Navardok yeshivas

The way Navardok yeshivas were first made was by two students from the yeshiva just showing up in some town and sitting and learning Torah without asking for any favors. [It was part of that path to trust in God so asking people for favors was out.] I wonder if perhaps a similar approach is possible today. If there is no authentic Litvak yeshiva nearby then at least I suggest an hour a day of learning Torah [Old Testament, Mishna, Talmud, Midrash,  and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.].That is to restart the whole idea of Torah for its own sake, and trust in God.

In fact doing this at home is better as a rule. That means to have a session every day in Tenach, Mishna, Gemara, and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. 



In essence Navardkok consisted of two complementary concepts (1) to learn Torah without monetary compensation. (That is known as "Torah Lishma," for it's own sake, not for the sake of anything else.) (2) Trust in God without effort. That is to trust in God without doing anything to get that help. That is not to do what is called Hishtadlus "השתדלות". (The the מדרגת האדם by Rav Joseph Horwitz-the Alter of Navardok for details.)

The reason this is important is: to receive the yoke of Torah really there is a need of a Beit Midrash where one can learn Torah without being bothered. But the religious world itself needs a thorough house cleaning. It is full of Chametz/leaven. That is the leaders as a rule are demons from the Hell and that tends to leave a bad effect on the regular people. So in  a practical sense, I would not walk into any religious place but pray in a Conservative or Reform. The only kind of religious place I would walk into would be an authentic Litvak yeshiva. [There are very few of these. In the USA the only ones that are true and authentic are in New York. In Israel there are only Ponovitch and its branches or startups from people that learned in Ponovitch. ]

[The basic idea of learning Torah Lishma is not to use Torah for money. So to  large degree all the yeshivas in Israel that do so are lying as the Rambam wrote (commentary of Chapters of the Fathers, Pirkei Avot, chapter 4). Still the ironic thing is when they do learn for its own sake, then I think there is  mitzvah to give. I think this is clear in a few places in the Gemara.]

The false yeshivas use Torah to justify their sins and lies and covetousness and lust for money. They way they do this is to justify sin to make people feel good and positive. They say "We do not want any doom and gloom here. We want only positive messages. No Musar here."
The sin of the religious world is to use Torah to justify their lust for money. So I go no where near them.

[The classical example is the history (in the book of Kings) of Achav and Chizkia and the four hundred prophets that said, "You will be successful." Chizkiah however thought they were lying. So the called a prophet of God, Michayahu. He came and said also "Go up and you will be successful." Achav said to him How many times have I told you tell me only the truth in the name of God. Michaya said, "OK, you really want the truth? The truth is --you will not return alive." Achav said to Chizkia you see he always speaks bad about me. He is always negative.

T16 C major

Rambam 21:10 מלווה ולווה Laws of Lending and Borrowing

Rambam 21:10 מלווה ולווה Has been a confusing halacha for me for a long time. I did not realize that the Magid Mishna had actually explained it simply,-- even though he left it with  צ''ע (not clear why it is so.)

The basic idea is the same case that I have mentioned before in this blog many times. You have a lender a borrower and someone that bought a field from the borrower after the loan.
If the field is regular [not a guarantee for the loan] the lender gets it in case of default and 1/2 the improvements and in Halacha 21:1 he does not even pay for the expenses.

In Halacha 2:10 [when the field is collateral for the loan] the way the Magid Mishna explains it if the expenses are more than the improvement he gets half the improvement and pays nothing.  If the improvement is  more than the expenses, he can take all the improvement and pay for the expenses.
This would not be worth the time writing if not for the fact that the Rambam there is so unclear.
The way to see this in the Rambam is in the wording. The first part of the halacha is clear. The שבח is more than the הוצאה so the בעל חוב says "my field made the שבח" so he is claiming all the שבח and pays the הוצאה. Clear enough. But then: The שבח is less than the הוצאה he collects 1/2 from the בעל חוב and 1/2 from the מוכר. That is where the Magid Mishna and Rav Shach come in. At that point the בעל חובis coming by the claim of normal שיעבוד by which he has only a right to half the שבח as it says in Bava Batra. Still the בעל חוב gets the field with everything on it --all the שבח - but he has to pay only for a half and the other half he has a right to. So the part he has a right to the לוקח has to collect from the מוכר as per the same agreement "What I buy will be משועבד to this חוב."

It is clear but only with Magid Mishna and Rav Shach. [In any case the part the part that the בעל חוב is collecting because of מה שאקנה יהיה משועבד לחוב הזה he is not paying for. The only part he pays for it that which comes because it is part of the field. So with regards to 21:1 where the Rambam brings two opinions if the בעל חוב pays for the הוצאה in the normal case that the field is not collateral he is going like the opinion he does not have to pay.]






In any case there is still a lot to talk about in this halacah as you can see in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and I have had occasion to bring this up also in my notes on Shas, and I also recall that Reb Chaim Soloveitchik brought it up.
This is what I wrote about this about a year ago:
  ב''מ קי: ב''מ י''ד: בבא בתרא קנז: הסוגיה כאן הוא בב''מ יד: ובבבא בתרא קנז: יש מחלוקת בין תוספות בב''מ ותוספות בבא בתרא. המחלוקת תלויה בסברת רב חיים הלוי מבריסק. הסברא היא זאת: לפי דעת הרמב''ם, בדיון של מַלְוֶה לווה ולוקח (ויש ברירת מחדל) שהמַלְוֶה גובה רק חצי השבח (השיפוצים) וחצי נשאר אצל הלוקח בגלל ששיעבוד שניהם עובר דרך הלווה. אבל המַלְוֶה גובה את כל השבח שגדל ממילא בגלל ששיעבודו חל על הקרקע בעצמו ישיר, ולא דרך הלווה [שהוא המוכר]. (זאת אומרת שאחר שהשיעבוד חל על השדה, הוא נשאר שם, ואינו שם בגלל המשכה של כח המוכר.) זאת היא סברת תירוץ הראשון בתוספות בבא בתרא במצב שלנו איפה שהמַלְוֶה גובה את הקרקע מן הלוקח, אף על פי שיש קרקע אחרת ללוקח השני. הסיבה היא ששיעבודו חל על הקרקע בעצמה. מצד השני, תירוץ השני ותוספות ב''מ יד: אוחזים שאם יש לוקח שני, המַלְוֶה צריך לגבות ממנו בגלל ששיעבודו הולך דרך המוכר, ואינו חל על הקרקע בעצמה. ועכשיו מחלוקת שני שתירוצים היא מחלוקת ראשונים. שהסברא של תירוץ הראשון היא שיטת הרמב''ם לפי פירושו של רב חיים ברמב''ם. והרמב''ן והראב''ד חולקים על הרמב''ם.  ותירוץ השני ותוספות בב''מ יד: הולכים לפי שיטת הראב''ד והרמב''ן
ואין להקשות על זה מדברי הרמב''ן שכתב שהמַלְוֶה אומר: "ארעאי [הקרקע שלי] השביח", בגלל שכוונת הרמב''ן היא שבגלל שיעבודו על הלווה הקרקע נחשב של המַלְוֶה והשיעבוד בא דרך הלווה

 להבין את מה הרמב''ם יחזיק כאן קשרתי את החוק הזה לחוק של לווה ולווה וקנה. קודם כל יש שני תרחישים בתוספות. אחד מהם הוא שבו השדה השני נקנה לאחר הגבייה. אם זה המקרה שלנו אז יש קשר ברור לדין לווה ולווה וקנה. במקרה שלנו יש מַלְוֶה וקונה ולמַלְוֶה כמובן יש שיעבוד ראשון. אבל אם שדה השני נקנה לאחר הגבייה, אז שיעבוד של שניהם באים כאחת [באותו הזמן]. זה כמעט אותו המקרה. אבל אנחנו יודעים מה רמב''ם אומר בלווה ולווה וקנה, שהם חולקים את השדה. אם זה אותו העיקרון אז למה החוק כאן לא יהיה אותו הדבר
 תירוץ: יכול להיות שזו כן דעת הרמב''ם שיכול לגבות מאיזה מהם שהוא רוצה. זה כמו בלווה ולווה וקנה שיש לנו ספק ומניחים הברירה בידם לפי פירוש הרמב''ם
אבל יש תרחיש אחר בתוספות. כלומר, כאשר השדה השני היה בבעלות בעת הגבייה (או  של הלווה או של לוקח השני). כאן אפשר רמב''ם מחזיק כמו  חוות דעתו של תוספות שמַלְוֶה חייב לגבות את שדה הראשון או השני. אנחנו לא באמת יודעים מלשון רמב''ם. כל מה שאנחנו יודעים הוא שהרמב''ם אינו מחזיק אותו שהוא מצב של  אפותיקי (או משכון) להלוואה.

That is I had gone back and forth on the idea if this is related to לווה ולווה וקנה as you can see. And in the end I guess I decided it was.
I do not recall if it was there in that place but I do know I used Rav Shach's idea about the difference between what grows on its on and what grows by means the efforts of the buyer. In any case I wanted to bring up this halacah because of the clarity the Magid Mishna and Rav Shach both bring to it.

I should mention that שיעבוד of a field whether a field that is collateral or just plain is the same when it comes through מה שאקנה יהיה משועבד that is the buyer and the lender divide the שבח.

problem with Islam

I noticed the problem with Islam but only after it was brought to my attention in the most unpleasant ways possible. Personal experience. Before that I had assumed as many others that we are all just people underneath our skins and everyone really just wants the same things security and happiness. I had to learn the hard way what Brett Stevens is suggesting apparently simply from thinking things out thoroughly.

It might be considered a fault of mine to give people and groups the benefit of  a doubt long after they have shown their true colors.
But on the other hand when I finally do decide that some group is bad, then at least I being a reliable source.

The Mishna says כל המקבל עליו עול תורה מעבירים ממנו עול מלכות ועול דרך ארץ "The yoke of government and the yoke of the way of the world is removed from one who accepts on himself the yoke of Torah."
I took this to heart a few years ago thinking that I needed to get back to Torah.
Then I noted the Rambam brings this idea in an expanded way in Laws of Repentance ch 9, where he brings the idea that "all fears" are removed from one that accepts the yoke of Torah. This is the same idea but in a more general sense.
This idea can be used by unscrupulous people that try to get money out of secular Jews. Still abusus non tolit usum. Abuse does not nullify use. And I can see that there is a great need to sit and learn Torah.

Since the really great and authentic Lithuanian kinds of Yeshivas based on the Gra are few and far and the evil yeshivas that are hot beds of the sitra achra [the Dark Side] are close and many, thus there really is no choice but to get yourself the basic set of Torah and learn at home. The most important I think is Rav Shach's Avi Ezri which contains the basic principles of how to learn and most of the basic principles of Torah.

But in case people are reading this that might need a more basic introduction: the best of introductory books I have seen are those of Rav Shimshon Refael Hirsh --that is his book, the Horev. After that The English Soncino Talmud I think is great. I am not exaggerating. The translations there are works of genius. After that the best book of Jewish Law is the Tur with the Beit Yoseph. I really loved learning that book with the Bach also.

Race mixing

Stephen Gould suggested the fact of female choice as being an important factor--that is when there is freedom for the female of a species to choose upward that tends to bring the species to a higher level.

In any case, the problem with mixing that I see is that race is the beginning of one species being divided into two or more. That means race mixing is going directly against Nature and fighting against nature usually results in Nature winning the battle.

reason can perceive universals

To me it seems reason can perceive universals. I tend to go with Michael Huemer on this and Hegel also. The idea that there is some upper limit to reason Hegel answered by means of a dialectical approach.  [That is Hegel does not really hold of what is called intellectual intuition and is like Kant on that score. But he holds by thinking reason penetrates into the ding an sich by a dialectical process.]

As Bryan Caplan pointed out Kant is based on Hume and Hume assumes that all reason can do is perceive contradictions. He never proves this but just accepts it as an axiom. But clearly Reason does much more. It recognizes general principles.  Thus the whole basis of Kant falls away. Still there is much in the Intuitionist school of Michael Huemer that seems like quietism and does not address the issues raised by Kant--like how does reason go further? For this we need Hegel.

That is the Intuitionists deals with Kant's question how can reason perceive synthetic a priori like this: It just does. Period. clearly Huemer is more subtle than that and goes with probability. He is an amazing writer but still things there that needs critique. 

[I would rather not go into this, but just look up Hegel and Huemer's writings  Prichard's, John Searle, and the Rambam's Guide for the Perplexed.  You will see with this background what I mean.] [When the Rambam says to learn Metaphysics, I think that though he meant the set of books of Aristotle by that name, this should be applied to Kant and Hegel.]


[I should mention I have tried hard to defend the Kant/Fries school of Kelley Ross, but in the end I have had to go with Hegel. It is not necessarily one particular problem. Kelley Ross is an amazing thinker, but to me Hegel just makes a lot more sense.]

There is a Jewish mother blog "Mother in Israel" that suggested on her blog Hegel a long time ago that I ignored because I had found some important insights on Kelley Ross's Kant Fries site.  The thing I think that got me most interested in Hegel was when I realized his jargon was philosophical an that statements taken out of context or poorly understood did not constitute a true critique. Also just seeing  some of the problems in Kant that simply are not well answered brought me around to seeing the importance of Hegel. That is in a nut shell: The critiques on Hegel I thought were not accurate.

It occurs to me I was never very impressed with implanted knowledge especially since it can't be falsified-not with any of the things Kant though were unconditioned, but even things like Math.   Still all in all Dr Kelley Ross is an amazingly thorough thinker. I still have to go with Hegel.

Hegel as opposed to Leftism

I think the left made its progress by taking the name of Hegel in vain and misappropriating some of his slogans and and misunderstanding him (maybe on purpose) to fit. That is,-- if all they had was Rousseau, that would not have been enough.


So one step in the right direction I believe is to retake the battle field. They have got Hegel? Then take him back. Show how he was opposite to everything the left is about. 
And after all is said and done even the real intellectuals of the Left were aware they had to repudiate Hegel.  Just for an example with Hegel morals are real and objective and can be perceived by reason, though not directly. Hegel is a plain rebuke to Hume who limits reason to perceiving contradictions.

to learn Torah and trust in God

My own set of convictions [core principles] while in the Mir in NY were to learn Torah and trust in God that He would take care of everything else.  If my test was to stick with that set of principles, then I failed.  Adding principles add subtracting got me into  one mess after the other.

The basic order of events was interest in Rav Shick's ideas which appealed to me because it was the closest thing I saw to the Litvak path that just seemed to add some other important principles. It did not occur to me the problem of what is called "fly paper" where the fly smelling something of beauty and wonder lands on the fly paper but then can't get up again. Some refer to it as a "consciousness trap" = a way to capture people's mind.
So the real first step away from Torah was in my own faulty decision making process. I did decide to go to Israel mainly based on Navardok's idea when there is a command in the Torah to do something  then by definition it is possible. You do not look at if it is possible and then decide whether to do it or not. But I did not do much learning Gemara in Israel and when I decided to take a break from the problems in Israel and got home to Los Angeles the people that supposedly are there to learn Torah made it their job to destroy my family. Thanks a lot.
So as William James put it, "The difference has to make a difference." So for me the charlatans made my own desire to learn Torah much less since I saw they could learn Torah and still be evil.  Still that is more of a question on the way people that are using Torah to make a living  can get away with their fraud and no one is the wiser rather than a question on the Torah which in any case they are not listening to. But it also shows how a general rule is fulfilled. Once one walks away from Torah, then he can't get back and even the supposed supporters of Torah join together to keep him away.

So I today I try to learn Torah as best I can. What is Torah in this context? That is the Oral, Written Torah, and Musar. [I include the Rambam's idea of adding to this also Physics and Metaphysics for many reasons.  Part because of the Rambam, another reason is my parents and the basic Torah with Dersch Eretz approach. But I do regret not just sitting and learning Gemara when I had the chance. A far as I can see if one accepts just to sit and learn Torah and not budge, then מעבירים ממנו עול מלכות ועול דרך ארץ the yoke of government and the way of the world are removed from him.]
I can not be a advocate of just sitting and learning Torah since I failed in that test, but I can honestly say that if one chooses Torah at all cost, the Torah will stand by him and he will never regret it. 
Normally I would say the best thing is to sit and learn the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach straight. The thing is that in spite of its amazing clarity still I think a certain familiarity with the actual Gemaras that he bring are sometimes necessary. Sometimes on the other hand he brings all the necessary information right in the page. There are times I realize that without having the Gemara in front of me, it is not always clear what he means.
It might be possible I imagine to restart the whole Narvardok thing with the combination of Trust in God plus learning Torah. That I would think is  a good thing. But I also imagine it would have to be every person on his own. You cant really depend in others in this endeavor. 
The biggest obstacle to Torah is the phony evil disgusting people that pretend to keep Torah and are really demons from the Dark Side sent on earth to keep people from Torah by their pretense of keeping it will in fact doing everything they can to destroy it.

 

core principles. super-organism

Identification with one's group or super-organism is the central theme of Howard Bloom in his Lucifer Principle. He also shows how super-organisms are always based on some social meme - set of principles. And at the very end he makes a value judgment that the USA is superior to all other nations because of its social meme. So to my way of thinking the Fabian School or what is more well known as the Frankfurt School were really undermining the very essence of the USA. The basic infiltration of communist ideas into the USA I see as very bad. 


 It is not just the super-organism but also the individual I believe is usually centered around some social meme or core principles.

The thing to do is to make a conscious decision to make sure your core principles are right and moral. They might change with time as one gains experience and realizes that some of his core principles did not really correspond to reality.


[The best approach in my judgment is  that of the Rambam which is learning of Physics, Metaphysics, the entire Oral Law [the two Talmuds], and the entire Written Law in Hebrew [Old Testament]. And avoid cults at all cost. Especially those that claim to teach Torah. Better to learn Torah at home than to be involved in the religious world which is mainly built on lies. {Reb Nachman pointed this out many times in his Magnum Opus and called these kinds of teachers "Torah scholars that are demons," with the implication  that he meant it seriously and literally and not as an exaggeration.} However I admit there might be one or two places in the religious world that are OK like Ponovitch or Merkaz HaRav of Rav Kook (Religious Zionism). Or there might be individual  synagogues built on the straight Torah model of Ponovitch or the Mir in NY. The best thing to do to stop the cults is to pull away their funding. Get the State of Israel to stop the endless flow of money into the cults, and I predict they will all vanish overnight.]

F Major T15  mp3  T15 MIDI Format

When Torah is used for money as in kollel, this tends to cause what is known as Chilul Hashem.חילול השם desecration of the Divine Name.

This idea was not stated as such by the Rambam who simply said it is forbidden to use the Torah to make money or even to accept charity for learning.
Still the basic effect seems clear. When yeshivas are run to make money, they chase away all sincere people, and that leaves just the dregs.
This leaves great doubts about the Torah itself in the minds of many people that see this.

I myself have experienced this kind of thing,-- as I am sure many others have also. If you try to sit in a yeshiva and just learn Torah (as they claim to be doing), you will as a rule be thrown out unless they think they can make money off of you.

"תורתו אומנתו" does not mean to use the Torah as a means to make a living. {The permission not to pray is for a person whose Torah is his occupation.} The  yeshiva world as a rule purposely confuses this issue to make simple Jews think they ought to give them money. Maybe they should as some scholars thought like the Beit Yoseph. And maybe they should not as the Rambam thought. But one way or the other, that does not give permission to pervert the meaning of statements of the Chazal (Sages) in order to trick people.
[שכר בטלה means שכר הניכר. That is also a flimsy excuse. You can pay a person to judge a case if h is occupied in a job. You pay him the same amount that he was making. Not what he would have been making if had a job. plus שכר בטלה is for a judge and has nothing to do with our subject here.]


Still, in any case, I always  depend on lenient opinions when I find myself in need (which is all the time). So I can not blame people for depending on the Beit Yoseph. [In fact I have told people to stay in their kollels in Israel because of my being aware of their situations.] All I am saying is: the effect of this in the long run seems to cause something which is a sin to all opinions-- Chilul Hashem.

That being said I should admit that I was very impressed with a few Litvak yeshivas in NY and Ponovitch in Bnei Brak. But that is about it. Everything else seems to be  a scam. THEY LEARN Gemara in order to impress people. Not because of any real love of the holy Torah.

Branches of Ponovitch or places that were started by those that learned in Ponovitch also seems very good. I have to mention Shar Yashuv which is a place with no reputation, but to me it seemed to be the most sincere and also had an amazing level of learning, not just for a baal teshuva yeshiva but even the best of yeshivas. You might think I am being silly but to me it seemed that the Mir in NY was a step down from Shar Yashuv. [Being in Israel I think was a major step up but it seems to me today that for that to have been permanent I would have had to be learning Torah in some kind of Litvak environment.]

kollels were never right in the first place. They were invented by Reb Israel Salanter and were only because of the need of the hour. But since then the whole concept has deteriorated into using the Torah to make  a living.

Muslim immigrants

Many Jews and myself included felt like Walt Disney "It's a small world after all," and we are all brothers, until dealing with people from other countries and nations and being treated in the most unbrotherly fashion imaginable (up to and  attempted murder) convinced me we are not all brothers. We are tribes. And as Hegel noted some tribes and some states are more devoted towards justice and goodness than others. I mean the social meme is different. Some people will just do anything to hurt white people or Jews, no matter how much it hurts themselves.


The Muslim immigrants as far as I could see did not contribute anything. The USA when I was growing up was much more wholesome and lovely. I grew up in a totally Wasp area [Orange County, Newport Beach] which and things were very nice.  But we moved, and since then I have have to deal with all kinds of immigrants [not Jews] and they always use whatever power or positions they have to hurt Jews and Wasps. Always. I think Jews knew this, but thought that, "If we are nice to them, they will be nice back." But it never worked that way. Wasps I think went along with it because that was more or less the message they were getting in church.




More or less this is what I experienced in Israel with Sepharim that say openly the rights words, "We are all brothers," but if an Ashkenazic Jew is stupid enough to move into their neighborhood, he will soon find out otherwise. There will always be at least one or more that will take upon themselves the holy mission of getting rid of the Ashkenazic Jew no matter how long it takes and no matter the risk to himself. [Of course a Sephardi in an Ashkenazic neighborhood tries to behave better, until the number of Sephardim rises above a certain percent. It is thye same with Muslims. The soft jihad starts at around 15% and when their numbers get to around 30% then hard jihad begins. I learned this because I learned the history of Spain. in the Middle Ages  and I have alwayys been facinated with the history of Europe in a real power way. If I see a book on Roman or any nation from Europe's history I feel  a tremendous urge to grap it and learn it.]

Rav Shach brings a difficult Rambam

Rav Shach brings a difficult Rambam in the laws of idolatry. ch 4 law 2. The Rambam says for a עיר הנדחת [a city that does idolatry] you need 100 or more to be seduced to worship an idol, and you need the area to be  a city with no less than 100 people. And he also says you need a majority of the city.
Then it gets the category of a city that does idolatry which must be destroyed. The max limit is the majority of a tribe for the size of the city. And the max limit of the number of people is also the majority of a tribe.


This does not seem to be in accord with any opinion in the Gemara.
R. Yoshiyah says you need the city to be from 10 people  up until 100 people. R. Yonatan says from 100 people until the majority of  a tribe. Sanhedrin 15b

So the Rambam does decide like R. Yonatan, but if we go by the majority of a city, then 51 should be enough if the city has 100 people.




I am wondering how Rav Shach answers this which I did not understand.

I am also wondering if "and" could help us. That is intersection. Perhaps the Rambam is thinking that "and" in the verse means you need two conditions- both: (1)100 people and (2) a city of a hundred.



Since "and" is an argument between these two amoraim perhaps that is how the Rambam understood the Amora that he is deciding like. But intersection is the opinion of R. Oshiyah and that does not seem to help.
But since in this case the only difference between R Yoshiya and R Yonatan in the numbers, not in the verses so the Rambam might hold both hold the "and" is to cause intersection. {This and that. Not "this or that".}

trust in God --the message of Navardok (Musar)

Since there is a deeper kind of knowledge beyond empirical knowledge and reason that both empirical knowledge and knowledge based on reason depend on for their ground of validity-therefore that ground conditions  reality. Faith. 
This explains what you see in the Altar of Navardok in terms of his trust in God when he was in the forest in his hut there and learning Torah, and in the middle of the night his candle ran out and someone knocked on his door and handed to him   new candle. Faith determines reality. [The Altar of Navardok, Reb Joseph Yozel Horvitz, was a disciple of Reb Israel Salanter.]

In short what I am saying here is that there is knowledge which is not derived from experience [five senses] nor from reason. Faith.  And the claim is that faith is a deeper sort of knowledge than reason. So I am adopting a version of Kant's principle that phenomena must be conditioned by the structure of knowledge. I am going a bit further and saying that both knowledge and also phenomena must be conditioned according to faith. This is a simple one step further than Kant.

But to the Rambam and Hegel,  Faith and reason are not two things. They are the same essence but differ in degree. 

to oppose Islam.

I do not think the West is in any state to oppose Islam. Christianity is in essence lukewarm. It is good for a Sunday morning thrill to make people feel good, but that is all. As soon as they are out again on the street, everything is forgotten. I simply do not see anything in the West capable of stopping Islam in its attempt to expand and take over. 

Once Christianity was vibrant and powerful enough to stop it But certainly no longer. 
And what else could stop it?

Tanks and guns against ideas? That is no match. Ideas will win every time. People willing to blow themselves up along with as many Jews and Christians as possible simply can not be stopped by all the guns and bullets in the world. The more you throw at them the happier they are.



Personally I see Christianity not just as lukewarm, but also mistaken on a few fronts. 

My own approach is that of the Gra and Reb Israel Salanter and Rav Elezar Menachem Min Shach on three fronts. Learning Torah, Ethics, Learning Torah in depth. 

This more or less goes along with Reb Shmuel Berenbaum's (the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir in New York) idea when he was confronted with life problems that people asked him about. His answer was "Learn Torah" but never at the expense of doing kindness in places that were needed.

That was his idea of the one and only solution to all individual and all of mankind's problems. Thus it is my suggestion for people to acept on themselves to learn Torah every day for at least one hour (that is to accept bli neder [with no oath]).


That is for one hour to learn either the Written Law (Old Testament) or the Oral Law [The Two Talmuds] in such a way as to finish them at least once. Girls that are not required to learn Torah should be committed to marry guys that learn Torah.
[What counts as Torah? Books of חז''ל the sages of the Talmud which includes the midrashei halacha and midrashei agada. Rishonim mediaeval sages. Musar. Plus a few achronim like the Maharsha and Rav Shach.] [To the Rambam, Physics and Metaphysics are included in the Oral Law, but in my view that would mean to learn the Talmud in one hour per day session, and in another session learn Physics or Metaphysics. The Rambam obviously meant Plato,  Aristotle Plotinus, but I would add Kant and Hegel

The battle against socialism.

Part of the battle is to provide support from thought, for everything starts at thought and then goes down to word and then to action. Ayn Rand did some work in the right direction and Howard Bloom also. I think Richard Epstein also is doing good work. 

(The Lucifer Principle)

Since I read Howard Bloom (The Lucifer Principle) I definitely agree with nationalism. But as a rule I felt that people have a right to their own stuff and therefore leftism never made any sense to me. I think leftism is a way to justify greed and theft. 
I think the main reason I think people have a right to their own stuff is mainly because of the Ten Commandments but I believe that my sense of this was probably deepened by learning Torah and Ethics. Since then whenever I see government schemes to take stuff from people as in Socialism or when I see theft and fraud not from government my sense of outrage is ignited.  But that does need a kind of taking back Hegel from the Left. If you want to defend people's right you can not let the Left use Hegel anymore. You need to take from them their ammunition.
My neighbor, John Factor, (brother of Max Factor) really summed up the problem one day for me. He as (all Reform Jews in those days) adopted the basic world view of Leftism. He must have thought all blacks needed was a helping hand. So he gave them a million dollars to build a sort of sports center (in or near the black areas in downtown LA). His comment to me was "They never even said, 'Thank you.'" Six immortal words that to me sums up the whole problem.

I remember one black fellow telling me the same basic idea way back then before any of this problem had started. I forget the exact words but his idea was essentially this “We (the black community) are gong to bring down and destroy the USA.” That is he meant it as intention, not as a by product of wrong polices.

E Major  C Major

The Sitra Achra (Dark Side) gives awesome powers and miracles--true powers and miracles to people so as to when the real question arises --what is God's will?--then they will be believed when they say to worship false gods.

Why would Achav believe false prophets? [In the biblical book of Kings] Was it not clear to him that they knew nothing? Answer: because up until then everything they said was right. Every prediction came to pass exactly like they said. They were given power and miracles so that when the time would come to say something false,then they would be believed. That is the way of the Sitra Achra Dark Side. It gives awesome powers and miracles--true powers and miracles to people so as to when the real question arises --what is God's will?--then they will be believed when they say to worship false gods.

The history of the events was thus: Chizkiah and Achav got together to go to war. But before they went Achav called all his prophets  to hear what they had to say. (Why would he do this, unless they had been proven accurate on every other occasion that he consulted with them?)

They all came and said he will win the war. Chizkiah then asked:
 "Is there no prophet of God here?"
Achav said: "There is one; Michaihu is his name. and I hate him.
"Why is that?"
"Because he speaks only badly of me all the time."
"Call him and let's hear hat he has to say."

He came and said you will win the war. Achav said to him how many times do I have to tell you to say in prophecy only the truth in Gods name?

The Michaihu said that he would be killed in battle.
Achav then commanded he be put into prison until his return.
Michaihu said "If you return alive, then I am not a prophet of God."


Achav was killed. He had been fooled because everything else the prophets of the Baal had said had always turned out right.

The Republic (of Plato), Law of Moses, and Western Civilization

The Republic (of Plato) is very important but not the sole basis for Western Civilization. The West was built out of the Mediaeval synthesis of Reason and Revelation. Plato and Aristotle form and important part of that. But so does the Law of Moses.[As Hegel noted this. The Jews gave devotion to the Law part of Western Civilization and Christians the compassion part.] What is the right synthesis is a good question, but that knowledge that such a synthesis is necessary is the  condition for Western Civilization.
[When Rambam talks about Metaphysics he is referring to Aristotle, but his understanding of Aristotle seems to me to be clearly the neo Platonic synthesis of Aristotle and Plato.]
I am no scholar, but from the little I read I saw a great deal of the advancement of the West after 1350 was based on foundations that that were created during the Middle Ages.

Things like parliamentary system of government, universities, water systems that became adapted to electricity, Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides were huge influences with Natural Law. I guess you could disagree but that is the way I see it. 

[It is my impression that  Kant,  and Hegel are as important for Western Civilization as Plato and Aristotle.]
People do not give enough credit to the Middle Ages. The way to put Reason and Faith together is by no means simple as we can see in the many Gnostic schools and also in Philo and Plotinus. Just looking at that you get the idea that there were infinite possibilities of false and wrong and really dumb ideas about whether such a synthesis is possible and desirable at all and if it it then what is it? But only one possible right answer.

The Rambam's four fold way. Learning the Written Law (Old Testament), the Oral Law (the two Talmuds), Modern Physics, and the Metaphysics of Aristotle.

To understand any thinker it is usually necessary to understand their background and what they were reacting against. But then not to limit them to just a reaction.

The idea is similar to Kant. In his city there were people that were very pious and others that were super rational. And on the larger world that he was born into there was a school of the rationalists like Spinoza and Leibniz and another school of empiricists. like Locke and Hume. But I do not limit Kant's insights to mere reaction but that reaction caused a spark to ignite. His search for a ground of validity in both schools gave the spark that created the three great Critiques.

So with the Rambam. He also wanted to find a path that synthesized Reason and Revelation and not just find a middle path. 

In a similar way my own thinking is thus: I want to find out what is the service of God? And after I know that I want to know what is the service of God with מיסרת נפש [self sacrifice]? And after that I would like to share with others my insights. My own conclusions are largely a reaction to the world I found myself in.

That is to say: I was in yeshivas in NY which more or less concertized and personified the Nefesh HaChaim [נפש החיים]of Reb Chaim from Voloshin (disciple of the Gra). That is.-- yeshivas that accepted the basic idea of the Gra that the prime service of God is to learn Torah. Though one must keep all the commandments, still the focus should be on learning Torah and then everything else good will flow from that.

On the other hand I also saw a world of events after my divorce that got me thinking there must some ways that that yeshivish approach is right, and in some ways it is missing out on something.
While this was going on I returned to Israel and noticed the Guide of the Rambam in a Beit Midrash in Ramot Gimel that said something that got me interested  לא הצם והמתפלל הוא הנרצה אלא היודעו (Not he who fasts and prays is desirable rather he who knows Him.). Over  the years I was in Israel at the time the ideas of the Rambam began to crystallize in me and though I might have been vaguely aware of his ideas before that, during my time in Israel it became more and more clear that he was on a slightly different track than Reb Chaim from Voloshin and that his track also had some ground of validity.

So to a large degree my own ideas of what is the service of God come as trying to find what is valid in both approaches. 

My set of experiences I take as a background to understanding this question and I take my own experiences as empirical evidence. Ad Hominem what kinds of people are on one path or the other is not an irrelevant consideration when it comes to the service of God. It cant be the entire  determining issue but it must not be ignored. 

That I hoe gives to anyone reading this a bit of understanding in what way I arrived at my basic approach which more or less centers on the Rambam's four fold way. Learning the Written Law (Old Testament), the Oral Law (the two Talmuds), Modern Physics, and the Metaphysics of Aristotle.
That is to say I did not arrive at this by picking up a rabbit  out of a hat. Not by going "Ei Mini Mini Mo"closing my eyes and picking something that appealed to me at random. Rather this came as a long process of observation of myself and others and close consideration of the different opinions involved.


Appendix:
{1}Getting divorced was very important to this process because it showed me how people act towards someone that has no social status as opposed to someone that has social status and money that they want. Being "down and out' is the best way to see the reality of what people are like as very different from what they say and pretend. 
{2} My path is not only the Rambam. The whole Gra thing is very important in terms of the prime mitzvah being the learning of Torah
Also in terms of learning in depth, not just the Gemara but the Rambam also. That is the whole school of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and his disciples and Rav Elazar M. Shach.  But I also see the great importance of Rav Kook and the State of Israel--which many great people in the Torah world did  not see.



(3) I learned the hard way that the  religious world is  place to stay as far from as possible in order to survive [Unless we are talking about the great Litvak Yeshivas in Bnei Brak and New York.]. [They talk the talk, but do not walk the walk. Acta non verba.] But I also realized the importance of the Gra and the Rambam and Reb Israel Salanter. I think it is possible that my choice to go to authentic Litvak yeshivas in NY and then to Israel made all the difference. 

T11 Music File

F Minor t11

Divine light

 God's light and salvation is not confined to dogmas and theology.

In any case, my basic approach I would like to define as mainly the path of my parents. That is more or less conservative Judaism, but with a special emphasis on learning Torah. The Jewish religious world itself is believe is filled with demonic spirits, especially the leaders and the books also.
The Litvak world at the time I was there I thought was however very good, but nowadays I try to stay home and mind my own business. Something seems to have gone haywire even with the greatest of the yeshivas.

So my path has is more or less what the Gra, and Reb Israel Salanter, and Rav Shach were teaching. If there is any place around today that walks in that straight Torah path I would have to say that is great, but as I said something seems to have gone wrong.

That is: they have become businesses. Greed has destroyed the yeshiva world.
Th frum world is full of counterfeit Torah.
[One practical thing to do would be to throw out all the books of the cult the Gra put into cherem/excommunication and also any book that quotes them. I am ignored. Fine. But I have said what needed to be said.

Psychology is a profession that attracts mentally ill and sadistic personalities.

I would not out much stock in any particular psychology handbook. I may not know exactly what is wrong with it but that whole so called "science" is mainly pseudo science. Something is deeply wrong with that whole profession. 

One possible problem is that it is the prime example of pseudo science. It is not falsifiable. But that just seems to be the beginning of the problem. The major problem is their main result is to take normal people and make them mentally sick. That is there seems to be some internal evil that characterizes the whole profession. [They seem to have the ability to inject true mental illness into healthy people and by that to force them to keep coming to them for some imaginary cure.]

The main problem seems to be it is a profession that attracts mentally ill and sadistic personalities.

I think the goal is to define all of humanity as psychologically sick except for psychologists.



The disciple of Israel Salanter Isaac Blazer wrote the best cure for sickness of the soul is Musar bringing that idea from the Rambam in the Rambam' Musar book  Eight Chapters. Why Musar? Mainly Musar is about being a mensch a decent human being. It reveals that that is what the Torah is about. This is hard to know and even harder to fulfill. But since the religious world itself is mainly satanic the best approach is to learn on your own or in Reform and Conservative synagogues but avoid the religious world. [Unless you happen to be in the area of an authentic Litvak Yeshiva or a Mizrachi yeshiva.]

If you need confirmation of this view take a look at all the people that count the mitzvot, not just the Rambam and you will see that all there are plenty of the 613 that have to do with good character. So good character is from the Torah itself--not just from the words of the scribes.

In any case the religious world is very evil and very sick and they may hide behind Torah but the essence is wrong. 
[Musar mainly refers to Mediaeval books of Ethics like the Obligations of the Heart. There are also books from the disciples of Israel Salanter which are very good.]

problems in life are spiritual

 From my point of  the problems in life are spiritual, and the solutions come from learning Torah [that is the Old Testament, the two Talmuds and Musar (mediaeval Ethics)], repentance, worship, and holy living. For the secular people the problems of life are material and thus best addressed with money, technology, and good policy. 

 For me  the adversary is Satanic demons and organized well funded demonic charismatic teachers of Torah religion instead of authentic Torah. To secular people the adversary is lack of education and unjust structures and systems. 

For me  the world is an "enchanted place," full of secret connections where the central issue is how to do God's will. (How to get right with God according to the holy Torah.) For the secular, the world is a material place that can be improved by reason and science. 

 For me the best human future (for all people) is being in accord with God's will  and loving one's neighbor. For the secular, the better human future is some form of material well-being. 

Christians are uniformly against the Talmud

Christians are uniformly against the Talmud for little reason. They might not burn it for the same reason they do not burn the Communist Manifesto. But the attitude is roughly the same.
This comes directly from a statement in the NT, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees."
Then comes a long tirade against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. A well deserved tirade, I must add. 
The prushim פרושים in fact are considered highly related to the Baali HaTalmud [authors of the Talmud] as we can see in many historical documents (Hippolytus) that people in general divided Israel into three parts Essenes, Pharisees, Sadducees. The curious thing is that the gentiles did in fact distinguish between the different groups of Essenes. But here between the Prushim and the people that were involved in keeping the Oral and Written Law they seem to have not made any distinction. [Christians in fact were generally considered just a subsection of the Essenes]. 
 From my point of view this all seems curious because the פרושים (Pharisees) and the Baali HaMishna and Talmud ([authors of the Mishna and Talmud]) are not the same group as we can see all the time in the Talmud itself. The Prushim may have held by the validity of the Oral Law, but so did the Essenes, and so did Jesus himself.  Some braitot (outside teachings, i.e. teachings outside of the Mishna) brought in the Talmud in fact were borrowed from the Essenes. [This type of thing gives rise to the constant occupation of the Talmud to figure out which braitot (outside teachings) were legitimate and which were not.]

At any rate, the clear critique of Jesus was against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, not against the Oral Law as close examination of his statement will show. Plus his little noticed statement "The Pharisees sit on Moses' throne,- so all that they say and teach that you must fulfill." (I should not neglect to mention that the Talmud and Mishna have parallel critiques of the hypocrisy of the Prushim which I mentioned in other essays.)

The thing which bothers me about all this is that one is required to keep the Law of Moses. It was not replaced, nor done away with. So along with throwing out the Law of Moses, there seems to be little or no concern about what it actually means -- until it gets into an area that Christians are particularly sensitive about because of their level of disgust at certain a practice forbidden in the Law of Moses.   

Natural Law comes into play here as Aquinas did by using the ideas developed by Saadia Gaon and Maimonides (the Rambam).  Still, all in all, neither Natural Law nor Divine Law have had much popularity in Western Christianity for  along time. Christians as a rule go to Paul to decide what is forbidden according to "Scripture." They certainly never go to the OT (Old Testament) nor to the actual words of Jesus, since the actual words of Jesus would just make things a million times more strict than the Law of Moses. That is something no one wants even to consider.)

In any case, my basic position is that the Christian distaste for the Talmud is completely uncalled for, and based on a simple mistake in understanding the NT.


On the other hand, if their critique was on the charlatans and demonic teachers that pretend to teach and keep the Talmud, then their critique would be justified. For that reason I avoid the religious world like I would avoid a leper colony. But that is people misusing the Talmud. Abusus non tolit usum.  Abuse does not cancel use.  If  you have authentic Lithuanian types of yeshivas in your area, then fine. But if not, then I would avoid the religious world at all cost. Go to Reform, Conservative, or Mizrachi synagogues.



What does this mean in a larger Christian context? I admit that from my point of view, I see Peter and James as more valid than Paul. Still issue of the Talmud is a separate question.
Most Christians see Paul as representing the most valid understanding of Jesus, while Peter and James are basically lukewarm. Still that does not seem to have any bearing on the issues I discussed up above. [ See this book which goes into the issue. But this was already noted by many authors that I have seen. Not the least the Recognitions of Clement.] However it is clear from the New Testament itself that Peter and James disagreed with Paul completely and held his approach of anti Torah was against Jesus himself. James could not have been more clear: one is required to keep every single command in the Old Testament from A to Z. And that means all the commandments not just the Ten. There are lots of commandment in the Old Testament that are not in the category of the Ten and they were openly told to Moses that they are for all time for example the commandments pertaining to the Building of the Temple and the bringing of sacrifices.

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.

 I assume the business atmosphere in the USA will probably change for the better now. Until now business owners were getting slapped with more and more taxes and regulations, and so did not want to hire. The trouble with hiring anyone in such an environment is they can sue if they do not get hired; and if they get fired, they can also sue. 
I believe now business owners will be more open to hiring people 

The American Civil War

The Civil War  was religiously motivated. That is each side thought that the message of Christianity was more or less what they were saying were their motivations. But they did not say it was because of Christianity but that was the unspoken undercurrent. My opinion is that slavery is included in two commandments in the Torah. That is there is a positive command in the Old Testament to judge according to the laws of slavery. That is many things in the Old Testament have lots of details. But you do not count each detail as a separate command. So the whole idea of slavery is a positive command.

[The reason this is not usually stated is that Divine Law has not been  accepted  West for a long time. Nowadays even Natural Law is also not accepted.

This is the same today. The whole left wing of the protestant church is just as much anti Torah today. They are the ones that are upset that lots of Americans want to get back to the traditional values of the Torah

The Constitution was supposed to work with people that had values based on the Bible. I think that at least Jefferson thought that education also would be necessary. But this fact is little noted in the West. Much political debate assumes the kind of people that were weaned on Bible stories. It was noted this flaw in utilitarianism also. They assume something that is not at all to be assumed.

"Frum community" [the religious community]

The Hegelian idea of the State is very different from that of Howard Bloom and Hobbes. To Hegel the State is the manifestation of the Divine Idea on earth [borrowed as such by Rav Kook and to a lesser extent by Herzel.].
To Howard Bloom it is an idol. (The Leviathan.)

To go into this might be a good idea but for now let me just say to the "frum community" [the religious community] the prime mitzvah is to be part of their community. To my way of thinking, the primary sin is to be part of the frum community. It is pure idolatry, and has nothing to do with the holy Torah. It is the Lucifer Principle that swallows one's soul and absorbs it into the idol, the dark side (sitra achra). The way they get one to join is by promising things: (1) money and (2) a shiduch and (3) outward appearance of Torah. [The religious world sadlly is filled with familiar spirits.]

The way to be saved is by "יאוש" to give up all hope. Not to keep on hoping everything will be fine if you join them [as they tell you]. Just the opposite. To realize that the ways things are is the way they are supposed to be. Things did not work out because God was trying to get you to a broken spirit. To die to the things of this world and to live for Him alone.

The way to live for God is to learn and keep the Torah, the Old Testament and the two Talmuds that provide the rigorous painstakingly worked out explanation of how to go about keeping Torah. But that has nothing to do with the frum world which is a deception and scam and filled with familiar spirits and kundalini spirits.

If you let the frum community into your life, they will steal you blind (of your spouse and children and money) and leave you to rot in the wind, because they have no conscious and no soul. [As I know myself and have heard from Meirav, the major of  a frum city {Bethar} in Israel, in exactly those words: "They have no conscious" אין להם שום מצפון.] [I recall Merav had another term he used for the frum world "חיות" animals while referring to his position of having to deal with them as major of the city..]

The appearance of observing Torah is a scam in order to get money out of secular Jews. You have to inspect what kind of people are the fruits of these communities. If the fruit is rotten, you know the community itself is sick and demon filled. 


However I must make an exception for the few sincere places that truly try to keep the Torah with no pretense like the great Litvak Yeshivas in NY (Mir Torah VeDaat, Chaim Berlin) and a few in Israel like Ponovicth. [The Mir in Israel is not  a yeshiva but a bus station. Most yeshivas in Israel are  just businesses and have unclean spirits.] The good places are the Mizrachi types of places like the "Merkaz" of Rav Kook. I think the name they go by is "Bnei Akiva."

[I should mention that the Mizrachi Rav Kook path  mainly appeals to me because it is in essence the path of learning the Oral and Written Law of the Torah plus Physics and Metaphysics plus learning a vocation. ]

 (I should mention the most essential commentary Torah book on the Rambam  is the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.]

I had a few little pieces of advice I wanted to share. I had lost everything. And yet God still kept me and protected me. The religious world was truly full of snakes and scorpions and I had put all my eggs into that basket. So when the true nature of the religious world revealed itself in all its nasty, perverted glory I found it necessary to hold onto certain basic things.

These are the two things I recommend. (1) Speak the truth at all cost. (2) Say the 13 principles faith of the Rambam every day. I used to do  this right when I got up in the morning.

So I believe hanging on to faith and truth are sufficient to bring others through their difficulties also from my own experience.


The religious world should really be called the world of delusion. They keep telling you and themselves everything will be fine if you listen to them. First of all they are lying. They do not have the holy Torah. 
[I do make an exception for the authentic Litvak yeshivas like Ponovitch and Brisk. If you are not in the area of a place of real Torah then the best thing is to learn Torah at home. That is the Tenach and the two Talmuds. [If you have been through it once then to do Tosphot.] [I should add that my general approach is that of the Rambam to emphasize the learning of the Oral and Written Law and Physics and Metaphysics. The short way to do that is to do the Mishne Torah with the Keseph Mishne and modern Physics and the Metaphysics of Aristotle.]

There is nowadays a great need to discern what is true tradition and what is false. With the great profusion of false Torah from teachers of the dark Side, it is necessary to limit the set.