

Tosphot in Brachot accepts the distinction of Rashi, and then rejects it later in Pesachim. Tosphot hold that leaning Torah for honor, money or to argue is all the same. And one who learns Torah in such a fashion it is better they had been aborted. The Gra hold with this second answer of Tosphot. He holds that when it says, "It is better to learn not lishmah, because then one will come to lishma" it means  not everything in  set of "not lishma." Rather it means, one who learns not lishma--that is he lacks the lishma. So the case is he is learning "stam," with no intention.
That is to the Gra with no intention at all  is OK, but if it is for money it is better he had not been created.




It makes sense to put the Rambam here together with the Gra because then what the Rambam says  in Pirkei Avot chapter 4 Mishna 5  will go together well with this. [Not that the Rambam brings this for a proof, but rather it seems to parallel his opinion there.] [See the book of musar written by the son of the Rambam where he actually says exactly like Tosphot in Pesachim]