World of the religious. Worship of corpses.

 Torah scholarship undoubtedly moves in fads, and  much of the literature has received less attention than it deserves. The general rule of thumb about the Rishonim (mediaeval authorities) is quite true--that they form the backbone of explaining the Torah. 

While some Achronim (later authorities after 1520) are very valuable, but a lot of trash got thrown into Torah thought in since the times of the movement the Shatz. [That is from around the time of 1660.]





While to some degree bad cults are weeded out over time, but sometimes not. Sometimes they just change form.

Nowadays to find out what authentic Torah thought says the worst place to go is to the religious. The world of the religious has sadlly become an epi-phenomenon of the Shatz and in fact uses the Torah as a cloak to disguise their anti Torah teachings and demonic essence which is Worship of corpses.  ["Kivrei tzadikim"]

The main problem with the cult that the Gra put a Cherem {חרם} excommunication on is idolatry. That is: people have a natural tendency to worship some idol. It does not really matter which one it is. That cult made worship of its leaders as a kind of supposedly kosher idolatry and created a sophisticated system to show how it is kosher based on the kabalah and also used ideas from the Shatz and also makes sure to look kosher in dress and rituals to try and get away with this fraud. 






[There are some islands of authentic Torah like Ponovitch in Israel and the NY yeshivas Mir, etc. But as a rule of thumb it is best to stick to Mesorati or Conservative and Reform in  order to avoid the kelipot (demonic forces) that fill the world of the religious.]

Vocabulary:
Mesorati means Conservative but it is roughly the same as Religious Zionism or Mizrachi or Bnei Akiva.--All very good.

Rishonim means the great sages from the time after Rav Hai Gaon until the Beit Joseph.
Achronim means from the Beit Joseph and on. That period in itself ought to be divided into two. The achronim before Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and after him. The reason is that after Reb Chaim Torah scholarship shifted in a way I can not describe but you can see easily if you compare  the achronim before him and after him. All the great yeshivas after Reb Chaim teach in more or less the basic approach of Reb Chaim.

I want to add that borrowing or finding the same themes and ideas does not mean identity nor does it mean conscious borrowing. The fact that the religious teach the doctrines of the Shatz does not mean they are doing it with intention nor that there are some variations. For example no one could consider Reb Nachman anything but  as  completely sincere and devoted to God and the holy Torah. Sincerity however does not mean there are no mistakes.  But Reb Nachman is the exception, not the rule and was not in fact under the excommunication of the Gra at all as you can see by reading the original documents.



The problem tends to be circumvention of the Torah. Most often what people in power are doing is finding ways of getting out of keeping the Torah according to its simple meaning. In general the text of the Holy Torah and the Talmud is perfectly clear.The religious in order to get out of things  they do not like simply ignore the Torah. In Torah we do not trust those in power and we always check the text. That is what the text of the Oral and Written Torah is for.
There seems to be some kind of equilibrium point where you maximize the בין אדם לחבירו ובין אדם למקום. For we see groups that are not religious at all. Then there are groups that are more religious and then even more until you get to the ultra religious. And the measure of menshichkeit/human decency seems to take a nose dive according to the degree people are religious.

brainwashing

The History of teaching  History is important to know. In the span of time from 1960 until today teaching history has become a kind of brainwashing meant to subvert the values of democracy and undermine the Constitution of the USA and the free market system. Allen Bloom in his very important book the Closing of the American Mind went into a detailed description of how the social studies and humanities departments of universities have become brain washing factories. Though it is easier to learn History than Math and more fun also still that does not give either of these departments much value. So be careful.  It is best to learn books of history that were written before 1960.

This IDF Soldier shuts off the lights for Islamic Terrorists.

this-female-idf-soldier-fights-off-23-Islamic terrorists-in-ambush-attack-after-being-shot/

I should mention that  the best approach to the State of Israel that I have seen is in the book by the Gra קול התור.

In short that is the approach of basically what later was developed by רב אברהם קוק  

Rav Kook's approach itself was highly related to Hegel as is well known.

My own interest in Israel however began with my noticing the opinion of Nachmanides [The Ramban] that includes settling in Israel as part of the 613 commandments. I would have to say that that formed a lot of my motivation for actually making Aliya.

The approach of the religious [which is anti Israel] in this regard I think is nefarious and despicable.

Almost everything the religious do or think is exactly against the holy Torah

Shaari Teshuva by Rabainu Yona

Ethics. {Musar}. I think  one of the most important Musar books to read is the Shaari Teshuva [Gates of Repentance] by Rabainu Yona. It occurred to me that it contains all the basics of Torah in a small, thin volume. Just think about it. It goes through the stringency of לאווין [prohibitions] that is a very important aspect of Torah. Then it goes through pretty much all the aspects of Torah that are relevant today that most people do not know about. And then it gets into the ארבע כיתות that deals with the four types of people that will never see the Divine Countenance. Those that speak lies, lashon hara, ליצנות, flattery.

If you think about it you can see it contains most of the basic facts that one needs to know in order to understand and keep the Torah. That is pretty remarkable for one small book to do.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

I have dealt with the issue of Rav Avraham Abulafia before today and he still seems to me to be important enough to bring up again. Professor Moshe Idel at Hebrew University has written about him already, and Rav Abulafia's  many books as a set are for the first time available in Mea Shearim.  Some would call him a kabalist, but he was not a kabalist. He was a mystic, and there is a big difference. I discovered his writings in the basement of HU, and spent a lot of time trying to decipher them --before they were actually printed in the modern edition. I was not sure myself what to think of him until I found him quoted by Reb Chaim Vital and the Remak and even the Chida.

You can get Professors Idel's books on him, but nothing quite compares to the impact and shock of actually reading his own words and visions. 


It might seem I am not in favor of mystics, but that is only partially true. I am against kabalists and mystics from the dark side as all of them are today. But a true tzadik like Rav Abulafia I have only the greatest respect for.

[The Chida writes very positively about him and adds "The Rashba (a Mediaeval Torah scholar) treated him as a common and empty person, and I do not know why? He was clearly a great man.]


The thing you have to know when it comes to mystic things is you need to get it from the realm of holiness. The trouble with the cult the Gra put into excommunication was  they are from the Devil and therefore can not be trusted even when they say seemingly right things, and do what seem to be kosher deeds on the surface.  

[Just for public information I ought to mention the aspects of mystic tradition I  think are OK: Sefer Yetzira, Rav Abulafia, the Ari (Isaac Luria), the Gra, Rav Yaakov Abuchatzeira and  his current day descendants, and the Reshash (Shalom Sharabi)), the Remak. ] Outside of these one must run from what disguises itself as Jewish mysticism but is actually from the Satan as almost all modern day kabalists are. Not to mention the cult the Gra put into excommunication because he saw they are from Satan, though  they try to cover up their unkosher, unholy inner essence with Jewish rituals. You need to burn whatever they touch.





I am not saying I understood the Reshash. But I think he is very important in order to understand the Arizal (האריז''ל), but I just never got that far with him. It was mainly the Intentions of Sukka (כוונת סוכה) and Drush HaDaat (דרוש הדעת) that I did fairly thoroughly in the Rehash. And that actually went along well with the Intentions of the Omer (כוונת העומר) that I did in Shar Hakavanot and also in the Sidur HaReshash (סידור הרש''ש) by the grandson of the Reshash. 

I should warn people that I do not think anyone should look at even this very important stuff until having finished Shas with Rashi, Tosphot. --a warning offered by the Ari himself in at least two places with surprising severity. [My personal favorites are the עץ חיים of the Ari and almost anything the Remak wrote. Rav Abulafia was not my favorite reading, but I copied down some of his major unifications, and used to concentrate on them a lot as he said to do. I think I would have to say he is my favorite mystic, and my second would be the Ari.] 
[Some of the obvious problems are that people get mixed up with the idea that the mental "high " they get from this is somehow connected with Devekut [soul attachment with God]. But there are a host of other problems.] There are mystics that get attachment with God. But that is rare and it is not the kind of emotional high that people think.

The "Nirvana Fallacy."

 The issue of what kind of system or constitution people choose to live under is not an idle question. And it matter also if  the system is large or small where everyone knows everyone else, and there is a certain amount of confidence in promises and trust in one another.

 This is a issue I have thought about for a long time after seeing the fact that religious people universally assume as an a priori principle that if they were in charge and in control, that everything would be peachy. The "Nirvana Fallacy." Yet we see that when in fact, they gain any power at all, they always manage to destroy good arrangements and understanding between people, and to make bad situations much worse than they would be without their meddling.

Yet we also see some great yeshivas which are great not just for themselves but for the entire surrounding communities like Ponovitch in Bnei Brak and the three great NY yeshivas, Mir Chaim Berlin and Torah Vedaat.

This is an obvious question but one that few people have ever raised in such a fashion. Rather what we see is people take a pro or con approach without  considering that the facts on the ground seem to point in contrary directions even without any interpretation.

The answer to me seems simple-- based on Hobbes. That is the difference between government and civil society. That is government is a monopoly of force. That is the most terrible thing to grant to religious people under any circumstances. But civil society is voluntary arrangements between people and that  is the place of Torah. קיימו וקבלו as it says in Megilat Esther. That they accepted the Torah afresh in the time of Morechai and Esther.
Thus we see in private institutions like yeshiva where everyone is there because they want to be there everything works fine. But when you introduce an element of coercion (כפייה דתית as they call it in Israel)  then the whole pie is ruined. [Plus the problem with the fanatical religious that their word is meaningless. For some odd reason they do not seem to think lying or fraud towards secular Jews is  a problem.]


Another issue is that the religious are exceptionally prone to schizoid tendencies which makes them susceptible to the illusion that whatever they are feeling or thinking at the time must be right and must apply to all people uniformly--since they believe they are in direct contact with the Divine. This leads to incredible levels of self delusions.  The reasons the great yeshivas avoid this problem is obvious--they are Litvaks. That is they go with straight Torah as their guide. 

And their intention is clear -to sit and learn Torah and to keep it. It is not to gain power. The last thing you want to do in grant coercive power to any faction that seeks it, no matter how nice they make themselves seem before they get power. You know they will control everyone for the interest of their own small faction.


Appendix:
Note 1. The importance of what kind of system people to live under you can see from Herodotus when the Persians were deciding whether to live under a democracy or an monarchy, and in the history of the war between Sparta and Athens when what kind of system in place largely determined outcomes. 

Note 2. It should be obvious that people have the right to be free of fraud and force. Thus the existence of  a civil society [where government does not enter into] does not give the right to people to commit fraud. Thus the fraud of the religious ought to be outlawed.
It, at least, comes under the category of dishonest representation of one's product.

Note 3. No one should be able to declare himself a expert in Law without authentic ordination which no longer exists since the middle of the Talmudic period. They do not get to call themselves experts and thus lord over other Jews by means of fiat and their own decrees.

s87 music file

s87 F minor

Reform Judaism as opposite to Jewish cults.

The trouble with Jewish cults is that something can be idolatry and still be quite Jewish and even  seem kosher. Jewish cults are the modern permutation of idolatry. Just because something is Jewish and 100% kosher does not mean it is not idolatry

The main obligation of the Torah as we see from the second commandment of the Ten Commandment is not to do idolatry.

The way to see this is from the Gemara in Sanhedrin [circa 64] and also in the Tosephta האומר עבדוני חייב

One tells another person, "serve me" is liable under the law of מסית ומדיח (One who tries to seduce another to do idolatry.)
And their supposed "devekut" (ecstasy) is of diabolical origin since the mind and the speech of the ecstatic are confused, as if he were being spurred on by someone else, or as if another were speaking through him.



[This is one area in which Reform Judaism is doing a lot better than the more religious who have a great deal of trouble with cults. I can scarcely even think of any religious group that is not actually doing idolatry. ](You can easily see the problem in the religious world because along with idolatry comes dishonesty. There is no security of possessions or contract or even your own wife and children.)


Another side point about Reform is they are mainly going like R.Shimon Ben Yochai that holds we go by the reason for the verse--דורשים טעמה דקרא

And another important point is that  the basic creed of Reform is Monotheism which is in fact the creed of the Torah. That is the belief that God made the world, and He is not the world.

However is there is a authentic Lithuanian kind of yeshiva in the area that is the best. [Authentic can mean   either Mir, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat, or Ponovitch,--or it can mean that it is run by someone who learned at one of these  authentic yeshivas.]
 The trouble with the religious is the "Nirvana Fallacy" You see an imperfect world and they suppose if they were in charge everything would be better. When they get power they always make  bad situations worse.  And their rule when it comes to secular Jew is "force and fraud." Promises  are considered as a way of gaining misplaced trust with no intent of fulfillment.  The better system is Reform and Conservative Judaism in which religion is mainly the private sphere. Coercion ought to be separate from Torah.

Administrative Agencies?

Administrative Agencies? I should mention that Dr Kelley Ross also criticizes this at this link

NYC Junto Oct. 1, 2015: Epstein and Huemer. Small government or no government?

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s85 A Major  s85 midi format  

s85 in nwc

points of focus.

In my own life I have found it useful to have  several points of focus. That is I try to identify negative points of focus--things I have done wrong and try to find ways of correcting these areas. Also I try to identify areas of positive value to focus on. 

That is "Teshuva" (repentance) is trying to figure out what I have messed up, and what to do about it. And then there is the fact that people can have only a very few central rules that they keep in mind,-- and so I try to identify the central areas that need attention.
And I do not want to pick out rules randomly or just pick rules based on what people tell me that they think is important. Like my Dad used to say, "The best way to lose money on Wall Street is to listen to the experts."

So just to make this short "Learning Torah" in the sense of Lithuanian kinds of yeshivas I have found to be an important area of focus. You tend to see this best in the small book, Nefesh HaChaim  by a disciple of the Gra, Reb Chaim from Voloshin.
[When we say "Learning Torah" in the sense understood by Litvak yeshivas and by Reb Chaim from Voloshin we tend to mean the entire Oral and Written Law. Tenach, the two Talmuds, Sifra Sifrei, Midrash Raba etc. That is the actual Oral Law as it was written down by the Tenaim and Amoraim [Talmudic sages]. Later on adaptions or reductions tend to be not what is referred to in this sense.  [Thus learning Gemara is called "Learning Torah."][Based on the Rambam. I also consider Physics as apart of the Oral Law as he says openly  in Mishne Torah.]

Another area of focus I think is important is Musar. Fear of God. That is the works of Ethics written during the Middle Ages which help to orient one's attention to what is important in Torah. Good character, fear of God etc.

Part of the importance of this is that there are values that one thinks he made up all by himself, but in fact gets from the media, TV, his parents, his society etc. Very few people make up their own values from scratch (though almost everyone thinks they did.)
And besides the values that one hold to consciously or unconsciously, there is to issue of the inner essence of a person --who and what he really is, in spite of the fact he might be holding to values to go against his inner essence.


The reason true authentic Torah learning is so rare is that any one who wants to gain many followers has to make extraordinary promises. Litvak yeshivas make no promises and claim no special revelations of Divine truth. Their job is simply to sit and learn plain straight Torah.  They do not even claim money to support them. They are well are that learning Torah is not a money making profession, and never claim that it is. 

FALSE TEACHERS:

People that try to use Torah for money are simply scoundrels  and should be avoided at all cost. Plus the cults that think they are in communication with the dead ought to be avoided. This is a common feature in all the religious groups and therefore they all should be avoided. 
Another way of telling whom is  a false teacher-he asks for  money. Another thing is they assume they have authority that the Torah does not give them. After all semicha (ordination) is non existent. True authentic ordination ceased during the middle of the Talmudic period. 

And they make extraordinary claims. They are not teaching Torah.

one's inner light comes from his mother and his outer light אור מקיף comes from his father.

The Hindus had this idea of following in your parents footsteps. [I mean that they thought this is desirable.] To me this makes a lot of sense as long as what one's parents are about and what they are doing is not obviously wrong. I think one's parents and ones immediate family and one;s immediate friends have a lot to do with what one is. They not not just reflect on his inner essence but are apart of it.

See חידושי הגרנ''ט from Reb Naphtali (Troup) [One of the great Roshei Yeshiva at the time of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik.] He considers כיבוד אב ואם (honor of one's father and mother) as a regular מצוות עשה(positive command).  [I forget the context and I do not have the book to be able to look it up. His book incidentally is highly related to the חידושי הרמב''ם of Reb Chaim.

In the Ari שער הגלגולים we find that one's inner light comes from his mother and his outer light אור מקיף comes from his father. There is a lot to go into about this but I think I wrote about this a few times already.

In any case, this would not apply if the parents are on some kind of bad path. This is dealt with at length in the Tur Beit Yoseph

counterfeit Torah.

Maybe Leftism is rage against pseudo religious people and counterfeit religiosity.  ( It does not have to be from a bad heart to be wrong. Maybe it is like the original Enlightenment. People just got tired of pseudo religiosity. If they only people that were openly religious would have been the ones that were sincerely religious then I doubt if the Enlightenment would have gotten of the ground.
What has been noticed is a lot of people use religion for personal gain, and also a lot of religious people are insane. And they try to win people over to counterfeit Torah. In fact this is the vast majority. The actual authentic yeshivas where real Torah is learned are rare.

 Most of the religious follow leaders who are  spirit mediums, that channel information from the "spirits" who communicate with them.  They make a show of keeping Torah but the whole philosophy is דורש אל המתים--In the category of the verse "Do not seek the spirits of the dead."

"There shall not be found among you anyone who... practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord..." Deuteronomy 18:9-12

Dr Kelley Ross on Divine command theory

A “Divine Command Theory” might have been mentioned somewhere, but it’s impossible that would be in a “positive way.”  I don’t think I had even heard of such a theory until I found it in the Ethics textbook I used to use.  So if I ever mentioned it, that was to caution students about it.   Again, Nelson’s diagram at http://www.friesian.com/universl.htm#note-3 rules out anyone’s will as the source of morality.

Musar and the Rambam

Books of mediaeval ethics (Musar) say that if one has sinned the best thing to do is to bring merit to the public.
They base this on the statement in the Mishna, כל המזכה את הרבים אין חטא בא על ידו( A sin does not come to anyone that brings merit to many people). That is supposed to counter [oppose] the effect of כל המחטיא את הרבים אין מספיקים בידו לעשות תשובה ( One who has caused sin to many people is prevented from repentance.)

But you can see the effects are not opposed. Let's say that, for example, one has been מחטיא את הרבים (caused many to sin) up until today, and now he wants to start being מזכה את הרבים (bringing merit to many). Then he would  be prevented from future sin, but still be unable to repent on past sin.

But what the books of Musar are suggesting is still valid. The effects of bringing many to sin and bring merit to many are still opposed in their effects. So it is still a good idea to stop bringing people to sin, and to begin to bring merit to people. 

One still might not be able to repent, but still even a little bit of good is also good.


[The idea of bringing merit to many is brought in the books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter and that is no surprise.  But you also find it in the classical mediaeval  books of Musar.]

You can learn what ever books of Musar you like, but my own tastes have changed during the years. If I could I would try to get all the books of the son and grandsons of the Rambam, Reb Avraham and later descendants of the Rambam.  [They were printed recently in Israel].

I saw one time in Uman someone had a copy of volume that had a lot of the books of the descendants of the Rambam in it. Interesting also to note another fellow had the entire Mishne Torah in one volume (no commentary)!!  That I thought was really neat. I think it was based on the Yemenite manuscript. [That makes it easy to do the program of the Rambam of learning the Mishne Torah and then the Physics of Aristotle and then the Metaphysics of Aristotle.]
What I suggest is to have one session in the Mishne Torah of the Rambam straight and another in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach (Elazar Menachem Shach from Ponovitch) straight through from beginning to end. 

[This is just for a first reading of the Mishne Torah. The second time around I recommend doing with with the Keseph Mishna. I mean this for the 45 minute halacha session in the morning. This should not take the place of learning the Gemara Rashi Tosphot Maharsha Maharam from Lublin. ]

Dear Dr Ross. You wrote here http://www.friesian.com/universl.htm : 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.

(eio. No U (universal) is S (substance). Some F (form) is S. Some F are  U, but some  are not.)
That is F is not a subset of U. But F and S intersect. There are some forms that are substances.

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

Dear Dr Ross. I thank you for your detailed reply. My basic idea that Aristotle hold no universal is a form comes from Marc Cohen  in the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia Aristotle's Metaphysics. where he traces this idea to  book Z chapter 13 of the Metaphysics.Sincerely Avraham Rosenblum

Dear Mr. Rosenblum,

I’m not entirely sure what this means.   in Aristotle can only be a universal, since it can only be general.  Individual things are combinations of form and matter, with the matter accounting for individuality and spatial extension.  Are  you saying that Marc Cohen traces the idea that form is not a universal to Metaphysics Z?  This would be very strange.  Forms can be individual things if they are sui generis, unique of their kind.  But only God, and then the Intelligences that drive the planets, are of this kind – although St. Thomas, naturally, added human souls.

KR

Appendix:

(i)	Substance is form.
(ii)	Form is universal.
(iii)	No universal is a substance.

"Substance" is the major term. "Form" is the middle term. "Universal" is the minor term.

[I have trouble understanding this. Either (i) means "All substance is form." All substances are in the category of form, [A]. Or perhaps it means, "Some substance is form." [I].

Same with (ii) either: "All form is in the category of universals." [A] or "Some forms are in the category of universals." [I]
(iii) seems to mean:  "There is no intersection between  the set of universals and the set of all substance." [E]

So we have a lot of possibilities to go through. Let's start with AAE. The middle is distributed. But there is the illicit process of the minor term..
Perhaps it is rather IIE. Then that would be the fallacy of the undistributed middle. Neither premise refers to every member of the middle term.

Perhaps it is AIE. Same problem. The middle term is not distributed.

Perhaps it is IAE.  Form is distributed in the second premise but not universal. That seems to be a fallacy of the minor term. You say something in the conclusion about every member of the minor term but not in the second premise.

So that is what Marc Cohen means. That there is no way to make sense of all three propositions.

Perhaps Aristotle means this:

(EIO-4. No U (universal) is S (substance). Some F (form) is S. Some F are not U but some might be?)

Proverbs. 27:6, "The kisses of an enemy may be profuse, but faithful are the wounds of a friend,"

Accountability relationships in the Torah  include that of Saul the king to Samuel the prophet, Nathan holding king David accountable for moral failure, Nehemiah wanting to travel to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls but being accountable to King Artaxerxes, Daniel to  God,

How do we choose someone to be accountable to?

An unhealthy choice would be to choose someone you know will tell you just what you want to hear, or someone who has the same weak areas you do. Far better to choose someone who can encourage you-add courage to your life and struggle, someone who is making a success of his/her own life, someone further down the road than you in life stage or experience. Mutual accountability between equals (either two individuals or a small group) can be non-threatening and growth-producing, as well as protective.

The whole trouble in the Jewish world is the religious teachers that set themselves up as authorities. People go to them for advice and by that are drawn into more evil than they would do on their own. While having someone to discuss your spiritual problems with is a great thing, there is a terrible fact that the religious teachers themselves are  demons. This is brought in the LM [Lekutai Moharan] of Reb Nachman in many places. {This book of Reb Nachman was studied by Bava Sali and Rav Hutner.} He asks, "Why are people making disagreement with those who fear God? It is because they hear Torah lessons from תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים." (literal translation: "Torah scholars that are demons.") [I bring this from Reb Nachman, but the same idea you can find in the Talmud and Mishna and the Ari.]

The way to deal with this is simple. Pray for them and pray to find charity in your heart for them. But be wary and stay as far from them as possible.

[My warning here does not refer to the great Lithuanian yeshivas Ponovitch, Brisk, Mirrer Yeshiva  in NY, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat.]

There is a famous place in the Mishna which deals with this subject I think in Nazir about the pharisees being those that destroy the world. That is the only place I recall off hand. In the Gemara itself there are few places. One is the end of Shabat where is says literally "If you see a generation that troubles have come upon it, go out and check the judges of Israel;-- for all the troubles that come into the world only come because of the judges of Israel. "And then the Gemara brings a verse. Then there are few places from the Old Testament itself. And I do not mean the famous verses from Jeremiah. Someplace else which few know about.. You have to read the verse very carefully to see it. It says something like this: "Since Israel will not listen to the true shepherds I have given to  them, I will give them other shepherds that will lead them astray. ""וירעום" The reason no one knows this verse is because it is easy to miss. It says "וירעום" as a pun meaning "they will be shepards to them" and also it means "they will do damage to them." It is hard to see in the verse itself until you read it very carefully.

The Gaon from Villna

The Gaon from Villna as is well known went into "Galut" exile. That is a kind of repentance that people no longer do anymore.

The idea is to go from city to city where no one knows who you are and not sleep in the same spot for two nights in a row. I think it also involves not taking any money with you. What it used to involve was to sleep in the local Beit Midrash [study hall].

What this kind of repentance was supposed to do I imagine was to open one' person to insults.

But I think it also opens up ones mind to "reality" the way the world really is as opposed to they way we are taught that it is.

You learn by how people treat you as an unwanted stranger much more about them than when they treat you as someone they know has something they want like money etc.

To some degree I have lived like this for some time, and it is an amazing way of opening your eyes to how people really are --- as opposed to how they want you to think of them, and the act they put on to impress others.

The inevitable oblivion which must be the fate of the pseudo miraculous and the falsely sacred will be the fate of those that opposed the Gra and Rav Shach.

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Everything depends on getting to the right kind of yeshiva and avoiding the cult yeshivas.

When I consider the actual need to repent on my sins, it seems the place my thoughts go to automatically is the Musar books (Ethic books) of the Middle Ages.  I got the idea a long time ago that my troubles are the direct result of sin. Therefore when I see things not going the way I would like the to I think about "What is it that I am doing wrong?" 
Now in yeshiva I learned  a certain amount of Gemara and Tenach (Old Testament). But to get a good idea of what the Torah actually requires of me I found  I was not really understanding at all until I learned Musar.

The thing I gained from Musar was to get a good idea of the basic worldview of Torah--that is: what the Torah considers important.[Also the ספר החינוך [Sefer HaChinuch by a disciple of the Ramban] was a great help in that direction.]  

There is however a question on this system because sometimes people that are "משגיחים" "mashgichim" (מנהלים רוחניים "the spiritual adviser in the yeshiva") are not people that represent the ideals of Musar very well. Often it is those people that specifically give Musar and all yeshivas a bad name.

I wish I had an answer for this dilemma. But at least for myself I consider Musar to be the way and the path to the Tree of Life because through it I can understand at least more or less what is is that God requires of me.


Just for the record the actual Musar (Ethics) books that I liked the most were the Mediaeval Books: חובות לבבות Obligations of the Heart, שערי תשובה. אורחות צדיקים, נפש החיים ספר היראה המתיחס לרבינו תם, אור ישראל ע''י רב יצחק בלזר תלמיד רב ישראל סלנטר
(Musar tends to emphasize fear and love of God and good character which it sees as the most essential and important aspects of the Torah. )

Once I discovered Musar I tried to get my actions to fit. Part of the problem for me was the message was not always clear. That is the yeshiva path seemed different to some degree. A later problem for me was the religious world really did not seem kosher at all. For some reason I encountered "love bombing" when I was younger and and later an amazing amount of animosity when I did not seem to present a source of income to yeshivas. [Young yeshiva students with rich American parents are highly sought after  in yeshivas.] For this reason I have tried to make it a point to recommend only the best of the yeshivas that I have known are doing their job sincerely like the great NY yeshivas: Mir, Chaim Berlin Torah VeDaat and Shaar Yashuv and the Israeli Brisk and Ponovitch.
Everything depends on getting to the right kind of yeshiva and avoiding the cult yeshivas.



They are attempting to establish a dichotomy that does not exist; one between the spirit of Torah and institution of yeshivas. There is no opposition between the two. One can learn for years in legitimate yeshivas and come to Israel and merit to great attachment with God in a way that can not be described by word.
It is an error in a matter of divine truth, to imagine the Torah is
invisible, intangible, a something merely "pneumatalogical", by
which many Yeshiva communities, though they differ from each other in their many ways, are united by a bond that is invisible to the senses…
If you are not in any yeshiva and nothing is nearby that is authentic then the minimum is the get the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and just plow through it.


[What I assume that if you are in Russia or France or Germany that there must be places that could be considered as authentic branches of the basic authentic Lithuanian yeshivas. That is in Israel you have a yeshiva in Tifrach that is not Ponovitch nor a branch of Ponovitch but is run by someone who was at Ponovitch and along the lines of Ponovitch. That constitutes an authentic Litvak yeshiva. In a similar way they must be places in Russia or Germany that are run along the lines of authentic Litvak yeshivas. Even a local Beit Midrash study hall could be considered authentic if it is run along the same line.]
[Musar yeshivas learn and accept all Musar but I should mention that I am not able to learn Musar that is kabalistically based as most of it is after the Middle Ages. Even to the extent of learning teh Shaarai Teshuva of Rabbainu Yona at this point I would have a hard time with because of his affiliation with the anti Rambam party. The only Musar I can learn and be comfortable with is from the school of thought of Saadia Gaon and the Rambam.

Hyper religiosity

Hyper religiosity actually has a history that is very different from simple keeping of Torah. That is people first think they will adhere to the literal meaning of the text (of the Oral and Written Law). Thus being more loyal to the Torah than normal Jews. Then comes the personal delusions in the form of visions that radically change the meaning of the texts. 
That is.-- first (step one) being supposedly more loyal and faithful to Torah, and then (step two) ending up replacing the Torah with their personal revelation (schizophrenic delusions.)
They hide their secret venom for the holy Torah and Jews that are not part of their cult.
[I should, make it clear that straight Torah is great. It is when the hyper-religiosity comes from schizoid tendencies  that there is a problem. There is also a problem when a normal person is seduced to join a cult and by that partakes of the schizoid delusions of the cult even though he is himself sane--at first. For this reason the Gra signed the excommunication because he did not want normal Jews joining  any schizoid cult and thus slowly losing their own sanity.
The Gra said that to the degree one lacks knowledge of the seven wisdoms he will lack in knowledge of the Torah. That refers to the Trivium and Quadrivium: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric,
Music, Astronomy, Arithmetic, Geometry. [The Hebrew translation of these in the חובות לבבות is not like modern Hebrew. הנדסה today is used to refer to Architecture. In the Obligations of the Heart it refers to Geometry.]
To subvert Torah many people pretend to be religious and replace Torah with religious delusions.
They distract people from real Torah. Anything as long as it is not Gemara, Rashi, and Tosphot or the worthwhile seven wisdoms.
I do not agree with redefining Torah to make it correspond to people's supposedly mystic delusion.
The trouble with the religious and their schools is they are on the forefront of every new kind of delusion. They try to hide it, but that is a fact.

 God would never ratify the message of a false prophet. That so
many religious leaders  and teachers  fell under the spell of Nathan from Gaza  attests
to the fact  he was not a peripheral figure in the mystic circles, but his influence with regards to the movement’s adoption and approach to
the kabalah of the Ari   was  decisive. This taken by itself
represents should represent a devastating blow to the propagandists of a new
movement, but when coupled with the other little known facts about the
origins of these mystic circles should lead any and all Jewish people desirous of being
led to the truth that this movement was nothing but a successful deviation of
historical Torah. I do not want to go into it in detail. But it is simple to draw the line between the dots.

As time went on, these factors were to produce the
inevitable march from spiritual pride and pseudo-religiosity to down right
diabolical deception and delusion.

How can you tell who is an expert in areas that you yourself are not an expert?

It may not seem like  a big deal but to me it seems an important question whom can you trust about a field you know little or nothing about?There is an essay by Steven Dutch about this. [Actually in his writings there are two essays about this. Who is an expert? and how do you discern an expert?] 
There seems to be a few focal points. And there is also a question of subject matter. An expert in Physics today is not the same thing as an expert in philosophy. In Physics, the more one knows, the more expert they become. In Philosophy (or in things like pseudo sciences like psychology), the more they know, the more stupid they become.

At any rate, the  focal points are: (1) Experts. (2) Talented amateurs, self taught. (3) Being yourself self taught--this was the old American value given birth to by the Old Frontier life style. (4) In yeshivas it is assumed if you know Torah fairly well then you know everything.  (5) Public opinion.
(6) Credentials.
My Dad (who made a lot of money on the Stock Market) said the best way to lose money in the stock market is to follow the advice of experts.

John Stossel had an opinion piece about this a long time ago. And Dr Dutch noticed that real experts when they venture into others areas seem to forget that those other areas also require many years of efforts to master

In any case each of these areas requires a whole essay in itself. The USA once was very much into the "self taught" thing. Later "experts" became the thing. After that "credentials" became the thing.

George Fox had the idea of listening to ones close friends and family is the best way and this has support from the Arizal {Isaac Luria.}



This above essay is just to give a brief account of the issues. To me it seems I never found out a good way to decide who is an expert. I had great parents and great teachers in high school and later in yeshiva and at Polytechnic University in NY. But all of that was simply a result of God directing me in good directions, not personal choice or any abilities of discernment.

When given a choice I usually choose badly. Only after a long time would go by I would see how my own choices tended to ruin everything. 

Sometimes the subject matter make the question who is an expert very easy. For example in Physics or Math we have no doubts. The standards are well established. There is no way to fake it. In other areas the subject matter makes knowing who is an expert almost impossible. And there are areas that are in between these two extremes.

The way in moral values seems to be simple. You start with prima facie evidence. The reason is that all reasoning starts with prima facie evidence or common sense principles. Then you work from there. If your conclusion is highly improbable based on some prima facie A then you have to decide which to reject A or B.  It seems to me the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule have prima facie validity. It would take something with more more prima facie validity to overturn any of them. And nothing can fulfill that condition. 


In any case since I have no idea who I am writing for let me try to be ore specific. For example at the Mir Yeshiva in NY the very idea of credentials was laughed at. Everyone knew that to have ordination was a guarantee of being an עם הארץ (totally ignorant of Torah). They way they knew who was an expert was that they themselves were experts and they had no trouble of telling whom was the best. That was obviously, Reb Shmuel Berenabum. 

The thing that all this leaves out is the fact that there are plenty of people who have something to gain by pretending to be experts and giving themselves credentials.   (That is they give to members of their cult, credentials. And most people are easily fooled by this trick.)  You need the ability not just to tell who is expert but also who has the most to gain by fraud and pretense.  

In any case the Lithuanian yeshiva world is generally very accurate in their assessment of the level of people. The great Roshei Yeshiva as a rule are in fact very great. Rav Shach, Rav Kinevsky were in fact very great Torah scholars and great tzadikim.

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We know what legitimate Torah is

I noticed one very nice thing about Torah, and that is that we know what legitimate Torah is. There is very little (if any at all) ambiguity  about what is authentic Torah. And that makes it easy to detect what is phony and false.
Just for the record, just in case there might be some person who does not know:
The Oral and Written Torah  we know very well what they are. Two Talmuds, Tosephta, Sifra Sifri, Midrash Raba, Midrash Tanchuma.
We know what is legitimate and authentic halacha [Rif, Rosh, Rambam, Tur, Shulchan Aruch of Rabainu Joseph Karo.]
We know what are the authentic books of Musar  (Ethics) (Obligations of the Heart, אורחות צדיקים  שערי תשובה.)
And we know what are the authentic books of השקפה [- the world view of Torah]. The Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam, אמונות ודעות of Saadia Gaon. [Joseph Albo and Abravanel also.]

And we know what is legitimate למדנות: books showing how to learn: R. Akiva Eiger, Reb Chaim Soloveitchik (חידושי הרמב''ם), Rav Shach (the Avi Ezri אבי עזרי), Reb Naphtali Troup.

What I mean by this is this: There might be some people that keep this better and some that keep it less well. But at least we have a clear idea of what is legit [legitimate] and what is not.

[That does not stop phonies from trying to claim their delusions are legitimate. But what is good is that those who wish to know what is authentic,-- can know]

[There is debate about the Zohar. I do not think it is from R. Shimon ben Yochai. The words עם כל דא which is a translation of עם כל זה come up all the time in the Zohar. And עם כל זה is a phrase invented by the Ibn Tibon family of translators to say "although." Before the middle ages, there were a few ways of saying "although." One was אף על פי. Another was אף על גב. But none of the ways was very elegant. The first means "even on my mouth." The other means "even on the back." So Ibn Tibon came up with this more elegant way:  עם כל זה. And this comes up all the time in the Zohar showing that it was authored in the Middle Ages. 


In mysticism there is a threat to the essential
underpinnings of the holy Torah,  in the sense that they adhere to a view of spirituality that is fundamentally
experiential and subjectivist; and in more or less subtle language,  put forth the idea that there is, in these days, a new, charismatic, "super wakening" in the making, which will inevitably supplant the antiquated institutions of historical Torah. Those at the fringes  tend (nowadays, using very cautious language) to consider any questioning of
its hyper-delusions as, at best, a manifestation of a hardhearted "traditionalism" or intellectualism [חכמות], and at worst, a diabolical the unpardonable sin of slander against tzadikim (righteous people). 







In any case, the things which I think is important is to get through the entire Oral and Written Law, and after to concentrate more on עיון in depth learning.

If you do not have time for that then Musar [Ethics] is the best thing to concentrate on. The basic set of Musar books contains after all the main message of Torah fear of God, and good character. Especially the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות. But also the book of Rabbainu Yona {שערי תשובה} is very important. There are  few other Musar books from the middle ages which form the basic set of Musar. (The אור ישראל by a disciple of Reb Israel Salanter also is a very important book.)

best yeshivas

The two best yeshivas that I ever saw were both in NY. Though I saw lots of yeshivas in Israel and in many other places around the world I was most impressed with the Mir in NY and Shar Yashuv in Far Rockaway. The reason is these places were the closest thing I saw to learning and keeping Torah for its own sake. It was not just that they were both very much into learning "Beiyun"(--in depth) but also there was a spirit of "Torah for its own sake" that I never saw elsewhere.

[I have tried to express in a few essays what is unique and special about authentic Torah but nothing really gives the power and impact of learning in one of these two places.]
[The main thing about the yeshiva world is to learn and keep Torah. Since most people are far from NY, the best thing is to get your basic set of the Oral and Written Law, and just plow through them. The actual world of yeshivas itself tends to be very confusing because of the numerous cross currents. For those like me that simply do not want to know or hear about that it is best just to make your own spot a place of authentic Torah (מקום תורה) and do not be concerned what others are doing.] It might be a good idea to do research and to write  a paper on the yeshivas, and the yeshiva movement as it started with Reb Chaim of Voloshin. But the short and sweet of it is simple. There are places which are more or less devoted towards learning and keeping straight Torah. Some are better and some are worse but as long as straight Torah is their focus they are basically good. The trouble is the cults that pretend to be keeping straight Torah and they are very dangerous and ought to be shot on first sight.

What is straight Torah? The basic Oral Law is the two Talmuds. The basic set of Halacha is the Rishonim Rif Rosh Tur Shulchan Aruch of Rabbainu Joseph Karo. The best of the later achronim are the Pnei Yehoshua, R Akiva Eiger, and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik, and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri.


Great tzadikim   such as the Gra and Rav Shach  became more and more aware of the danger of counterfeit movements entering in and ruining genuine Torah as time went by, and they wrote specific warnings  about this. Other people have chosen to ignore the problem and thus indirectly caused many to fall. 
The cults teach and practice and try to bring people to their imitation Torah and succeed because no one of real stature combats the problem. False teachers was a problem addressed by Reb Nachman himself;- and though the movement founded on him is full of false teachers, still there is great importance in his lessons, -and this one among them. Fake Torah is much worse than no Torah.


One way the cults trick people is by camouflaging the belief being taught and until the subject is willing to accept it.


They claim to teach Torah. But think for a minute.


 Imagine a man with a bottle in his hand. There is a colored liquid in the bottle and there are many healthy ingredients in that bottle. There's water in it and and  excellent ingredients. But there happens to be an amount of prussic acid, and though it's a very small amount it can kill anybody who drinks out of that bottle! What's the point of praising the good ingredients when there is rank, lethal poison in the bottle?" The pseudo Torah cults add Torah to their poison to hide what they are actually offering. [The Sitra Achra, the Dark Side, imitates the realm of holiness but one with his eyes open can tell the vast difference.]

The major reason the Gra signed the excommunication was for this very reason. He saw the attempt to subvert the Torah. The main objective of cults is to break up your relationship with your parents and wife an children. They are scum pretending to be superior beings.

I heard a story today which hit home.  A woman was praying for her husband to repent on his bad ways for ten years with no result.One day it was suggested to her that she  should pray to be able to serve him and be a proper helpmate for him as the Torah requires. From that time on  she began to wash his socks and laundry and help him in other ways. And in fact he also began to change for the better

What was interesting to me was  that a prayer for someone to repent is not a bad prayer. It is much better that praying for some enemy's ruin and destruction.  Still apparently even to pray for a bad person to repent is not a good as wishing sincerely for oneself to love them and to wish to serve them. 

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I can see that there were serious problems with the Enlightenment philosophers.

While I like the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, I can see that there were serious problems with the Enlightenment philosophers. But that is how philosophy progresses. At first there is some puzzle or problem, and then someone comes along and solves it. That was the problem of change for Parmenides. The greatest thinkers struggled with that until you got Plato and Aristotle. Same with the Enlightenment philosophers that struggled with problems of human freedom and how we know stuff until Kant came along and then the whole German Idealism school. My advice would be to learn from the best of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Kant.

It is common in Litvak yeshivas to learn and appreciative the importance of the Rishonim medieval scholars and yet still to learn from the best of the Achronim [scholars after the Beit Yoseph and including the Beit Yoseph (Rav Joseph Karo)]. This is not to say the achronim were greater but rather there is something to learn from them.

One can learn the Musar (books of Ethics) of the Rishonim but still come out not understanding a thing until one gets to the Musar of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter.

One can learn Gemara and Rishonim all day and still just not get it until one opens up Rav Shach's Avi Ezri. This happens to me all the time.

Kant

My suggestion is the Kantschool of thought. That is an extension of Kant that uses Schopenhauer for metaphysics and Hegel for epistemology. 


It is kind of like Ayn Rand and John Locke in practice.


The importance of Schopenhauer is great. Also  German Idealism [i.e. Kant, Fichte, Schelling,  et al.]. I still have a great deal of trouble with Hegel. I see most Marxist principles and Leftist Socialism stemming from him. I can not figure out if the trouble was people misusing him or if there really was something "off". This is not an irrelevant question. The fate of about 100 million people perishing under socialist governments in the 20th century seems to raise some some doubt about Socialism. 

From a Jewish point of view German Idealism is important because the basic structure of Metaphysics of Torah is mainly Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian. [That is the metaphysical backbone that is clearly stated by Saadia Gaon and the Obligations of the Heart and Maimonides and the Ari.] There are questions about this structure which need to be addressed and not just papered over. [The general way to deal with the Rambam and Saadia Gaon is to ignore them an pretend they did not write anything about the basic metaphysical structure of Torah.]
That is,- there is a reason why Saadia Gaon and the Rambam adopted the Neo Platonic point of view. The same reason gives us today a further reason to find support for the Torah point of view after that much of the medieval concepts used by the Rambam and Saadia Gaon seem quiet,.. well..--medieval. That is,- axioms that do not seem all that true anymore.

[After I wrote the above essay I thought to mention some points. Mystic experience is not what the holy Torah is about. Because the Rambam rational approach is not interesting to people they go instead to mystics. The trouble is most of them all are teaching the teachings of the Shatz in different form.]