Money and Torah just do not mix. When Torah gets to be a business, it turns sour.

I would like to suggest a new beginning. Something like a yeshiva based on the Gra. But not a yeshiva in the modern sense where people get paid. The is just too much a temptation to use yeshivas as ways of getting money from state of Israel .Money and Torah just do not mix. So what one ought to start is a Beit Midrash HaGra. The reason is that the term implies a place where people can come to study Torah but do not get paid for doing so.
In fact the whole yeshiva thing has really worn out its welcome. It started out without the sanction of the Gra because he knew that it would deteriorate into a money making enterprise.

And if Slavery (forced work without compensation) is so wrong, then why do black people not mind forcing white people to work for their free welfare checks?

Once you agree that slavery was some terrible evil then you have already lost the argument. Better to go along with what is open in the Bible--that Slavery is OK as long as the slave is not abused. Just forced to work. All England were more or less slaves under William the Conqueror. So were all Europeans under their lords in the feudal system.


The South was right. After all in the Bible there are Hebrew slaves and Gentile slaves. This is OK. The laws however are different for each one. [Hebrew slaves are let go after seven years automatically. A Gentile slave is never free until his master accepts money to free him, or gives the slave a document that says he is freed or there is injury of limb.] But it really goes against the Bible to say that a law of God was wrong.

[However slavery is an important issue because the simple claim that it is unjust mean automatically that one does not believe in the Bible.] 

And if Slavery (forced work without compensation) is so wrong, then why do black people not mind forcing white people to work for their free welfare checks?

If you look at the effect of England on the world you can not help but be astonished. Whatever it touched became prosperous and flourished. The USA, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, India, South Africa etc.

If you look at the effect of England on the world you can not help but be astonished. Whatever it touched became prosperous and flourished. The USA, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, India, South Africa etc. Count the USA as an extension of England and the effect goes further. [Japan after accepting an English kind of government.] [But take away the effect of England then things fall apart quickly.]]

One thing that is so astonishing about this is that there was nothing in the development of England that had anything to do with being planned. Not philosophy nor any political theory. [John Locke simply came to explain what had happened before him.]

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Some of the concepts of the Ari come from verses of the Torah  and the Sefer Yetzira, not necessarily from the book of the Zohar. The first three seferot from Mishlei 3 and the seven lower sepherot from Chronicles. ["God by his wisdom founded the earth by his understanding etc."].To you Lord is the greatness and the power and the beauty etc.
However the basic scheme comes from Plotinus. Nothing is wrong with that, but that does not mean that the basic concepts were found in Torah. 

You can wonder about mixing belief systems. When the Rambam combined Aristotle with Torah, that must have seemed at the time like mixing apples and oranges. However you would not ask that if one would apply that principle to Torah and Medicine. It seems like they deal with two different areas. But Aristotle's Metaphysics must have seemed to some people as not really a different area than Torah but rather a conflicting area.
It is hard to come up with a good rule of thumb about this.

"מחאה" (to object to wrong doing)

It was pointed out to me once by Leibel [the son of the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir Rav Shmuel Berenbaum] that there is an obligation of "מחאה" (to object to wrong doing--even when it seems you will not be listened to.]
In fact you see that in the Gemara in the events about Kamza and Bar Kamza. There was some wrong act that was done. But that act was not the cause of the fate of the Temple to be destroyed. Rather the fact that the sages of the time did not object to that act.
You see this also in the Old Testament with the tribe of Benjamin that did not object to the treatment of the concubine at Giva. And in that case God himself revealed to Israel to continue wiping out that tribe because of the fact that they did not object to wrong doing.

Similarly you can see why the Gra would have signed the letter of excommunication. Same reason. To object to evil--even if you know you will not be listened to.