The West has been thinking of Russia as a nobody ever since the end of the Cold War. But by constantly poking at the Bear, the bear will eventually react. A wise policy would be to notice that the Ukraine has never been an independent state--ever. Not when the area was owned by Poland, nor under the  Romanovs. All you have is a population that feels and thinks Russian, and that other unfortunate part of Ukraine that has always been addicted to murder and crime. Without the firm rule of Russia, they have always been a terror even to Ukrainians. Even now they force the common people to acquiesce to the false profile  that is presented as freedom fighters. Ukraine is divided between the bullies and the bullied. And if the bullied speak up they lose their lives.

 I recall the Cuban Missile Crisis. My mom and dad took us kids along with them to look at buying some underground shelter. [Even though we lived on the West Coast.] And all through the 60's, 70'sand 80's the power and ability of the USSR was never in doubt. No one thought starting a war with the USSR was a good idea. Everyone thought peace and cooperation with Russia was the most important thing.

Why is it that now people think that they can keep on poking the bear without worry? One reason is the fact that Russian advance into Ukraine has been slow. But that does not signal weakness but rather the desire to reincorporate the Ukraine back into the orbit of Russia. There is no desire to ruin things, but to keep everything intact, but just have rule from Moscow.

And for years I asked people what they thought about how things were in the Ukraine as different from the time of the USSR.  This I asked from the women at the markets, from the owners of stores. From random people where ever I went in the Ukraine. And the answer was always the same. "Things were better then than now." [I.e. better under the USSR than the more recent governments.]]

I have been thinking about a a certain problem in the Rambam Laws of Lender and Borrower perek/chapter 19 law 8 for a while but have not come to any clarity.

The basic subject is this: You have a lender and borrower. The borrower sells  a field to a buyer. Then the lender writs to that buyer "דין ודברים אין לי עמך" "You have no obligations to me." Then that buyer sells the field to a second buyer.  Then if the if borrower does not pay the debt, the lender can go to the second buyer and take the field as a repayment of the debt. [This is the regular law of שיעבוד that any property owned by a person at the time of a loan is obligated to pay that loan even if he sells that property or gives it away. The lender can always go after it if there is nothing owned by the borrower.]  

The problem that I have is that then the first buyer can go and collect the field from the lender because he will have lost the money that he had to pay to the second buyer  because of the loss of the field to the lender. I do not see why the first buyer can go and collect the field from the lender, for the lender did not collect the field from him. All he wrote was, "I will not collect the field from you," and he didn't..

I noticed this subject in the Avi Ezri and it is also brought in the Chidushei HaRambam of Rav Chaim of Brisk but how they explain this is not clear to me. I was hoping that thinking about this while at the sea shore would help but so far I have zero ideas.

Baali Teshuva have discovered that the religious enticement by a show of family values is false.

 The age of disappointment. The religious world has made an impression that they are for family values. But this false. They are for power over secular Jews.. They might try to give this impression because the Conservatives have in fat tried to support family values in the face of the left trying to destroy the family. But that is the definition of cult--trying to bring in people to support their power structure by means of a lie and false claim if moral superiority.

In the West the family collapsed. So it made sense for the religious world to pretend to fill the gap. What I discovered was that the claim of the religious as being for family vales is a borrowed value from the Republicans..When they have a chance to destroy the families baali teshuva they do so.

The religious found it useful to use the fiction of support of family values by means of Shabat Table Judaism, the whole thing is Potemkin façade. They are trying to show a value they have borrowed from the Conservatives and Republicans.

 After high school, I went to Shar Yashuv in NY and then the Mir. I learned a lot from both the great rosh yeshiva in Shar Yashuv, Rav Naphtali Yeager and the rosh yeshiva of the Mir, Rav Shmuel Berenbaum.

But I was a wild card sort,  and could not stay put. So even when I tried to get back to the straight Torah path of the Litvak Yeshiva World, I did not manage to reinsert myself into learning Torah.

So I went instead to the Polytechnic Institute of NYU to major in Physics. Yet, I always have a tinge of regret that I did not just stick with the straight Litvak approach. And this actually reminds me of the events that led up to R. Yochanan [of the Gemara] becoming the great sage that he was. When a young man he was learning with his learning partner, and they were in extreme poverty. So they thought perhaps it was time to get up and find a job. They were at that time sitting by a wall. R. Yochanan heard the angels saying one to the other, "Let us knock this wall over them, because they are thinking of leaving off learning Torah to find work."   The other angel said, "No. Let's leave them alone because one of them will stick with it no matter what." R Yochanan heard this exchange, His learning partner did not. So R Yochanan stuck with learning while the other went out and became a business man.

 There is a lot of sort of dumb stuff going on, like many that think war with Russia is a good idea  but I think it is better not to comment on it because Rav Nahman said אף על פי שתוכחה היא דבר גדול ומוטל על כל אחד להוכיח את חברו כשרואה בו דבר שאינו הגון, אם כל זה לאו כל אדם ראוי להוכיח  Even though rebuke is a great thing and it is an obligation on everyone to rebuke their fellow man when they see in him something not proper, still, not everyone is fit to rebuke.

[This seems to be a difference between Rav Nahman and the Gra. To Rav Nahman the emphasis is to say nothing unless one is sure to help the situation by means of rebuke. To the Gra one at least has to say one time his or her opinion that what the other s doing is wrong.

 The very first Litvak Yeshiva I was at [Shar Yashuv in N.Y.] emphasized learning in depth along with lots of review. And recently I have noticed that this seems to be a  correct approach for me. I might go through a Tosphot or a piece in the Avi Ezri or the Chidushim of Rav Haim of Brisk and not understand a word even if I do it lots of times. The only way that I seem to be able to get the idea is when I go through it from beginning to end, and the next day I do it again and so on and so forth the next day--- and this might go on for weeks or a month.  I know this is not how anyone else learns, but this seems to work for me. 

And I noted this idea of review also in Mathematics and Physics. It seems to help if I do one whole section many times over a long period of time.

Later I was at the Mir for a few years and there the emphasis was a bit different with the afternoon being devoted to fast learning. There that was not just saying the words and going on, but it was fast in that one would do Tosphot a few times and then go on.