"physics envy,"

The harder the science you do, the more you look down on anyone not on that level. If you are in math, you think physicists are stupid. If you are a physicist, you have "math envy," and think biologists are stupid. If you are a biologist, you have "physics envy," and think psychologists are frauds and idiots, along with being insane themselves, and their motivation in going into psychology was to project their defects on everyone they do not like. 
Also, the scale of jargon is reversed. The more of a pseudo science it is, the more they have to invent jargon for simple things- so that they can sound profound and call what they do "science." Thus, "social sciences," which are at the bottom, have jargon invented for things that there are commonplace terms for. It is a scam in order to be able to call what they do "science." [I feel nauseous just writing the two words together.]


The result of envy is to try to de-legitimize whatever anyone on a higher level is doing and make yourself sound as if you were at the top. 

There is a lot to go into here but this will have to do for now.
in every vector of value there is a hierarchy. 

So what I m suggesting is a hierarchy in each area of value.
So you get a string a values. E.g. the one I started with in the above essay. Math --Physics-Chem-Biology etc.. Up there in (8) Beauty will be Bach-Mozart-Beethoven-etc. Politics also will have its own string. Another string will be in the Holy-"Pietative" Old Testament-Talmud-Rishonim-etc. 


So what you need here are different kinds of awareness or knowledge of universals. That is some universals are "It must be." The next level is "It can be" and the next is "one ought to do such and such a thing." That is for the different modes of necessity and possibility there will be a different kind of non intuitive immediate knowledge.

Mir Yeshiva in New York

The Mir Yeshiva in New York was a unique kind of place in that every day was a new class that was along the lines of something you would see in the book from Reb Chaim Soloveitchik or Shimon Shkop. That is:- the classes consisted of expanding the approach of Reb Chaim to every single page of Gemara.

So this gives me an idea of how to explain simply what it means to learn Gemara on a small scale. To get the basic idea you really do not need to go through the whole four year program. If you just would have one tractate of Talmud and one essay from Reb Chaim Soloveitchik or Rav Shach and go though that one essay along with the Gemara it was written on, then you would already know what it means "to know how to learn."
You might not yourself at that point "know how to learn" but you would have understood the basic idea.

Now I do not claim this deep knowledge myself. In fact, in the two books I wrote on Bava Metzia and Shas I sometimes see the kinds of trivial concerns like are like Freshman Level. Like "Why did the Maharasha write such and such a thing."  That might be slightly interesting, but it is not called "knowing how to learn." Knowing how to learn is global.  It means knowing how to calculate the sugia [subject] in front of you--so you know thoroughly the Tosphot. And then the crucial step is to know how it connects with the rest of Shas.
There are not a lot of places on that level. Mainly they are in NY (Mir Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat) or they are offshoots of Ponovitch in Bnei Brak.

This gives you a general idea of how education should be pursued. You should look for the highest quality. For some reason God directly my steps to almost always have teachers of the highest quality--even when I was not looking for this. If it is worth doing it is worth doing right.

[Sometimes people jump towards the global thing and are missing the first step in knowing the sugia. So I think my two books are important because they tend to combine both things. I deal at first with knowing the sugia in its place and then see how it connects with the global concerns of the rest of Shas.



If you want an equal of a Litvak Yeshiva in your home, then you only need one Shas, plus the books of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and Rav Shach and the basic Musar books. If you also want to more mystic side of Torah after you have finished Shas twice, then what I recommend is simply to plow through the writings of the Ari (Isaac Luria) straight from beginning to end-or at least the Eitz Chaim which gives you the basic idea. But I should mention I think the Eitz Chaim goes with the idea of direct mystical awareness at least as far as the Ari was concerned. That fits with Hegel but not Kant.

Music r32 a minor

r32 a minor   [r32 in midi]

religious teachers have found way to mislead the public about Torah

I was naively optimistic about what most religious teachers are. I thought they were sincere and wanted everyone to learn and keep Torah.


Why is a good question which I do not have an answer for. But the fact is there are three main characteristics of most religious teachers. In these three things they are the exact opposite of what they claim. They are anti-Shalom Bait, Anti-Family values, anti-learning Torah. They do everything they can to break up homes and make sure the children are taken from their parents, and they hate it when they see Jews learning Torah. It rubs them the wrong way. They claim to make yeshivas as a public service but all they are in chat rooms for them and their buddies. If anyone actually tries to sit in one and learn Torah they make sure to throw him out.

I know they are extremely dangerous to ones mental and spiritual health. The worst mistake one can make is trust in anything they say.


They are failures when it comes to human decency and sincerity. How can they teach that to others?


However Torah is important. It is not a reflection on Torah the fact that it can be misused. There is no system that is immune to abuse. And it there is any way to abuse a system people will find it.

The problem is that religious teacher have found way to mislead the public about what the Torah says and means. They are enemies of Torah.

I will forever be their enemy because they are enemies of the Torah.
To them Torah is a set of rituals and as long as they are the center of worship they don't care what people do outside of the rituals that have little or nothing to do with Torah. They found some schizo persons that were addicted to rituals and found way and making everyone else do them.

It is not that they are buffoons. It is that they are outright damaging and dangerous.

I already dislike word play. Ordination from Sinai stopped during the middle of the period of the Talmud.

Religious teachers are the equivalent of the Sophists in ancient Athens claimed to be able to impart moral virtue to youth.  Moral education is their  venture. Now, I might say “Please spare me. I am not impressed. You oafs wouldn’t know virtue if it bit you.” But I would say it, or think it, partly because I already mistrust religious teachers .
But the question still remains - education of youth and also education of  adults that still have not yet acquired thorough knowledge of the Oral and Written Law. They too are like youth in that they are vulnerable because of their lack of knowledge and experience.
Almost anyone can come along and like the sophists claim to teach Torah and make  a nice bundle off of it.
I already dislike word play. Ordination from Sinai stopped during the middle of the period of the Talmud. So why do they play this word game? Could I just start to call myself and my friends "Doctor"? Why not? Is it not just a word?
I do not think these are innocent word games. They openly declare their intention that everyone has to listen to them.

They think they are the wisest of all men and  are also thought to be so by very many men—and  the only thing that prevents them from having a good reputation among everyone is natural science and those who study it. They believe that if they ruin the  reputation of Physics and Math, they will then be awarded celebrations as the undisputed champions of wisdom. They believe that they are truly the most wise, but whenever in private conversations they come up short they are shielded by their followers. These men, who think they are superior to all, are in fact inferior to all. They may pose greater dangers to Torah than  buffoons who do not go with Torah at all. These  are ambitious men who would like to discredit natural science by reducing it to its lowest common denominator: clever words and weaponry.

They gain power by being supposedly pro family and family values. They in fact highly hostile to any families but their own, and use their authority to dismantle families of people they do not like-- if anyone is stupid enough to listen to them. Mainly what they want to to weed out the smart so that they -the religious teachers- will be the smartest kids on the block. Religious teachers are inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when they are trying to disguise and deny their vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious religious teacher who jumps at such a chance to show off his holiness.

However to know any single halacha properly one needs to know the Talmud from where that halacha comes from.

As for Halacha in fact the only valid source is the Talmud. But because not everyone has the time it is perfectly fine to go by the Rambam or the Tur Beit Yoseph. The only Achron in Halacha I have much respect for is the Aruch HaShulchan. There are people that go by the Gra in every detail like Rav Zilverman in the Old City. These are all very good approaches. However to know any single halacha properly one needs to know the Talmud from where that halacha comes from.

As for the other issues like problems with all religious teachers  being creeps that I brought up in my essay. I would not say what I say if I did not know it to be true.  And like I mentioned before there is such a thing as group behavior.  There are plenty of examples of this in the Gemara. See the end of kidushin "Where it says stay away from that group that are from such and such a city because they are all liars."  In any case my essay was really meant to address a public problem which is very real and everyone knows it except the people that want everyone else to be blind. 

And there are the obvious exceptions of people that are sitting and learning Torah all day who can be trusted and in Israel there is in fact is pretty good rigorous system in place. But these are side issues and tend to detract attention away from the widespread catastrophe that surrounds us.

It is for good reason I have mentioned the importance of  a legitimate Lithuanian yeshiva. If you do not have one there, then at least  get the book of Rav Shach so you can be yourself a walking Litvak Yeshiva, keeping the whole Written and Oral Law. Get to you also the books of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik and the other great sages of Lita.

[What people call halacha nowadays is a joke. They take the majority of the frauds and liars that are as crooked as snakes and go by the majority opinion. That is what they call Halacha.]

why is there evil,

  I think the issue of "why is there evil," is confused with existence of God. Also I think in the West, a metaphysical structure of the world was denied beginning in the Middle Ages with the idea that universals do not exist  and getting up to the British empiricists. Both of these issues I think tend to obscure the central issue.\

FrankNorman

The people most likely to use the "problem of evil" as an argument against Christianity tend to have a very blurry conception of evil.
And also often to be the same people who reject the very idea of there being any transcendent standards of right or wrong.



\Frank: you brought up a good point that both points used against existence are contrary one to the other. If they hold no objective metaphysical structure of the world exists, then there is no objective evil, and so the problem of evil does not exist.

In any case, the first cause idea was already used by Aristotle himself.  People for some reason think it began with the Rambam and Aquinas based on Aristotle's' idea of a First Mover.  But in fact Aristotle does bring the idea of the first cause also in his Physics.

Here is the idea of the first cause in my own words:
Belief  in God is rational.
 Everything has a cause. So unless there is a first cause, then you would have an infinite regress. And then nothing could exist. Therefore there must be a first cause. Therefore God, the first cause, exists. QED. (You could prove the first step a priori that everything has a cause by noting that nothing can come from nothing. This makes it a priori, not just an empirical observation).