Bava Metzia page 112

Bava Metzia page 112. You have an artisan that fixed a vessel and asks 2 shekalim for his work. The owner of the vessel say the agreement was for payment of one shekel. One braita says you believe the owner and the other says you believe the artisan. Rav Nachman bar Izchak says the difference is when there are witnesses you believe the artisan because the owner has no migo (literally "he could have said...") to say לא היו דברים מעולם-I never saw you before. I wanted to say the reason Rav Nachman bar Izchak says this is that he can not make a difference between if the vessel is movable or not.  That is he hold even when it is movable the owner still has migo to say I do not know you because he might think the amount the artisan is asking is more than the actual worth of the vessel. I mentioned in my notes that I believe Rava disagrees with Rav Nachman bar Izchak and holds the difference is the case you believe the owner is when the vessel is not movable and so he has a migo.

[You can look at the notes but the simple and short of it is that Rav Nachman bar Izchak  was  going along with Rav and Shmuel that hold you believe a worker that says he was not paid only when there were witnesses that he was hired. Rava disagreed with Rav and Shmuel so I was suggesting that Rava also would disagree about the artisan and give a different answer that Rav Nachman]. That train of reasoning led me to find support to Rav Joseph Halevi that holds  a migo is causes one to be believed to say he does not have to pay money but does not absolve from an oath. The idea was there are versions of the  braita about the artisan and the owner in which you believe the owner. One is you believe him with an oath and the other is without an oath. The one with an oath would be like Rav Joseph HaLevi and the other like the Ran [Rabainu Nisim who holds a migo also lets one of the hook of taking an oath.]

I might add one thing I did not mention in my notes. This all occurred to me because I realized that almost every migo has something working against it. Just like in the Torah we have מודה במקצת הטענה נשבע because the Torah is thinking he wanted to deny everything but he would rather not because אין אדם מעיז פניו בפני בעל חובו. That is if he had denied everything he would have been beloved so why not believe him when he admits only a portion? Answer because a person does not have arrogance in from of someone that did  for him a favor. So the Torah put an oath on him. [I wrote that the argument between Rava and Rav Nachman bar Izchak is when you say a migo. I forgot what I meant when I wrote that. But today it occurred to me that the above idea is what i might have meant.]

Four elements and the problem with the the fifth element. There are many fundamental concepts in kabalah which come from Ancient Greek Science. I wrote a whole essay about this once long ago [That essay called Ten Sepherot in some blog entry]. The "Aether" was one of the first times I noted this. So what my learning partner suggested was the Greeks got it from the Kabalah. But then that just makes it worse. Since it is wrong, then it was the Kabalah that mislead the Greeks.

Aether is not the same thing as space. If someone had suggested that empty space is a thing in itself with nothing in it, then that would have been an insight. But that is never what anyone is referring to when they talk about the four elements and then the fifth one.

I went into some detail about this in terms of the ten sepherot and the ten orbits of the planets and sun around the earth from Ptolemy and Medieval science. But I brought a lot of other things along teh same vein but with less detail.  Still the point is the same.

Demonic synagogues.

Demonic synagogues. Do not judge a book by its cover. They might be raking in money by the barrel-full but that means nothing.
[That is a theme that sometimes come up with Reb Nachman but his main point is that the teachers are bad. He usually does not focus on groups.] False friends and false teachers tend to be the problem. And when they are bold and fearless they are worse. False teachers have all the virtues. They have every good quality but truth.

The Satan has all the gifts. They demonic synagogues will promise every type of good thing that they can in fact deliver, Parnasa money, shiduch [wife] but when payment time comes to pay, the toll is awful. There are no free gifts. It is at the cost of one's soul.

There is pseudo Torah, phony Torah. Or as Reb Nachman  called it תורה של הסטרא אחרא Torah of the Dark Side. This what the demonic synagogues teach and it makes money and has enormous success. People are not what they appear to be.

While focusing on the negative I might as well mention the basic things that are Torah from the Bright and Holy Realm. The trouble is the Dark Side uses every means  to seem to be kosher. What every kind of learning I could recommend they will jump at.  

[The only kind of places I would go to would be Reform or Conservative synagogues or Litvak yeshivas. The  religious world is devoted to many forms of  worship of the dead, and keep Torah  in clothing and appearance alone.]

Around twenty years old one's destiny is fixed

The reason I think my parents understood the importance of college is that at around twenty years old one's destiny is fixed in stone. What you are doing then and the crowd you are with will more or less determine your future. So my own situation to some degree was fixed by my decision to go to yeshiva in New York as opposed to University. 
[You do need to learn Torah. You do need to get through the whole Oral and Written Law. But that is a separate question from yeshiva.]




And this same principle applies to every single person. You can not start at forty what you did not start at 20.

So the very nature of the frum religious world is highly relevant to the discussion of whether to go to yeshiva or to learn a vocation.

Whether it is good or bad or a mixture is important to know since joining almost any yeshiva and being that at the  age of twenty will largely determine everything that happens later.

And to back off and try to sound impartial  makes no sense since this is not an academic question. Whether people like it or not, what they decide at twenty will determine everything that happens in their life from then on.

My general impression of the religious world is pretty low and I know of no one in the religious world itself that would disagree with me. However there are a few remarkable yeshivas that I think are on the right track an those are the well known Lithuanian kinds of yeshivas based on the path of the Gra. 

demons

The whole subject of demons is important since they come up in the Zohar and often in the Agadic parts of the Talmud. The Torah forbids dealing with them, but they exist. In the Torah, people that are in contact with the spirit world are called אוב וידעוני מכשף ומעונן קוסם ודורש אל המתים. [who seek the dead, witches, etc] The Torah is amazingly  strict about this. For example, we find in Devarim 18:10-11 (Deuteronomy ch 18 verses 10-11) the Torah goes through a  list of all the different kinds of ways people get in contact with the spirit world. The shocking thing is how much of this is accepted as kosher in the religious world. The spirits {or as they are called שדיים} run all the synagogues and all the religious denominations in the world.

There are people born with an inherent gift to get information from the spirit world. The last one ודורש אל המתים ("one who seeks the dead") is common in the religious world. They  think they are actually in communication with some spirit of some saint, but the spirit of the saint is in Heaven, and all these people talk to are demons that are super smart and know all there is to know about that tzadik (saint) and about the future.


[These all get the death penalty. I forget which one. (There are four types.) You should look up the Mishna in Tracate Kritut to find out which one applies.] The whole subject actually comes up in שמות Exodus 22:18 with the verse מכשפה לא תחיה and also in ישעיהו  Isaiah 8:19
Everyone knows the story of Saul and Samuel. But few know the the reason he died  was because of the event of not wiping out Amalek and also for seeking a familiar spirit as brought in Chronicles I 10:13-14 even though the last sin was not mentioned as the cause of his downfall in the book of Samuel.

One story brought in the Gemara was about one fellow who went to sleep in a graveyard and heard the spirits talking to each other and he found out what crops to plant that year. The spirits always give useful information but in the end they extract payment of one's life and family in this world and then in Hell.

The religious world presents a picture that looks similar to Torah in a few select rituals. It sounds like Torah in some ways. But instead of directing their service towards God it is directed towards idolatry.
People want to hear good stuff and how they are OK and if they join the club everything will be good for them.  Secular Jews are largely at fault for this because they accept the frum (religious) narrative and all te money for yeshivas comes from secular Jews. If not for the monetary support and the compliant acquiescence of Reform and Conservative Jews the whole rotten structure of religious world would collapse.

There are demons that get into the head. This is the main problem.But there are many other types.
And the spirits have information that is not available to us. In the religious world every indication that someone has extra knowledge of the future or miracles it is assume they get it from the Bright Side. This assumption is usually false. Most of what are called "tzadikim" are people in connection with the dark spirit world and thus get amazing powers and knowledge.

T-12 E major  T10 C major T-9 D major edited

Demon spirits. The Dark Side and the Intermediate Zone.

The Dark Side and the Intermediate Zone. דורש אל המתים. מנחש ומעונן etc. The Torah actually forbids interaction with the spirit world. A lot people are looking for spirituality and by that open a door to the the spirit world.
While on this blog I have tried to mention the good aspects of Torah. but the religious world of Judaism is sadlly is filled with demonic spirits.

Spirits are very good at making up false religions and appearing to people in the guise of some tzadik. [People think they are safe by listening to false spirits, but then they fall suddenly.] ]

Islam is a good example of a "familiar spirit" that appeared and gave a very complicated mixture of truths and falsehoods.
Demon spirits mislead people. They make people feel good. People want spiritual things, so the false spirits take advantage of this.

The spirits can also come in through a family tree. So even if you have never been involved in any familiar spirits, still they can come in through the fact that somewhere in the past their ancestors were involved in them.
This mainly came into Judaism through the events of the Shatz, but it continue in different  forms until today. The best thing is to avoid the religious world since the familiar spirits there can come into a person just by being in the same synagogue.  

[Some examples of demon spirit inspired things: Yoga, astrology, modern music, mysticism, psychology etc. That is spirits reveal true things in order to get people involved bad stuff.] 

The trouble with all this stuff is that it involve spirits from the Dark Side, and in the Torah most of this stuff gets the death penalty. So even if people are doing their occult necromancy in the name of the Torah still that does not make it OK.

The tendency of philosophy has been to deny all metaphysical phenomena, but that is not my approach. I go rather with the Rambam Maimonides approach which accepts Metaphysics but does nothing to discern between the Bright and Dark Sides. 

My approach to these issues is that it is hard to discern. I would say most spiritual phenomena are from familiar spirits and not from holiness. But that does not mean people with familiar spirits do not have vast powers and knowledge of the future. Rather they do, but it is not from the Bright Realm.