Rav Elazar Menachem Shach

Rav Shach [Elazar Menachem Shach] was connected with Navardok. He was in fact the Rosh yeshiva of Navardok for a number of years.

It seems to me that most people that did were great in learning Torah passed through the doors of Navardok at one time or other.
And the thing about Navardok was  that it was a Musar [Jewish Ethics] yeshiva. And Musar (Ethics) in Europe meant something very different than what it means nowadays. It was a whole program devoted to character improvement. It was not the twenty minute period before Mincha that you see nowadays.

Also I should mention that every school of Musar had one particular facet of Musar that they emphasized.

For Simcha Zizel was into order. Slobodka was in the greatness of man. Navardok was into trust in God with no השתדלות (with no effort).

So what I wanted to mention now that I have been able to get on the Internet, are two things. One is the importance of the book of Rav Shach. That is called the Avi Ezri. If he would not have gotten on  everyone's wrong side by insulting and offending  everyone, his book would be the most popular book in the Jewish world today. In my opinion it rivals the Chidushei HaRambam of  Chaim Soloveitchik. It is that amazing. Deep and yet completely clear and understandable all at the same time.

[I should mention he was not into secular knowledge. And as a rule he was right. It is just in teh two filed that that Rambam recommended I have to defer to the opinion of the Rambam, that is Physics and Metaphysics.]

The other thing I wanted to bring up is in fact Navardok and that whole idea of trust without effort.
It is known that this is an argument between the Duties of the Heart and the Ramban and Gra.

If you put it all together you get a path that looks similar to what I saw at the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn. That is that one can learn Torah and does not have to worry about making  a living. Though I am no where near this grand vision and ideal still it seems to me to be an admirable path and one worth emulating as much as one can.

To have an idea of what the world is about I think it is important to know Physics. You often hear people discussing the nature of reality who are not familiar with Physics. And that lack seems to disqualify them. I am not saying this is a positive reason to learn physics but at least it is a side motivation that I think is worthy. Who is guilty of opinions about reality without knowledge of physics. A lot of people I know.

But what if you are not good at math.

This is the point of my comment here. To learn Physics I think one needs two things (1) To say the words and go on. (2) 10,000 hours. The last requirement is the hard one. It is the time factor that gets harder as one gets older. For this reason it is important to do this during  the twenties.

The Quantum Enigma.

My suggestion here is a statement by by Leibniz. Representation causes consciousness. Not consciousness causes the representation. It is from this statement that Nietzsche discovered the Id. [That is to say that Nietzsche said that that is the source of his idea.]

So what we have is a case of ontological undecidablity.



As Dr Kelly Ross has noted that Kant's system accommodates quantum mechanics very well.


Appendix. What Nietzsche meant was the representation bring forth the subconscious and makes it conscious. But one can also understand Leibniz to mean the representation creates all levels of subconsciousness and also sub levels.

When it comes to religion I am pretty firmly in the camp of Israel Salanter. That is to say I like the idea of Musar which are classical books of Jewish ethics. They are based on the value system of the Talmud, but make it easier to grasp than if one would be learning the Talmud directly. But Musar avoids the problem that most books of Jewish ethics have today is that in stead of presenting teh value system of the Torah and Talmud they falsify it it. Musar has the advantage that it in fact is presenting authentic Judaism as it relates to values.

The two modifications I would make to the idea of  learning Musar is that I would learning it  with some amount of philosophy. The reason is that many of the concepts come from Plato and Aristotle and it is best to get their ideas directly --not second hand. Also I would try to concentrate of teh school of Musar based on the Rambam and Saadia Gaon. The more kabalistic Musar I think kind of leads to fanaticism.
It is not that I am against learning the Ari. Not at all. But not in the context of Musar.
. The connection between length of days with fear of God. To me that means two things. If I want long days--that is not to waste my days, then learning Musar stretches out the day. The other thing is if I in fact see that my body changes over time--so I do have a need for literal length of days-then also Musar is good for that.
My favorites are חובות לבבות  Duties of the Heart and אור ישראל The Light of Israel by a student of Israel Salanter named Isaac Blazer.

Musar can be divided into (1) Rationalistic Musar [that is medieval Musar], (2) Kabalistic Musar, (3) Musar of the disciples of Israel Salanter which could be called Talmudic Musar in that it mainly goes to the Talmud directly to support its ideas. But that is probably not  a good name for it in that it implies the other two are not Talmudic. It is just the emphasis is different.

n81 in mp3 [n81 in midi format]


n79 in mp3 [n79 in midi]

I used to think that secular Jews simply had a bias against all religion. Whenever there would be some Muslim blowing himself up to kill Jews the secular Jews I knew would always blame it on religion and/or the State of Israel.
Of course to any average Joe like myself this seems ridiculous.  No all religions are alike. Islam is extremely evil. Others and in fact most are mixtures of good and bad elements. Blaming all religion seemed simplistic to an unreasonable degree.

But on further consideration perhaps there is something about religion that grabs a hold of people and make them see things that aren't there. I remember this distinctly during the time I was in Jerusalem.
I don't need to go into my own experience because I am sure that anyone who has been to Jerusalem has seen this.

My learning has been slow recently. We were doing the laws of the seventh year in the Rambam.  So I thought to breach this subject to my learning partner since things were going slow anyway.

His example of this was a follows: he used to go to the Western  Wall every day. He had been thrown out of the diaspora yeshiva and went to live with Peretz. Peretz once on the way home took another intransigent person. So David and this other fellow got into a conversation. After some time taking that fellow told David that he is Moses the prophet. No surprise there. Then he revealed the name of the Messiah and identity and address.  I asked him "Why did you not get his phone number and email?" And he said in two weeks the messiah will be revealed and there will be no more need for army bases in Israel and he will then give to David 200 acres  in Mitzpe Rimon. And in case he needs a sign he  gave to him 4 digits of the lotto number for the next day.

This goes on but you get the idea.


I think the Reform are right about a lot of things but they simply go off in the social justice direction way too far until they end up doing and saying things not like the Torah. The the insane religious world  do the exact same thing in the direction of rituals.  In order to keep Torah you simply can't accept either package deal but you have to do the work yourself to see how the Torah applies to your own life.


As far as religion goes there does seem to be a problem with getting too fanatical. The reform are right about that. But fanatical nuns don't blow up Jews. The reason people blame religion is because they don't want to blame Islam
Most of the debate over the Islam has less to do with advancing an explanation of terrorism than finding reasons not to accept some proposed explanation. People who otherwise aren't concerned with terrorism  become very concerned when terrorism is credited to Islam. The motives for rejecting this hypotheses: people either don't want to believe the hypothesis. 

The Ten Commandments are the basic principles of Torah but they are also Law.
That is we have in Torah some laws that are personal morality laws. And other are laws that are given to be actual law. This is one area in which  people are  confused. They think the Torah has only personal morality laws. That is not true. Most of the laws of the Torah are the Constitution of the people of Israel that was given by God and can't ever be abridged or amended.
But the Ten Commandments have both aspects. They are principles of personal morality, and also  are enforceable legal laws.

In any case the aspect of the Ten Commandments that is legal jurisprudence is more limited than the principles that they represent.

(1) For example "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Every lie a person says does not make him liable to the death penalty. So even though every lie is included in this prohibition, not every lie is liable the death penalty, but some are; for example עדים זוממים. That is when you have two witnesses that come to court and say, "We saw John Smith  having sex with another male and we gave him warning beforehand and told him 'If you do this you will get the death penalty.' And he said, 'I understand and even so I do this.'"

And then two witnesses come to court and say to the first two witnesses, "How could you have seen this? You will with us  the whole day in this other city?"

The first two get the death penalty for their false testimony.

(2) Another example is not to do idolatry. Not every act of idolatry gets the death penalty;- only the four services or service according the the usual way that idol is worshiped. Idolatry to be liable needs a physical object. There has to be something tangible that the two witness can say to john smith "If you bow to this [or do it regular service] you will get the death penalty." And he has to acknowledge the warning and say, "I understands and even so I do it." But still there is a large variety of things one can do to transgress the prohibition without being liable


(3) לא תגנוב "Thou shalt not steal". Not everything that a person steals gets him the death penalty. As far as jurisprudence goes the "Thou shalt not steal" goes on taking children from their parents. People that do this get the death penalty. Even if they think they are doing a mitzvah.
But as a principle it means that in any way money or anything gets into one's possession that does not belong there according to the law of the Torah is stealing.

(4) לא תנאף Thou shalt not commit adultery. ניאוף [adultery] has only one definition. It has a legal meaning. And that is only one specific act. Sex with a married woman. But when is a woman married? It is not the Chupa. It is ארוסין "espousal." That is the man says to the woman, "You are married to me by this ring or document," in front of two witnesses, and she accepts by her free will, then she is married. But she does not live with him until נישואין which could be much later.
 But there are other acts of sexual intercourse which have the death penalty which are not ניאוף adultery. For example homosexuals do get the death penalty.But as above it has to be in front of two witnesses, or else they might admit it themselves. That is they might come to court and ask to get married. And the judges look at each other wondering what that could mean. And then they explain. In that case they would by their own admission get the death penalty. הודאת פיו כמאה עדים דמי




I could go on, but you get the idea. Now this idea that Ten Commandments are principles of Torah beyond actual legal measures is well established


Appendix:

 It is a mistake to think people will not take their beliefs the the absolute extreme given a chance.
In Washington State also, Aaron and Melissa Klein also refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian wedding, and have been been threaten, by an administrative law judge no less, with a fine of $135,000, even though gay weddings weren't even legal in Washington when their supposed "offense" took place. The fine can be imposed with assent of the Stare "labor commissioner," who, of course, has no more real judicial authority than an administrative law judge.Donald and Evelyn Knapp have been ordered to perform gay weddings in their wedding chapel, with the threat of 180 days in jail and a $1000 fine for each "civil rights" offense, which means every day that they don't do it.