There is an obligation to finish all the Torah.

There is an obligation to finish all the Torah. This you can see in a few statements from the Talmud and the Gra brings them down. You might have noticed them all brought in books of Musar. The idea is when a person gets to the next world, God asks him, "Did you you learn The Old Testament? Did you learn Mishna?" If he says "Yes" he is then asked, "Did you learn Gemara?" And it gets up to the "Work of the Chariot."
It is not a hard statement of the Talmud to find because it is brought in lots of books of Musar. But the implications are almost universally ignored. It means you really have to have gone through the entire Old Testament, Talmud Yerushalimi,  and the Halachic and Agadic Midrashim. [Sifra, Sifri, Mechilta, Midrash Raba.]
I heard Rav Shick from Yavniel say once that without the path of learning of Sichot Haran 76 it is impossible to do this. [Lithuanians Jews in fact do this. Rav Kinyevski from Ponovitch finishes this material every year.]
He said he has students learning by him that have learned and finished rishonim that most people have never even heard of like Sefer Haegoz. He had one student I remember that used to finish the Talmud every month.
[Lithuanians Jews in fact do this. Rav Kinyevski from Ponovitch finishes this material every year.]

Since according to this statement of the Sages the obligation includes the work of Creation which to the Rambam means Physics  I decided to do the same with Physics. That is to go through the basic material. Even though there are great books out there I took Joos's Theoretical Physics and then Quantum Theory,  Quantum Field Theory, and a couple of  books on String Theory. And I tried the same with Math.That was a little harder. But I tried to at least go through Algebraic Topology by Allen Hatcher.

Trust in God as it was translated at the Mir yeshiva in Brooklyn

Trust in God as it was translated at the Mir yeshiva in Brooklyn meant to learn Torah and not to worry about what will come in the future.
Or to be more explicate it meant as a unmarried student just to learn Torah according to the regular four year program at the yeshiva.

The idea was that after one would be married somehow things would work out if one trusts in God.
[The concept of God here is more than the First Cause. It is the First cause that made Nature, but sometimes interacts with  the world in a way above Nature. Also there are intermediate realms, like a moral plane that interacts with the world.]


Now according to the view of the Torah, we have two kinds of trust: One of the Duties of the Heart חובות לבבות that is trust with effort. That is to do what is necessary but also to trust that God will make things work out in the way that he wants.

The other kind is of the Gra that one needs no effort and in fact it is better not to do any effort to get things, but to put everything into God's hands. [This idea is attributed to the Ramban also by Israel Salanter.]


[When I  saw the Torah being used a   means to make money, I got turned off.
But that is just abuse of a high ideal--and a good ideal. People should learn Torah and trust in God. Abusus non tollit usum. Abuse does not cancel use.

Steven Dutch:
Whether religion or unbelief have been sources of good or evil are absolutely irrelevant to anything. The only issue of any significance is whether a position is true. If it's also good, that's a side benefit. I would like nothing better than to find ways around the speed of light and the laws of thermodynamics, but they are still true even if I don't like how they affect things I'd like to do. If something is true but evil, then that's something we have to deal with. Is it at all possible that the Universe was not designed by Walt Disney? Is it possible that our current prejudices  ... may be more based on sentimentality than reason?

And another idea from Steven Dutch which I think applies to Judaism: A lot of people will misunderstand the religion and stress trivial issues, ignore or downplay significant ones, or garble concepts. In extreme cases people who disagree with the established religion will attempt to redirect it into a form very different from the original, or take it over entirely. The Gnostics of the early Christian era who cast Persian mystery religions in Christian terms are a good example. Many people will use the religion to rationalize other motives; they will use it as a pretext for prejudice, or dominating others, or lashing out at authority.
Some will adhere to the established religion out of inertia. They feel a need for some kind of spiritual activity, and the established religion is the best (or only) game in town. Some will adhere to the established religion out of fear. They may not really believe in the established religion, but are afraid of misfortune or damnation if they abandon it. Some will adhere to the established religion primarily as a means of securing good fortune, as a security blanket, or as a means of easing guilt feelings. Often they will select elements of the religion for emphasis and ignore other elements.
 Many will adhere to the established religion for social acceptance. They may like participating in special occasions, or may value the religion as a symbol of national or group identity. Some will adhere to the established religion for cynical reasons. They may secretly disbelieve everything about the religion but go through the motions for personal advantage, reputation, or social standing or, in really intolerant societies, merely to stay out of trouble.
Once a religion becomes really established, the religion itself can be a route to power, prestige, and privilege. Not only will some people adhere to the religion for cynical reasons, they will become entrenched at its very center.

   All the above Professor Dutch says is dishonest. The only honest approaches are these: Some will sincerely believe in the established religion, will critically evaluate its teachings, and will attempt seriously to model their lives on its tenets. Some will decide they do not believe in the religion at all. If the society is reasonably open, they may either become nonreligious or convert to something else. In intolerant societies, they may go through the motions of belief merely to stay out of trouble. Some will reject the religion to the point of revolt and active opposition. Some will adhere to the established religion out of sincere conviction but will disagree with important tenets. They will attempt to recast the religion in more personally palatable terms, or possibly work to redirect the religion itself into more agreeable lines. The changes may be real reforms or merely redefinition into something more palatable.

Appendix: "Trust in God" was a major issue at the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. The reason for this in part was that it was a Musar Yeshiva. That means a yeshiva that introduced Ethics (Musar) into part of the daily sessions of learning.  "Ethics" here does not mean worldview issue or what is called hashkafa. It means simple books about ethical behaviour. Now part of the reason I think this was important at the Mir is that the students there were not learning Yore Deah for ordination. The entire yeshiva was learning Torah  because one is supposed to learn Torah. So people needed a kind of justification for what they were doing. 
Later on I noticed that this emphasis on trust in God was much less in other places. Sometimes it was completely absent. But at the Mir it was definitely a part of what was going on  and that affected my own worldview since then. [Just to prove my point there was a whole shelf at the yeshiva (in the Musar section) of about 15 volumes of the מדרגת  האדם  The Sum of Man the book by Joseph Yozel Horwitz. The major theme there is trust in God.

It should be noted that the trust in God at the Mir Yeshiva in NY was in order to learn Torah. That is the idea was you trust in God so that you will not have obstacles towards learning Torah.  It is directed towards removing obstacles from learning. The Gra has this in the opposite way. He says the entire purpose of Torah is to come to trust in God.

Reform Judaism

There are positions of Reform Judaism that I disagree with. Judaism is really about Torah. The Oral and Written Torah.
(Judaism is not equal to  liberal politics. Everything in Left wing politics is against Israel and the Torah.  Democrats are definitely the worst enemies of Israel since the Nazis.)

But idolatry  has become part and parcel of the insane religious world .
So my position is that we all need to keep Torah, but that no one is really doing it.
The closest I have seen is in Lithuanian kind of yeshivas. The best of them is Ponovitch. And in fact the best of all Torah books has come out of Ponovitch, the Avi Ezri on the Rambam and the Kehilat Yaakov.

While the Litvak world is not perfect, I saw enough horrifying stuff in the rest of the insane religious world  to make me feel the insane religious world  is been absorbed into the Sitra Achra. I know I am not the only one who has experienced this but I also know people would rather no discuss their unpleasant experiences. I any case I have to tell and warn people of the truth. I expect no one will listen but at least I have fulfilled my obligation to warn people to stay away from a  bad thing.

A conversation about race in Starbucks

Race is the beginning when Nature starts to make one species into two species. And once this process starts there is no stopping it. You can't fight biology. And if you try, then biology fights back.

For an example you have one species in one area. Then for some reason part of the group gets separated. At first the two species will develop different characteristics based on female choice and environment. For some time they will remain one species, but with different characteristics. That is called "race."  After some time they will become two different species. So race is simply the beginning of when Nature divides one species into two.
Any disagreement between Nature and political correct positions is not really a contest. Reality will win out every time.

The reason this is so difficult to say, even though it is perfectly obvious, is that there has been for some time an attempt exterminate WASPS [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] . [I would use a stronger word: a war against wasps if I could. But war might be too strong a term. Let's say at minimum there is a conspiracy to wipe out WASPS.] And there is a concern that if they become aware of this attempt, they might try to prevent their extinction. So it has become P.C. to say: "There are no WASPS". Or rather, there are no races. But, in all species, there are races. And they are always the beginning of an uncross-able divide.

My learning partner mentioned to me that the problem with Germany was not racism. He noticed that there have been  black Germans for hundreds of years. There was and still is not a bias in Germany against others races. The major problem was that they did not like Jews. That is not a issue of race. Racism and being anti-Jews are very different things. And though I realize that Germany has gone far to make amends as far as that is possible, still I think confusing the issues of WWII with racism is a smoke screen. The problem was not racism. The problem was being anti -Jews.

In fact, if we consider the idea that Esau was a brother of Yaakov, then Germans and Jews are one race.

Gra told him that to the degree one lacks any knowledge of any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree he will lack in his understanding of the Torah.

Baruch of Shkolov wrote in his introduction to his translation of Euclid a statement of the Gra about secular knowledge. He writes that the Gra told him that to the degree one lacks any knowledge of any one of the seven wisdoms, to that degree he will lack in his understanding of the Torah.
This statement of the Gra is rarely quoted, but Litvaks are aware of it to some degree.
The significance of this is the statement of the Gra in the Shulchan Aruch about not learning secular wisdoms. The Rema and the Rambam write about the Pardes and there is a note from the Gra that is a  polemic against learning philosophy. It is very uncharacteristic of the Gra. One person wrote after that that that note in Shulchan Aruch is not from the Gra and he knows who put it there אני יודע את האיש ואת שיחו "I know the guy and his talk". Later on people claimed the note is authentic.
Since the note deals with general secular wisdoms and contradicts what we know the Gra said elsewhere it seems reasonable to say like the first opinion that it is not authentic.


We know Rav Hutner [The Rosh Yeshiva of Chaim Berlin] sent his students to learn in Brooklyn Collage in the afternoons to learn a honorable profession and not depend on using Torah as a way of getting people's charity. And Reb Shelomo Freifeld  [The student of Rav Hutner and the Rosh Yeshiva of Shar Yashuv] in fact told me to go to collage. In fact he ordered me to go to collage.
[Eventually I did listen, and  majored in Physics at the Polytechnic Institute which is connected with NYU. ] I am not a good example for this matter. My parents also wanted me to go to collage. It was the only thing that they exercised their parental authority about. And it was about the only thing I refused to listen to them. On one hand today it looks like a good thing I went to yeshiva in NY instead. Yet the way NY was I think I could very well have spent 1/2  a day in yeshiva and 1/2 in Brooklyn Collage. [But who knows? At the time it seemed to me that I needed to concentrate on just Torah alone. And at the Mir as a student you were not supposed to take time off to go to university. That practice was only at Chaim Berlin yeshiva and Torah VeDaat


Appendix:
The Seven Wisdoms
1) Grammar
2) Rhetoric
3) Logic
4) Arithmetic
5) Geometry
6) Music
7) Astronomy

(They want to divest from Israel. Sure go ahead. The first PC microprocessor was invented in Israel. Let them all turn off their computers. The intel 8088 was invented in Haifa )

There is a lot of  antisemitism out there. Mainly in universities.
(They want to divest from Israel. Sure go ahead. The first  PC microprocessor  was invented in Israel. Let them all turn off their computers. The intel 8088 was invented in  Haifa )


Any time a guy has his wife take away his children, and his house, and his money, who gets blamed for it? His wife? Of course not. And when blacks are making a war on white USA, who do you think gets blamed for it? Blacks? Of course not. You know who gets blamed.
This is the major characteristic of Wasps-White Anglo Saxon Protestants. They go all out for some dumb ideal like equality or some other such nonsense. And then when it turns sour, they keep on enduring it. And enduring it... and enduring it.... Until it explodes in their faces.  And then they go in the exact opposite direction. No tolerance for anyone,-- especially Jews. And in the meantime who is blamed? Jews of course. Most Jews would not consider the Feminists or Howard Stern or Wasserman to represent Torah ideals. Not even Reform Jews. No one said to make them poster boys for Jews in the first place. And no one said there is anything special about Jews except in so far as we attempt to keep the Law of God. And we are the first ones to admit we don't do a good job at that.

[And no Jew who believes in Torah voted for the anti-Semite traitor to the USA in the Black House.]

Now this was the idea of Chaim from Voloshin that Jews have the quality of combining Divine Traits. That is you find Divine traits like Power or Kindness, etc. All ten sepherot. And wasps often take hold of one trait. That is why Jews are necessary--because they have the quality of combining opposing traits to bring balance to the situation. [See the Nefesh HaChaim by Reb Chaim the disciple\ of the Gra.]

Now I am not going to put all the blame on the Wasps. It has been suggested that there was a certain amount of animosity towards Wasps even before all this. The minimum requirement today to be anyone anywhere is to have something bad to say about Wasps. [Personally I developed a good amount of respect for Wasps. All my elementary school and high school teachers were wasps and they were all very good. Some were outstanding. I had a girl friend who was a wasp and she fit all the stereotypes you see about smart girls. She was smart without even trying. I think she got, according to my memory, a  1198 on her SAT. That is she missed two points from a perfect score.]

It just goes to show we should have stayed out of the civil rights movement  which was a clear war against wasps, and now it is blowing up in our faces. I can't imagine why anyone would have thought civil rights for clear and open enemies of America could possibility be a good thing.

I any case, I  told people a long time ago that tolerance towards Jews and Asians is very different than tolerance towards people who main goal in life is the destruction of White America. But no one was listening. No one.

And if you want poster boys for Jews I can think of a lot better choices. E.G. Susskind, Gregori Pearlman, the thousand and one Jewish professors of Physics and Math all over the world, the roshei yeshivas of the Mirrer yeshiva in NY, and etc.
And I don't recommend being open or tolerant of Jewish cults. Cults are bad for everyone.
Wasps should learn  to discern. There are things they ought to be tolerant of and thing they ought to exclude.There is a golden mean.
Since tolerance became a big thing, people lost the ability to discern the difference between good and bad people.

The Oral Law is not a porous concept. It is fairly well defined

The Oral Law is not a porous concept. It is fairly well defined. The two Talmuds, the Mechilta and Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta, and the Midrashim. When the Zohar came out there was (and still is) debate if to include it in the set. But later on books are at best are commentaries, not the thing in itself.

With so many people trying to pull you into their cults, it is easy to lose focus on this.

So I suggest either plowing through this material on your own at home after work, or to find a straight Lithuanian yeshiva in your neighborhood to go after school or work to do this.

I remember when I was at the Mirrer Yeshiva in NY, there was some kind of after school program where students from the local high schools would come in the afternoon to learn Torah and get credit at school for this work. I don't know why this has to be a solely NY kind of thing. Why could it not be in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or Baltimore?
However care should be taken to exclude cults. There is a significant danger level that very damaging cults could take advantage of this arrangement. For that reason I have stressed that this should be only with straight Lithuanian yeshivas. And these types of places can be hard to make. In fact in the whole world there are only a few in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and Flatbush. There is something hard about making such places. I could count the sum total of legitimate Litvak yeshivas on two hands.

What makes a legitimate Lithuanian yeshiva? Certainly lack of "shtick" games plays a role. Schedule also. But I think the main component is the Rosh Yeshiva. The Rosh Yeshiva has been learning for about twenty years before he became a rosh yeshiva. He is not a novice. He has not been spending his time making money for the yeshiva. he has been learning. He is like a doctor who did his time in pre med and then in med school. Without that period of training he is not a doctor but a dangerous quake.
[Most roshei yeshivas are in dangerous quakes because of the fact that hey did not put in the time.]

The students are also a factor. If you have to pay them to learn then they are not worth money. No one ever paid students to learn in Torah VeDaat, the Mirrer yeshiva or Chaim Berlin. Frankly it is hard to know why people learn in these places but something motivates them. And what ever it is that motivates them better not be money if you want the place to be authentic.

Appendix: I did not take part of that program teaching high school students Torah. I am not sure what they were teaching the students. I assume it was not Gemara, Rashi, and Topshot. It was probably something more basic like the Five Books of Moses in Hebrew. That is my best guess. In general people go through the Five Books of Moses anyway every year but the students were secular students so I assume they were probably needing an introduction. My own background was such that in fact I did spend time on the Five Books of Moses before I got started on Talmud. That was at Beverly Hills High School and in the Reform Temple, Temple Israel of Hollywood. And even later when I got to yeshiva I spend my first year doing a lot of work on the Five Books of Moses. It was only in my second year that the Talmud studies started taking precedence.