Suka [a booth] and the festival of Booths

ענייני סוכה
 ) במשנה הראשונה בסוכה הגמרא אומרת שאם הסכך והצל שווים על גבי הסוכה אז הצל הוא יותר בתחתית כך שהיא כשרה, כדאמרי אינשי כזוזא מלעילא כאסתירא מלבר. אם אתה במדבר ואתה מנסה לזהות מטוס קרב מתמרן בשמיים, הדרך לעשות את זה היא לחפש צלה. הסיבה לכך היא הצל הוא תמיד הרבה יותר גדול מהמטוס עצמו.  התמוה על זה הוא העובדה שנראה שהגמרא שוקלת צל על הרצפה כדי להיות הגורם המכריע בשאלה האם הסוכה כשרה או לא. זה אומר שלהיות שהם שווים למעלה הוא בסדר כי בתחתית הצל הוא יותר. על פי היגיון זה אז סככת העליון יכולה להיות הרבה פחותה מהצל בגלל שבתחתית הצל של הסכך יורחב. זה אומר גמרא זו היא חידה כי זה אומר על גבי סכך והצל צריך להיות שווה. הפתרון שלי הוא העובדה שאין פתרון מתמטי מדויק לבעיה של עקיפה. אני מתכוון לומר שלכל צל תחום אחד שהוא כהה ואזור אחר שהוא חצי אור וחצי כהה. האזור הכהה יכול להאריך עד אינסוף. אז כשאתה אומר הצל בתחתית צריך להיות יותר מן האור, לא ברור מה זה אומר. האזור של הצל יכול להיות אינסופי. לכן הגמרא מחזיקה שרק כאשר הצל וסכך על גבי סוכה שווים זה כשר. אתה אולי יכול גם להציע לקחת את האזור הכהה כגורם מפתח. אפשר לקרוא לזה מאה אחוז כהה ואז כשזה הופך להיות ארבעים ותשעה אחוזים  לקרא לזה לא צל. אבל הגמרא לא בחרה בדרך הזו.

Mainly I was bothered by the problem of the shadow being more that the light. The problem I wanted to deal with in that book was that as a rule when one is in a desert and looking out for an enemy spy plane he does not look for the plane but rather for the shadow which is always much easier to spot than the plane because it is much much larger.  i really do not remember much but the problem I think is that the Gemara seems to imply that the Suka is kosher if the shadow is more than the sun on  the floor. My answer is based on Physics that the solution to the problem of diffraction is not mathematically rigorous. It is a approximation. So in fact the areas are not rigorously defined.

You have I kind of remember two areas of shadow.  The one that is a mix can go off to infinity. So in fact the Gemara settles on a kind of approximation.


I do not have the Gemara but it seems that the Gemara takes the idea of the shadow as being more than the sun on the bottom floor as a proof that on top the shadow and sun are equal. But why would that be called Kosher? Should not the shadow on top be more? To answer this I think you could say the bottom is the determining factor

There is no such thing as a layman. You either know it or you don't.

The difference between a layman and an expert is something that I was aware of from a  early age. In my home my father was very much into STEM. In particular he got his Masters from Cal Tech and  went into aerospace engineering. His specialty was inventing stuff.  In any case  in our home e were getting month a magazine that was directed towards laymen.
I do not think I ever said this to my parents but my degree of frustration was immense. I would read some article about science and realize that there is no such thing as a  layman. You either know it or you don't.


But I had no idea how to cross the barrier from not knowing to knowing. I think the first hint of how to cross that barrier came from my first year in yeshiva in Shar Yashuv [New York, Far Rockaway.] There I encountered the first most frustrating thing that every yeshiva bachur encounters--the fact that the yeshiva spent about a week or two per page of Gemara. So one "Zeman" Session from October until April would be spent on one chapter of Gemara--about 15 pages.

Only after much time I began to realize the important foundational principle involve here: To know a basic component of any subject takes total immersion in that subdivision for at least 6 months.

The reason the Kant School is important is  I need to defend the Torah from an intellectual standpoint beside just gut feeling. While you can't actually prove Torah you can at least defend the basic belief system.

This is something that Saadia Geon and the Rambam tried to do  but the modern questions are different.

Universals, Aristotle, Rambam

Avraham rosenblum
Sep 7

to Kelley
Dear Dr Ross. You wrote here : However, a stricter empiricism again creates the difficulty that the apparent "form" of an object cannot provide knowledge of an end (an entelechy) that is only implicit in the present object, and so hidden to present knowledge.

This seems to be the only statement in that essay about the problems with Aristotle.
I thought there were more serious problems with Aristotle like this: from Stanford: Some maintain that Aristotle’s theory is ultimately inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the following propositions:
(i) Substance is form.
(ii) Form is universal.
(iii) No universal is a substance.
This seems important because the  Maimonides is considered to be going with Aristotle. It does not seem that he would have missed these problems. Is there perhaps ways to answer these things? Or Perhaps Maimonides was aware of these problems and therefore took a kind of Middle path between Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists. Sincerely Avraham Rosenblum


Dear Mr. Rosenblum,

Aristotle’s forms must be hidden in part, for we cannot tell from the inspection of an acorn what the grown tree will look like.  The Aristotelian “form” thus becomes separate from its obvious meaning in Greek, i.e. eidos as image.  Since Aristotle wants to be a kind of Empiricist, with the “form” derived in some way from the perception of the object, the universal that is mentally abstracted from the image carries with it things that are not actually visible.

In a Kantian theory,  what we know about universals will only apply to phenomenal objects.  The status of abstract (universal) objects among things-in-themselves is left open, as with other matters of transcendence.  At the same time, hidden features of universals obviously cannot be abstracted directly from perception.  Thus, what the oak will look like is a matter of speculation, scientific investigation, or just waiting around for the tree to grow from the acorn.  What scientific investigation has learned, of course, is that the form of the oak is determined by the DNA in the acorn.  The “entelechy” has a physical basis, but this could be not gathered from the mere inspection of the acorn.  Aristotle’s “entelechy” was thus for real, but not in the way he thought.

I would agree that Aristotle affirms (i) and (ii), but I don’t really see (iii).  Universals are forms, and forms are substance.  I think that Maimonides is actually a Neoplatonist, where the chain of Being is grades of form, and universality, from the four elements up to the One.

So I am curious why you, or anyone, would say that “No universal is a substance” in Aristotle.

Best wishes,
KR

In my apartment [in Ukraine] besides the home owner here coming in every few days to steal money and any kind of alcohol he had a son who is criminally insane who made it his business to steal from me and break down my door and steal from the other students in this dormitory.

For one one year things went kind of unnoticed. [The criminal was stealing but not too much.] I was basically alone. The second year students started showing up. and the criminal would steal stuff from me and them on a constant basis--a computer, cell phones, money, products in the refrigerator and basically anything of value. [a motor cycle that one fellow bought and lots of other stuff.]. How did it become clear who was doing it? He asked money for the stolen good in order to return them.

Dealing with the criminal made the actual home owner seem like a saint to me.

I told the landlady that her son is a problem, I called him the "Narcoman" because the first year I was here he came up every night with his friends to do drugs.

At one point I asked God for guidance. I have a "girl friend" that invited me to stay with her. There is a pastor in this city that made it clear I could live in his guest room. He had already invited me before,   but when I actually had to move it was the winter and he said it was not heated and and he was just then finishing to build it.

[My mental state was such that also because I was going to Reb Nachman's grave site and there is a profusion of insane people that that I was very tense.I like Reb Nachman's teachings but there are kelipot [evil forces] there and I would have to go into the mikveh with my clothing to get off the bad feelings I had from the people there. [I do not go there anymore.]



It was at that time that had begun to learn Musar/Ethics. I asked a fellow from Israel to bring to me a few books of Musar/Ethics.
I saw in a book of Musar/Ethics the idea of trust in God so along with prayer I decide not to move unless actually physically forced to. That is I trusted in God to do for me hat needed to be done. That is trust with no effort.

The land lady asked me to stay when I told her I was thinking of moving. It was she was kind of pleading with me. Not just asking.
For two more years the criminal kept coming up to see what he could steal and I was growing more and more unhappy and getting OCD.. The more he would touch stuff the moire I felt I had to go to the mikveh when I touched something that he touched. That is I felt he is possessed by an evil kelipa.
[Because theft was considered OK to him I did not think he would ever get any better. I think once a person believes theft is OK then nothing will help him.]



Right before Rosh Hashanah he was put into the local home for the insane.

Now I am in a situation of great thanks and gratitude towards God. Ho I feel recovery will be a slow and difficult process.

Thanks for reading this and sharing my experience with me.


I am still very nervous when I hear any kind of male voices outside my door. I should however mention that trust in God and also the fact that God was granting to me to be basically productive in my room caused me to hesitant. God has granted to me great gifts that I am eternally thankful to Him for like Music and learning Physics and Torah and even writing some ideas in Torah.

Experience frum [religious] world

Experience. I saw the frum [religious] world was not as great as I had thought it was, so I had to reevaluate my priorities to see what is valid and what to disregard. Also further study. That is it was a combination of further study, plus experience. I began to see what is valuable in the Torah path, and also to see a lot of what the frum world is about was not really Torah.

It was a lot of observation and a lot of study.

How to put this in a more simple form? I saw discrepancy between the claims and the reality.

I also saw discrepancy between what the Torah [the Oral and Written Law] actually says and what people were claiming in its name.

The religious world [frum] is kind of a nasty place. That was clear always. Religious fanaticism does not equal moral decency. But the Litvak yeshivas were very different. I had thought that in fact the Litvak yeshiva was a place where human perfection could be attained or at least striven for. That is I was expecting too much from the Lithuanian Yeshivas. 

In the realm of thought I also needed to do more learning.

In any case my conclusion from it all was that the Torah path is valuable and touches on a very important realm of value


Abusus non tolit Usum
Abuse does not invalidate use
You are right that my experiencing things caused me rethink my path
I had to sift through things and try to decide what was valid and valuable and hat was not.




Abusus non tolit Usum
Abuse does not invalidate use
You are right that my experiencing things caused me rethink my path
I had to sift through things and try to decide what was valid and valuable and what was not.

However there was some interaction between my thoughts about what I was doing and what I thought my service was about. 

In the Mir I was very happy very very happy.


For example sometimes a claim is made for a certain kind of Divine service--that is a service towards God. For example Hisbodadut which is in theory great enough to bring people closer towards human perfection When the actual result is the opposite as can been seen in people deterioration in character this case one to wonder.

   

Introspection can cause insanity.. Though Reb Nachman's idea of hisbodadut and speaking with God from one's heat in one's mother tongue is a great idea but it can be overdone and lead to insanity as we can in fact. The point here is it is possible and desirable to generalize about groups.There is such a thing as a Bell Curve and average behavior. If a group on the average displays a high degree of mental instability then it is permissible and desirable to generalize about it and ponder what is the cause?