Dennis Prager has an idea about the difference between left and right.

How do you judge America




My basic idea of how to improve the USA is by learning Torah. That means the Oral and Written Law [Old Testament and Talmud].  For Christians I recommend learning The Torah [Old Testament], plus Augustine and Aquinas.

This was Reb Shmuel Berenbaum's idea. Whenever he was asked a question about almost any issue in society his answer was to learn Torah and not to speak Lashon Hara [slander].

In my first yeshiva I gained two important ideas. Bitul Torah --that is bitul Torah is a bad thing. [That means not learning Torah when one can is a sin. This idea actually comes from the Talmud itself. In the Talmud Yerushalmi it says that Bitul Torah [not learning when one has time to learn] is equal to three   other sins of the Torah that are the most serious. Also I learned there the idea that every word of Torah is a mitzvah in itself.

I have a learning partner that I have been learning the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach with.

I  have a learning partner that I have been learning the Avi Ezri of Rav  Shach with. Sometimes the discussion goes into other areas but in general we have been plowing through Rav Shach's book on the Mishne Torah of the Rambam. This is a little different from the Gemara session we were doing before but at some point it seems natural to go over to Rav Shach because in his essays on the Rambam he is dealing with and bringing clarity to many of the issues that we were dealing with in the Gemara.

You can see that I was dealing with issues in sin offerings when we were doing Sanhedrin and and before that we were doing Shabat and now looking at Rav Shach we are seeing an amazing degree of clarity and depth he brings to these issues.
But I am not sure if someone would see this if they had not done the preliminary homework in the Gemara itself. In any case, the Avi Ezri is in my opinion the most important Torah book to come to print within the last hundred years.
I highly recommend it to anyone that can find it. 

I know people will say but what about the Chidushei HaRambam of Reb Chaim? My answer is that the Chidushei HaRambam is a great book in the it opens up the infinite layers of depth in the Rambam that had previously been hidden, but when I would finish an essay in it I usually came out with the feeling that things were even more confusing than when I had started. I never feel that way with Rav Shach. When I finish an essay by him I feel like the whole subject has been magically been made clear and light.

I was in  position to know Rav Shick {Moharosh} fairly well   But I think he got way too much into his pantheism thing.  This same process happens often with religious leaders. At some point they start getting absorbed into some kind of archetype. [Or they just get too much caught up with themselves.]

 I think I gained a great deal by learning the basic path of Rav Shick.
Still the Intermediate Zone has too many problems, and people that get caught in it seem to lose some aspect of their humanness.
The Gra accurately identified this problem, and thus came to be the basic approach of the Litvaks that tends to be straightforward--learn Torah  --and don't get into spiritual trips.

The best long and involved treatment of this problem was given by Arubindo, a Hindu saint. And his extended treatment of this problem seems to me to be as accurate as one can get. [What often happens is when people hear about the Intermediate zone and powers that come from the Dark Side they think that is only for those other groups but not our group--because we are on the path of truth. This is in it self usually a delusion.]

Litvaks --if anything simply don't have enough faith in the Gra to realize how accurate he was. Philosophy does not seem to have any way of dealing with the problem of delusion nor have any way of discerning between the different zones. Some people simply dismiss all spiritual phenomena as delusions and this seems to me to be based on scientism--a belief that only what science knows can be true--which is a highly non scientific attitude.

How to learn? Fast or slow?

I  remember Reb Freifeld suggesting to learn every chapter of Talmud ten times. I did not do this as I wanted to make progress. I also had seen the musar book The Paths of the Righteous  which said to learn fast.
Still I remember that I did chapter 5 in Ketubot a a bunch of times. But I was learning with the group of Naphtali Yeager at the time and he was concentrating on the first chapter of Ketuboth mainly from page 9 until page 13. He was doing it with the שב שמעתתא and I was just a beginner at the time. Still he was kind enough to show me the ropes and showed to me the depths of Talmud and Tosphot and I have not forgotten that amazing lesson. I think most people that I have encountered are simply unaware of this depth in the Gemara.



This tension between review and fast learning is part and parcel of the yeshiva experience.

Yeshivas began to deal with this issue in this way. The morning hours were spent in preparation of the Rosh yeshiva's class which would be given a hour before Mincha.  The afternoon was meant for fast learning--meaning some Tosphot but not necessarily every single one.

In conclusion I want to suggest to divide ones time equally between in depth learning and review time of learning. This was the eventual conclusion of the great yeshivas and it seems to me that it must have been based on experience.

 Kelley Ross understands rights as being derived from the natural law doctrine. He also mentions the Torah origin of this idea. [See the link.] That is he understands rights to be derived from things like "Thou shalt not steal." Since there are further commandments relating to human affairs that would make rights more extensive.

I think Kelley Ross might not have put all his ideas in one essay. So I might as well say the basic idea as fast as I can. Natural Law had some origin in the Stoics but was articulated clearly by Saadia Gaon חוקים שכליים. That is many of the commandments are simply morality that God already put into the basic fabric of nature. The Torah simply reveals what is already objectively out there. This was developed later by Maimonides and Aquinas. The idea of Rights of John Locke was simply the expression of this in a way that makes it more clear from a legal perceptive. Thou Shalt not Steal is Divine and Natural law. The way this is defined legally is that people have a right to their own property. No one has a right to take from anyone their property no person and no government.
John Locke was simply a natural continuation of the ideas of Aquinas in this regard. But he added the idea that legitimate governments are formed to preserve these rights.

The idea is that people give up a certain amount of their rights that they would have in nature, in order to preserve the government they live under. Otherwise it would be war of all against all. That was John Locke's idea of how it is legitimate to tax. But the idea was that government can't take what it wants. Only what powers given to it under a constitution are legitimate-nothing further.

This is related mainly to the fact that I noticed some people do not have a very clear idea of exactly what John Locke meant by rights the meaning of the American Constitution. So when Donald Trump suggests that the job of government is not to let in Muslims but rather to protect Americans he is absolutely correct. The only job of government is to protect its citizens from foreign invasion and from crime.

Ideas in Bava Metzia chapters 8-9 updated   Title page of Ideas in Bava Metzia


Ideas in Talmud  Title page for Ideas in Talmud


I was reading Bava Metzia page 81 and noticed that Tosphot did not seem to hold by my ideas on Bava Metzia page 104. Then when I read page 82 I realized that Tosphot was definitely against me. So I thought to salvage my ideas with Rashi. Then when I read Shavuot page 43 I realized that Rashi was not going to help me. So I had to correct my ideas on Page 104. While clearly it is true the lender owns the guarantee, but the document does not turn the whole thing into a sale. [You could say I was half right.He does own the guarantee but he cant keep it when the money is repaid.] In any case up above are the corrected versions.


I also see that the beginning on chap. 9 needs work. One idea was that David noticed the difference between the Rambam and Rashi about what is required on the worker. But that whole idea I think needs to be re written. 

I see that the issue of the Enlightenment in the Jewish world [i.e. the 1700's until the 1800's] was  related to the original Enlightenment. And at least in one issue they were identical--Secular Learning. Allen Bloom makes a good point that the original Enlightenment had a political agenda also. But that was clearly not all there was to it.

My experience is such that I have a good deal of sympathy towards authentic sciences  and have a great deal of antipathy towards pseudo sciences.


For example I have seen that where you find supposedly rigorous application of Torah principles with complete exclusion of  anything secular does anything but help people be moral or decent in any sense. In fact, just the opposite. Yet opening the door to the secular in the Torah world always leads directly to pseudo sciences and never towards the real thing.

So the quandary remains and I have to go and learn Talmud because I am already late, and I don't think this 600 year question is going to be solved on this blog this minute. Or rather I don't think I will solve it any better than my own patents and grandparents who held from  balanced approach--Torah with wisdom.


If we go back further to the argument about the Rambam's Guide we can see the issue of secular learning also was raised.
In any case, I hold learning authentic natural science is important and learning a kosher vocation also. But I also believe that there is something one gains by learning Torah that the secular world has not touched. There was some kind of amazing energy in the Mir Yeshiva in NY and also in Shar Yashuv. But i realize today that that energy can't be harnessed at will. It takes a very special kind of individual to make an authentic yeshiva.  The authentic yeshivas I can count on two hands. Three in NY and two in Israel. [That is in NY: Mir, Chaim Berlin, Torah VaDaat, Shar Yashuv. Israel: Ponovitch, Brisk.