Rambam

With the Rambam there is a kind of four fold program. The Oral Law, the Written Law of Moses, Physics of Aristotle and the Metaphysics of Aristotle. I would like to say that this is only an introduction. That is, I think the Rambam would agree that after one has finished the Mishne Torah of the Rambam (which he held contained the Oral Torah) that after that he should spend his time  on Gemara, Modern Physics, and Metaphysics as it was developed later by Kant.


The Rambam did hold his book the Mishna Torah is sufficient to know the Oral Torah, however look in the "Laws of Talmud Torah" where he explains that one divides his day into three parts, and one is for deepening one's understanding of the Oral Law, and also the subjects that he briefly touched on in the beginning of Mishne Torah which are called ''Pardes'' and are in fact the areas of Physics and Metaphysics.[He goes into more detail in the Guide.]

If one has a authentic Litvak yeshiva in his area, he should definitely go there to learn Torah,-- especially with a learning partner. But if not, the best thing is to make one's own space into a place of Torah.

I also am a big fan of speed reading in Torah. That is-- to say the words and to go on. That is to have a session in Gemara, Rashi Tosphot in such a way that he will eventually finish the whole Oral Law i.e. the two Talmuds, Tosephta, Sifra, Sifri, and the Midrashim. What one does not understand here, they will remind  him of in the next world. I am also a big fan of Rav Shach and Reb Israel Salanter, and thus I believe that everyone should go through the entire Avi Ezri of Rav Shach at least once, and all the books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter on Torah Ethics (plus the books of Musar of Rav Yaakov Abuchatzeira the grandfather of Bava Sali).

[To understand the Rambam I also think it is important to learn the books and letters of his son, Reb Avraham, and of course the very important Guide for the Perplexed. Some people are so perplexed they do not even know they need the Guide. Reb Avraham Abulafia wrote that the secret of the final redemption is contained in the first forty chapters of the Guide.


In case it is not clear what I was saying: The Mishne Torah is good as an introduction to Torah, but it is a terrible idea to decide any halacha without knowledge of the Gemara and the source of the halacha as the Mahrasha and Maharshal wrote and many others.
[As for learning Halacha as they do  in Authentic Litvak Yeshivas for 45 minutes in the morning my basic feeling is to get through the entire Tur, Beit Yoseph, and Bach. I consider that the prime Halacha book. Though I admit the Aruch HaShulchan is a close second.] [For the halacha session in the morning I recommend one of three things: (3)  Rambam Keseph Mishna, (2) Tur, Beit Yoseph (3) Shulchan Aruch with the Beer Hetev.


You can bring support to this idea of the Rambam from the LM Vol II. chapter 12 of Reb Nachman. This idea is this :Even though God's glory fills the whole world there are areas where his glory does not reach. מקומות המטונפים as it says in a verse וכבודי לאחר לא אתן. But since nothing can exist without God's making it exist every second how can those places exist? Answer: They get there life force from the מאמר הסתום. That is in Genesis it says for each act of creation He said" The tenth statement is the very first statement In the beginning God created heaven and earth. That is the highest statement corresponding to the sephirah of Keter the crown. So when one turn to God from those places where God's glory is not apparent he gets sustenance from the highest level of the Crown and brings up all the fallen souls. 

There are many other places in the LM where you could bring support to the Rambam like what Reb Nachman says about stories. This is to be expected because the thought of the Rambam and Reb Nachman are in general highly correlated. 

Oral and Written Law, plus Physics [Modern] and Metaphysics [of Aristotle].

 Torah is not about mystical experience. However as a result of true attachment with God one can have as a side thing the experience of oneness with God. Devekut.

But it is not experience -it is a kind of  knowledge and sense of meaning.  It is what I felt in learning Torah, and it certainly is what learning Torah is all about. Yet, it is a kind of thing which has a close connection with morality. And it is on one hand highly powerful. It is the meaning of life. It is certainly not mystical experience. 

This area of value is on one hand the most powerful thing in the world and in any person's life, and yet the most delicate and sensitive and can be destroyed simply by the slightest whisper.
The approach of the Rambam --to learn the Oral and Written Law, plus Physics [Modern] and Metaphysics [of Aristotle]. There I seek the luminosity and numinous value that is hidden in the ten statements of Creation in which the light of Torah is hidden. 


[That is the Rambam himself saw that what people consider Torah alone is not enough to come to what the Torah requires of man.]



Faith plus reason had early beginnings even before the middle ages-with Saadia Gaon.



Faith in the wise is one of the 48 ways the Torah is acquired in  Pirkei Avot. The question is that of interpretation. What does the Torah mean? And who has the right to interpret it? The Talmud to a large degree has settled this question. "Divine Spirit" is not the way to interpret the Torah. Only rigorous painstaking reason as we see in the Talmud and Tosphot.

The influence of Protestantism  however is very apparent nowadays that people think they have the right to interpret the Torah on their own. This has very terrible implications. (1) Divine spirit is claimed as a guide which in practice means to ignore what the Torah actually says. (2) People claim authority though in fact ignorant  of Torah.

A Deadly MRSA Spread to Everyone by Homosexuals

A Deadly MRSA Spread to Everyone by Homosexuals

"A flesh-eating form of pneumonia that is easily passed between healthy people on public transport is spreading across the UK, experts have warned.

The deadly strain of MRSA called USA300 passes easily through skin-to-skin contact. It can also survive on surfaces and so has the potential to be picked up on crowded buses and tubes."

"It was first seen in the U.S but cases are now being reported in the community and not just hospitals in Britain." (Daily Mail, 2 February 2012)

"Preliminary results from a small Spanish study in December 2010 indicates that 75% of gay men are carrying the Human Papilomo Virus (HPV). This is a significant marker for HIV and it causes cervical cancer in women and penile cancer in men. Similarly, a 2007 American study showed that homosexuals are spreading a new highly-infectious and extremely dangerous bacterium called MRSA USA300 which can only be treated with rare drugs. The bacterium manufactures toxins that can cause necrosis - the death of surrounding tissue." (LifeSiteNews, 2 December 2010)

The study's authors note that the strong link between unhealthy behavior, particularly among homosexuals, is the driving force behind the disease. "Spread of the USA300 clone among men who have sex with men is associated with high-risk behaviors, including use of methamphetamine and other illicit drugs, sex with multiple partners, participation in a group sex party, use of the internet for sexual contacts, skin-abrading sex, and history of sexually transmitted infections," the authors write. (LifeSiteNews, 15 January 2008) also (Annals of Internal Medicine, 19 February 2008)

"The same patterns of increased sexual risk behaviors among men who have sex with men - which have resulted from changes in beliefs regarding HIV disease severity with the availability of potent antiretroviral therapy - have been driving resurgent epidemics of early syphilis, rectal gonorrhea, and new HIV infections in San Francisco, Boston, and elsewhere," add the researchers.

The study, which focused on clinics in the San Francisco area, found that in some cases up to 39% of patients had the MRSA USA300 infections in their genitals or buttocks, although the disease can be spread by general skin-to-skin contact and can even be picked up from surfaces.

This indicates that what was once confined to American homosexuals has now reached out to ordinary folk in the community.

What is apparent is that the medical professionals are not disclosing the true source of this terrible disease.

Comments from K B Napier, Founder, Bible Theology Ministries:

"What later became known as AIDS was ONLY found in homosexuals, when it was discovered in the 1980s. It spread ONLY by homosexual sexual activity, but quickly affected those they infected, such as prostitutes, wives, babies, girlfriends, and people who needed blood transfusions. At the time the government REFUSED to identify homosexuals as the ONLY source of AIDS, for fear of a 'backlash' (though they deserved a backlash). The homosexual connection was completely hushed up and medics were given bad advice. The result is that HIV and AIDS are now firmly embedded in all societies and kills millions.

This new MRSA is different, because it can spread without sexual contact, just by touching skin or things touched by infected people. When AIDS first became known, brave experts advised that homosexuals with the disease should be isolated. But, pro-gay propaganda got rid of common sense, and the results are seen around us today with huge social and financial costs.

With this new and wickedly-caused disease, certain things should be done:

As the first person to examine the spread of AIDS from a Christian perspective, I suggested strongly that we should never shake hands with homosexuals, because HIV passes by way of bodily fluids. Of course, this was scorned at the time. As I wrote in the Educational Times, teachers who come across a child with HIV, who bleeds in a schoolyard accident, should treat the child with extreme caution. It was not the child's fault to carry HIV, but HIV has deadly consequences and so teachers should wear gloves, etc.

Now, this 'no-touch' policy is vital. If you know someone is homosexual, do not allow body contact, such as hand-shakes. Also beware of food handled by homosexuals, homosexuals who sell in shops and handle your goods; perhaps we will soon have to resort to wearing gloves that can be easily washed – but remember that there is no cure for this new MRSA and it can lead to death very quickly. Watch out for homosexuals in tube trains, trains, and so on, and do not touch what they touch. There may be a need for many more strategies, but that will suffice for now. None can say this is 'hate speech', when the cause and spread is already known!

Of course, homosexuals and government will cry out in horror. Frankly, I don't care about their sensibilities. They (less than 1%) have brought one great scourge - AIDS - on the people of the world. Now, they have brought us something even worse. It is not time to be pro-gay and to be 'sensitive'. They have produced this new foul disease by indulging in immoral sexual acts. San Francisco homosexuals began this evil by having AIDS sex parties in which infected and non-infected gays had sex with each other in orgies... those who were not yet infected saw it as 'exciting', and those who already had AIDS called passing HIV on to others 'gifting'!!

We have nothing to thank homosexuals for – but plenty to blame them for. If the new MRSA grips society, we must at last stand up and fight for our most basic of health demands. And if this means isolating them, then so be it. It took Pharaoh's eldest son to die as the angel of death passed over, killing the first born of everything and everyone, before he let the Hebrews go. Perhaps this new disease will at last cause governments to see how stupid they have been in giving homosexuals so much legal freedom, as potentially many thousands become seriously ill or die because of homosexual immorality.

The avoidance of disease is common-sense, therefore the suggested ways to avoid the new MRSA is just medical good practice. The same advice would apply to ANY persons with a communicable disease.”

s74 B flat Major 6-8 time Andante

Musar {Torah Ethics} and Halacha.

My approach to Musar is to emphasize the classical books of Torah ethics from the Middle Ages. That is what would be called the rational approach. The more mystic approach which got into Musar  I tend to think was an unfortunate detour. No offence to the Ari {Isaac Luria} but that approach tends to fanaticism and delusion.   When I was more involved with Musar I tried to go through all the basic set of the books written by the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter and this I still think is important.

[When Bava Sali came to Yerushalim on on of his first visits and people came to him to get a blessing he told his gabai [servant] not to let any kabalist in.]

My approach to  Halacha is to learn Gemara and to depend on דינא דתלמוד the law of the Talmud. Only after learning the subject in the Gemara itself does it make sense to me to look up how the Tur Beit Yoseph understands any given subject. There are no short cuts. And see the Nefesh haChaim "אין לנו אלא דינא דגמרא". "The only thing that matters is the law of the Gemara." He wrote this to a rav that he knew had made a wrong decision.

The thing to be careful of is religious people that use the appearance of Torah to hide their cults.


In any case to come to fear of God which is one of the major goals of Musar is not solely by learning Musar but Physics and Metaphysics also as the Rambam stated clearly in the Mishna Torah and the Guide and hints to in many place. Musar is important but to the Rambam it is not the real source of fear of God.

S72 D major

[frivorce] frivolous divorce

I went through this [frivorce] (see this link) in around 1990. This left me with not just a personal problem but also an intellectual problem. That is how to synthesis the information in order to create a more accurate worldview and then to act properly based on this new world view. I never got very far with this, But i found an approximate solution based on the opinion of Maimonides and Rabbainu Yona from Granada. That is to concentrate of personal improvement and not look at what is wrong with others but rather to find what is wrong with me and to seek to improve myself. That is to learn the Law of Moses, Physics and Metaphysics. That is I attributed my problems to some kind of lack of understanding and some kind of attitude problem and some kind of lack of good character within myself. I figured if I could change myself for the better then the whole world would change for the better. But I needed an accurate idea of what is good character. So I needed to synthesize   information that I was getting from reading the Law of Moses (Written and Oral) and reading about the world and also experience. 

Appendix:

(1)(The main thing is not to affix blame on anyone but rather to work on self improvement and to stay away from  evil people that will harm you and your family if given half a chance. This is part of the Mizvah of not saying Lashon Hara which comes in the same place in the Torah along with the mizvah do not stand by the blood of your neighbor. That is there is an obligation to warn people about dangerous people-which means mainly religious teachers whom I find to be highly dangerous for marriage and families.]


(4) [When the Rambam Maimonides refers to Physics and Metaphysics he says he is talking about these subjects as understood by the ancient Greeks.]  My opinion about it is it would  include Kant and  Hegel.

 My impression always was there is a big difference between authentic Torah at Lithuanian yeshivas,- and the false Torah of the Sitra Achra of the religious world. [Reb Nachman did warn about religious teachers an considered them as a rule to be quite evil. His term for them was "Torah scholars that are demons  תלמידי חכמים שדים יהודים" This sounds harsh but in fact seem like an accurate description of the vast majority of them.].  The main difference is that the ultra religious world makes up tons of rituals which have nothing to do with Torah and they claim it is Torah. The Lithuanian world tends to focus on what the Torah actually requires.

s73 A minor   s73 in midi

The Closing of the American Mind

It was Allen Bloom [The Closing of the American Mind] that thought there was a direct contradiction between two opposite flows of thought enlightenment and anti enlightenment that were coming int direct collision in the USA universities in the 1990's. His solution  was to learn the Republic of Plato along with what was called the great books.

Why would he have not mentioned learning Torah? Certainly the Gra would have. Is it possible that he had noticed that Torah alone does not produce the kind of answers he was looking for?

It seems the Gra and the Rambam both must have seen the same.
The program of the Rambam would be to learn the יד החזקה the Mishne Torah, Physics and Metaphysics. The Gra said that to the degree that one is lacking any knowledge of the seven wisdoms to that degree he will be lacking in knowledge of Torah.


So they are both thinking of  a polynomic theory of value. Torah provides an "in" into Numinous value. But they wanted a balance of values. 

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is an amazing book but I think a little unfair to the Middle Ages.Work then was being done on lots of fronts like Faith and Reason and lots of areas. Progress was being made that made things later possible. One example that comes to mind is water technology. That was a total Medieval invention. And when electricity was discovered it was easy to transfer from water to electricity.

It is common to find people that do not respect the Middle Ages. One of my first lessons in yeshiva as to correct me from that attitude. "Rishonim" are not just considered more logically rigorous than achronim. They are in fact more logically rigorous.

The Ari [Isaac Luria] brings this idea that a person can be basically good or even 99% good but have some evil core.

There is evil in quantity and evil in quality. The Ari [Isaac Luria] brings this idea that a person can be basically good or even 99% good but have some evil core. This gives a way to judge people on the scales of merit. For in fact most people that we see are evil simply choose a little less good that their environment would have dictated. Thus even if you see yourself as much better than them, this is only because your upbringing was better. not because you choose better.

Being out in nature and being able to survive

In California when I was growing up there there was a kind of ideal between nature and city life.  Being out in nature and being able to survive and thrive were considered just as much a part of growing up  as academic studies. Being out in Nature was considered as a great ideal all in itself. This was universal and also it went parallel to my own father's basic approach of emphasizing being self sufficient.


The way most American parents expressed this value was by in fact going out to nature every weekend which as the unspoken but universal rule in the USA. Jewish people did this on Sunday and Shabat was to learn Torah and Christians did this on Saturday and went to church on Sunday. The other very common thing was the Boy Scouts. Nowadays you would have to find an alternative this this.
[I have to admit I found keeping this balance very hard. I never got very far in the Boy Scots and even in academic studies I found myself very challenged.] Some Jews were just naturals at this type of thing. Like my Dad who was pretty much good at anything he tried to do. And also my father in law [Bill Finn] who was in Poland at the beginning of WWII and escaped from the Nazis to the eastern front and was taken by the Red Army and since he had German citizenship he was sent to Siberia. There he was so good at fixing anything he was made head of the work camp there. Later he got to NY and worked for Donald Trump's father.

The path of Torah

The path of Torah is to have  session of Gemara [Talmud] one hour per day and one half hour of Musar.
[The hour session can be review of one page for a few months or even one Tosphot, or it can be to make lots of progress by doing a few pages per day.] I should confess that I have had great difficulty in trying to do this. I would love to have an hour session in Gemara and a half hour of Musar. I am at this point very much longing to do this, but so far I have not been able to. But I see the desire in itself as being a great thing. The desire to do the right thing and the knowledge of what it is is already a big step in the right direction. 

s64 F major s64 in midi

Kabalah tends to lead to a kind of world view in which the experience and high LSD high gives validity to what ever the ideas are.

The trouble with Kabalah. The constant craving for spiritual experience,as is attested to by all the great mystics,is addictive, like a drug. If the experiences are indeed spurious,they will never ultimately satisfy the soul that hungers after them, and will be required in stronger and stronger doses. 

But Kabalah became embedded in Musar from the  start. It is an inevitable step from traditional Musar into Kabalah and from their into worlds of  delusions of grandeur.

Not that this was the case with authentic mystics like the Ari or Bava Sali.

You can see why Reb Chaim  and Brisk did not have Musar as part of the daily session. Kabalah tends to lead to a kind of world view in which the experience and high LSD high gives validity to what ever the ideas are.   

There is a problem with the slippery slope.People can not change the Torah openly because no one would accept that. Instead they claim mystic visions and explain the Torah in the way they want. That way they think they can nullify the Torah and be accepted.


Once the pursuit of spiritual power replaces the striving after straight Torah, then the flood gates have been opened up and it is only a matter of time before there will be an overwhelming confusion of spirits,and error and division will be the order of the day. The world of the religious today is sadlly overwhelming from the Dark Side Sitra Achra. That is not do there there is no spirit at work there. However it is not the spirit of God but rather the occult.

divorce

The fact that divorce was accepted in the Protestant  world  made it acceptable in the Jewish world also. Divorce would be the classic example of where shaming someone worked very well. People would whisper "she is divorced" under their breath as if some horrible unspeakable monster had been let loose.  Poland is a mainly Catholic country  the fact that divorce was considered as a horrible demon had the effect on Jews that Jews also simply did not get divorced except under extreme circumstances.

when they throw out the Law of Moses

I noticed people have some kind of moral code automatically. I have long thought that when they throw out the Law of Moses they do not become free but rather adopt some other set of values with the same kind of emotional fervor that you see in religious fanatics. Just the fanaticism is directed in different directions.  

They adopt some other thing to be fanatic about.

The basic idea of Howard Bloom in his book the Lucifer principle,-- that is the centrality of the social organism and the fact that the social organism is formed and based on some social meme [unit of social information.]

 So to people throw out the Law of God and find some other meme to coagulate around.

s71   [S71 in midi format]

Musar Movement [Learning Ethics]

 In the Musar Movement of Reb Israel Salanter there was a subtle shift of emphasis from the axis of Musar during the Middle Ages to a new axis. In the Middle Ages the axis was a balance between Reason and Revelation. [That is Faith and Reason.]
The Musar Movement itself emphasized fear of God and good character traits. 
[Even though each one of the great Musar Yeshivas built by the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter all had a different focus, still the ground level  was these two principles--Fear of God and work on good character. 

No one really knows any more how they worked on character. You can try to dig up hint in the books that they wrote but it is not at all clear. Nowadays the most you have is a few minutes of learning Musar before Mincha and Maariv.   

I can not say I am very happy with this. The average session of Musar in the great Musar yeshivas was 40  minutes and 45 minutes.

But I am myself no "Baal Musar" If I could I would rather focus on the points brought out and emphasized by three individuals. The Gra, Reb Israel Salanter, and Rav Shach. That is these three points:(1) Learning Torah (2) Learning Musar (3) combining the Rambam with the Gemara.  [If possible it makes sense to make a commitment to learning Gemara an hour every day and Musar and the Tur, Beit Joseph in such a way as to get through the basic material from cover to cover, every last word.What one does not understand in this world he will understand in the next world.] The Talmud itself ought to be done with Tosphot and the Mahrasha. That is to have one session in which you keep at the same Tosphot for days and weeks until it starts to become clear.

The fundamental problem with yeshivas

The fundamental problem with yeshivas involves the difference between them and let's say for example medical school. The difference is one trains doctors and thus asks government funding. The other asks for public money for what reason? To enable people to learn Torah.

Therefore for yeshivas there is no excuse to throw out people that are there to learn Torah. The fact that they do throw out people shows they are not in fact existing to provide a place for people who want to learn Torah, but rather to make money by providing a show of learning Torah. 


You could throw out all modern day yeshivas and not lose a thing. They are mostly all scams using the show of Torah to make money. But still there are places that are magnets for sincere people like Ponovitch and the great NY yeshivas, Chaim Berlin, Mir, Torah VeDaat. 


Since the religious are using Torah to make money, the Torah has no effect on their character except to make them worse and then when people see them acting like jerks (as is their custom), that gives people a bad impression about the holy Torah itself. That is called in Hebrew a חילול השם "a desecration of the Divine Name."


[For the sake of being fair there are offshoots of Ponovicth that are admirable. That is people that learned there and then went on to start their own Beit Midrash elsewhere. Same with the NY yeshivas. Just for one example of a yeshiva I was impressed with is the place of Rav Montag in Netivot which definitely had the real spirit of Torah as far as I could tell. 


 I should mention Rav Freifeld's place in Far Rockaway which I felt had the spirit of Torah very strongly and the level of learning was very high. It starts with beginners but reaches into very high levels of learning.
I should mention that I am allowed to write this because:

Shaming people is a permissible tactic. In the book on laws of slander by Israel Meir Hakohen he makes a distinction if it is for obligations between man and his fellow man and obligations towards God. See chapter 4 and the difference between there and ch 7.
מפרסמים את הרשעים מפני חילול השם There seems to be some difference between shaming for sins that are between man and fellow man an sin between God and man. The later case has clear permission from the book on slander by Israel Meir HaKohen in ch 4 as long as the sin is not just a one time event but done on purpose on a constant basis and private rebuke has done nothing.

USA

The USA is the result of a kind of ideological movement started by Hobbes and John Locke. It had a basis in Aquinas and Maimonides in terms of natural law. The very essence of American identity is bound up and tied with these thinkers.

What people are complaining about on this blog is the kind of Leftism based on Rousseau.

The difference is vast. But one thing that does stand out is Rousseau does not have any human rights. He has only the General Will. That is his center of gravity. To John Lock the beginning point is the rights of the individual.
But these rights are not more than the Ten Commandments translated from what one  person can not do to another to being right that the individual has not to be stolen from. 

But the difference between rights to get free stuff and rights to be left alone has been obliterated in the USA.

s70 G major  [s70 in midi]

To marry a virgin

The world has changed. It used to be known that being a virgin was very important. The Ketubah [marriage contract] is 100 (zuz) for a girl that is not a virgin, and 200 for a virgin. Also If he was tricked into thinking she is a virgin the marriage is null to some opinions. And at least she loses her Ketubah. [Either the whole thing or just 100. That is also an object of debate. See Ketubot pages 9 and 13.] From the first act of sex there is always something left inside according to the Ari [Isaac Luria]. However I heard that the Ben Ish Hai said that is only when the first act is after marriage. [That is not from the actual book the Ben Ish Hai, but from some other book that he wrote on the Ari. I assume he must have some source for that opinion. Maybe he saw it somewhere in Reb Hayim Vital?]
I forgot all the details. But, at any rate, this is a very big deal.

"Western Civilization."

"Christendom" used to be the term for it. Now it is called "Western Civilization." The problem is the weight of intellectual evidence weighed on the side of Christianity during the Middle Ages with heavy hitters like Aquinas et al.
The after that period the weight of Reason and Evidence did not go in that direction. This was not the fault of the Enlightenment philosophers. It was just the way things were. You certainty can not accuse John Locke of having a bad heart or evil intentions.  There was and still is a crisis of faith that no one has been able to mend.

To a great degree this had a parallel in the Jewish world also. And the advice there by Israel Salanter was to learn the books of Mediaeval Ethics. This to me seems highly applicable to the Christian world. That is to learn the books of classical Christianity, Augustine, Anslem etc. The reason is because everything starts in the mind. All deeds and all words and all attitudes start there. If you cultivate a good mind then you cultivate good deeds and good words. So learning the right kinds of things is the beginning of the correction.
Neo Reaction from Amerika: “They’ve essentially thrown out centuries of Christian tradition, practice, and scholarship in order to assert that here in the 21st Century, we’ve finally discovered the true doctrine, and it just so happens to be the one pushed by Christianity’s ideological enemies.”

Though not Christian myself, I have long thought that Christians have ignored Aquinas, Anselm, and Augustine at great loss to themselves and to everyone else. [I do not mean they ought to be Catholic.]

introspection can be bad for the health:

The trouble with psychology is that it makes people insane. 

"Indeed, introspection can be bad for the health: it is a road to “mental illness” (‘Illuminism and Terrorism’, 1798, [Immanuel Kant]

That means that talking about your problems with a psychologist or anyone in the related professions is the best way to go insane. Kant goes into great detail why this is the case.


People like to talk about their problems and about sex and all one needed to do to make money from this was to create the impression that doing this is good for them and then set yourself up  as one  whom to talk to. The terrible thing about this is that the real effect is just the opposite.

commitments

The reason I think making commitments to change one's deeds is a good things is this. It is based on something I learning with my telescope looking at the stars. I noticed that if u look directly that it gets out of focus. But if you look slightly to the side then the star is clear. Thus I see the idea of making commitments as a way of solving personal problems. That is: I see there are lots of problems in my life that I cannot solve. And I also see if I take the direct approach that usually backfires, or at least does nothing to solve the problem. Therefore I say like Rabbainu Yona in the Musar Book Shaari Teshuva that אין יסורים בלי עוון "there are no problems without sin." So it must be that the problems are coming from something that I am doing that I ought not to do, or from lack of doing something that I ought to do.

The study of Musar {Mediaeval Ethics} has helped me understand certain areas of improvement that I have needed to face. But as a general rule it is certain that Reb Israel Salanter would have said that if you are going to make any commitment to do anything it should be to learn Musar every day  for a certain length of time.
I have a lot of faith in this idea of Reb Israel Salanter and my older brother agreed with me when I mentioned it to him. Still I do not want to put too much into it. We do not want a scenario in which people are learning Musar and acting badly --  which would discredit the whole idea. Rather Musar is a simply a way of recognizing your own personal faults and working on them if you want to. It is no guarantee to have or to acquire  good character.  


It is a map but it is not the destination.

In any case commitments can not be things you pick out of a hat. They have to be things you anyway believe to your best knowledge that these are God's Will for you, but you just have not had the will power to do them. 

Leftism

I am no expert but a great deal of Leftism was attractive to people because they thought that it made sense. They had a few minor philosophers to go with and then some heavy hitters like Hegel. The only reason I am not a leftist myself is because of my own intellectual background which is more along the lines of the Talmud, Maimonides, Aristotle and then of utmost importance--Kant.  That is to say place Hegel on a lower level than Kant and also take the general approach of the people that developed Kant in a certain direction. That is not Hegel and not the Neo Kantians who took Kant in what I think is  a wrong direction. In any case in the long run I am saying Hegel did not prove his point and Leftism is based very much on Hegel. See for example the writings of Lenin on Hegel and also see Marx's Capital which is very much based on the labor theory of value -that something's value depends on how much work went into it.
In any case the Left used to have a case. But the judge of time and experience and Reason has thrown their case out of court.

Family history in California

The idea of my Dad in moving to California was to work for a company called Ford Aerospace. He had gotten there after work in NJ at an US Army base in Monmouth NJ where he was the head of the team that made the first Infra Red Camera. That got him into Life Magazine. Then McCarthy came there and started his anti communistic thing right there at that base  on Friday. The next Monday My Dad came in with Bernard Marcus and they were the only two people left on the team. Everyone else had been fired. That was about fifty engineers who were all Jewish plus one German fellow whose wife was Jewish. 

They were all rehired after the heat was off. But my Dad and Marcus were put off by the whole thing, and so accepted a job offer in CA. 

At that time he also worked on the U-2 camera.

  

After three years he invented in the garage a kind of copy machine that was super sharp based on x-rays and marketed it. After some time he sold the company and moved to Beverly Hills and worked on Laser Satellite Communication for Star Wars [SDI] at TRW.
That was the same time the KGB had a mole there. My Dad left that after about 5 years and right after that the mole was discovered and the company went under, and a major motion picture was made about the incident. [''The Falcon and the Snowman'' named after the two criminals that stole and old man Dad's inventions and other technology at TRW to the KGB.]

[After that I went to two great Litvak yeshivot in NY, Shar Yashuv and the Mir.--Both great but their approach to learning differed. shar Yashuv was more into in depth understanding of Tosphot and the depths on the page--like you can see in the Pnei Yehoshua. The Mir was definitely along the lines of Rav Chaim of Brisk--global issues like between Tosphot, Rambam and how the subject on the page relates to related issues throughout the Talmud.   

"No excuses."

There was a great comment on Dalrock one fellow describing father and his his experience in Medical school. His father had been a DI (drill instructor) and his favorite motto was, "No excuses."
So this guy in Medical school aced his first test. Then the professor decided grade on a bell curve and the next test he got was graded 30 out of 100. He called home expecting his mother to pick up the phone and give him some word of comfort. Instead his father picked up the phone. He said, ''I am never going to be a M.D. at this rate,'' and sobbed on for a minute of two; and then his father told him to buckle down and do the work and stop making excuses.

s68 D major  S65 D minor 6-8 time

[s68 in midi]  [s65 in midi]

Religious and secular cults

Going Clear was a book that my brother brought to the breakfast table and that reminded me of  a great thing about Scientology--that it is a secular cult.  So by study of Scientology one can come to grasp the characteristics of  cult without any religious overtones. But to get a clear view of what a cult is, I also found a certain Hindu religious cult to be helpful - that was Adi Da. 

I have mentioned before that to see what a cult is (and especially to see if the religious group one is involved with is really a cult), the best thing is to study these two groups, and the writings of people that were brave enough to leave the cult after being enslaved for many years.

[An important factor for me is that I can stomach them to some degree. Other cults are so bad that I simply can't read about them. Other cults also have religious overtones for me that are too close to my own beliefs, so I can't look at them objectively.]


 In Torah. there is  are  some mystic things going on. The best parts of that aspect also seem to be in the Middle Ages with  Avraham Abulafia. and later  on around the 1500's with Isaac Luria. Those two seem the best. There were two pretty great people after Isaac Luria which developed that tradition Shalom Sharabi and Yaakov Abuchatzaira. That is the basic outline of the best parts of those two traditions. 

The trouble with the mystic tradition is it fell into the Dark Side; and thus the world of Orthodox has a great deal of trouble because it mainly consists of cults that are claiming some exclusive access and knowledge of Isaac Luria. 

I do not know how to deal with these problems except by private prayer towards God--to pray and ask help in one's on language t be save from what one needs to be saved from. And to learn Musar. That is Torah books from the Middle Ages before the Dark Side gt to be  a part and almost the whole of Orthodox. 
 
I have to mention that God does not seem to answer prayer unless it comes with a change in deeds. Therefore I believe if you see God is far, then you need to try to determine what it is in your life not as God wills it, and to make a commitment to change.  

Not to take some good thing and accept it, but rather something that you already have good reason to believe is Gods will for you personally.
Personal failings you think you need to correct-the best thing is to make a commitment (without an oath) to correct.


That is there are things which are good to do as a general rule: learning Musar of Reb Israel Salanter, learning the books of the Gra, learning the Av Ezri of Rav Shach. But when I say to make commitments to act right I am referring to things you already know you need to improve but are simply lacking the will power. I believe doing this can make a breakthrough in you life and brings you wishes and needs before God. Commitments have to be possible to keep. The only thing in the way is lack of desire or willpower.
Still there are general things which are important to do even without making a specific commitment. That is to learn Musar. The reason is that Musar [books of Torah ethics written during the Middle Ages] give the most straight and simple way of keeping the holy Torah. That is why all teh cults ignore Musar. They are afraid people will read Musar and discover what the Torah really requires of men and women. And that is not what thy cults say.

I was in Odessa for two days and saw that I can force myself to do more learning on a bus and in a hotel than I do in my normal living situation. God had granted to me  a book on Spectral Theory (from this link) [Richard. Laugesen] [a really great book--It helps understand a lot of what i going on in QM and other areas involving PDEs](It really opened my eyes to a lot of intereting stuff.) which I had been saving up in case I had to take a trip anywhere. And God granted to me to get through the entire book 1.5 times along with lots of review. This reminds me of a story I heard about Rav Yaakov Abuchatzeira. He was once asked by the ruler of his area in Morocco to pray for his son who was very sick. Rav Yaakov prayed  and the boy was cured.  When the ruler asked Rav Yaakov, "Why does God hear your prayers?" Rav Yaakov  answered him, "I nullify my desires before the desire of God, and so He listens to me,"
I see in my own situation I do not work on doing God's will. I rather have found a kind of comfort zone. But now I realize I could do a lot more, and a lot better if I really wanted to.

What would that entail? I am not sure. I can see that given the right situation and emphasis I can learn Torah, Physics and Metaphysics as per the course study that the Rambam [Maimonides] prescribed.  But I clearly am not in such a situation, and I also do not know in practical vein how to in fact turn my will to God's will.


How do you know what good character is? [] You go by prima facie the way things seem before you apply reasons. Then if there is overwhelming evidence your original assumption is wrong, then you change it. But morality is not a subject that is so hard to figure out. We know it is not right to torture people for the fun of it, that we should pay our bills, we should be compassionate and honest in our dealings with all people. It would take a lot of evidence to overturn these beliefs. And, in fact, no evidence can ever be brought against them-- since you can not derive an "ought" from an "is."
 Philosophers usually make it their business to make up nice sounding principles that would imply the negative of the above mentioned moral principles. Marx for example decided  "All property is theft," and thus that would imply it is OK to steal. But think how the logic works. If you have a principle A by which B is implied, but B is counter intuitive. Then you have to see if "A" is more likely or "not B." If "not B" is more clear than "A," then "A" must be discarded.

But outside of basic principles, it is often impossible to tell what God's will really is even if one is sincerely interested in doing it. I have had that problem for as long as I remember.  [I could perhaps go into some of the issues but mainly my feeling is that since God's will is so hidden, the best thing I suggest is to learn Musar [books of Ethics from the Middle Ages like the Obligations of the Heart by Rabbainu Bechayee Ben Pakuda.]


The main thing I liked about that book on Spectral theory was the first four chapters but also the clarity it brings to how eigenvalues help solve PDEs. What I mean is if you are into Quantum Mechanics you should see that book. It is a real eye opener.

health

One of the advantages of having a learning partner is Talmud is you get to discuss side issues. I learned a lot about health from my learning partner.
These are some lessons I learned from him.

So you need a good night's rest. Maybe get "Gaba" which is a natural supplement which helps to go to sleep at night. You should be able to find it in heath food stores. They also have something here [Ukraine] called Donormyl which I find helps me go to sleep at night even when there is noise outside my bedroom. Getting enough sleep is important for your health.
[The Donormyl idea I got from a pharmacist  in Uman--not from my learning partner].









 Headaches are probably from lack of good diet. For one thing you need to concentrate mainly on raw vegetables and black bread and try to avoid anything with chemical additives. Also you need fresh air and exercise every day. I feel confident that if you do this you will see your health improve.   Walking is great exercise but you might try jogging also. 


I have no idea who looks at this blog or why. In any case I will be away for a few days. Maybe I will be able to access some computer-I do not know.

s67 g major  s67 midi

[s67 nwc]

.Resistance starts now!

Concerning the election, resistance is very important. That is not to bend or break but to uphold one's own moral integrity.
It does not matter who wins. The main thing is to learn and keep the Torah, the Oral and Written Law of Moses that transcends human law and human government

Resistance starts now! One must uphold the holy Torah in-spite of the government.

repent on our sins and to start to learn Torah,

No matter who wins, my recommendation is to repent on our sins and to start to learn Torah, the Oral and Written Law of Moses. In particular to begin a session in Gemara and another session in Musar every day. [Musar is ethics from the Middle Ages.]

Torah will survive.

It does look like Socialism will win. The Ghost of Marx has now come to the USA. Still Torah will go on.

I should mention I also hold like the Rambam like physics and metaphysics are important. I also believe that Physics should be done first thing in the morning when one wakes up based on the importance the Rambam gives to it. [Also as one gets older it is harder to spend as much time learning. I find if I can get an hour in that is already about as good as it gets for me. So the morning when one is fresh is the important time to do Physics. 

I should mention also that Yeshivas can be  a help for learning but since they are  institutions they can be an hindrance also. The best bet is to do one's Torah study at home where one is not dependent on how he will be treated in a public place with lots of people around like yeshivas.

New Music

S66 G major  I was very busy this month so I wrote very little. Still this piece seems alright. But it does look like I reused an older theme at the end. In any case I present it here and hope that people get inspired and uplifted from it.

I know I do not have open comments here, but I want thank people for their time and attention to what I write.   I hope people will be inspired to learn the Oral and Written Law and lead moral decent lives. 

Faith, Reason, and the Constitution of the USA

I think the Constitution would work if faith had been strong. Faith and reason seems to have been the working formula of the Middle Ages and I think it worked well. Two things worked against this. The constant attacks on faith causes it to weaken, plus that fanatical faith which opened Protestants to the Dark Side. Also the Constitution was never meant to be workable except for a certain kind of people--people that believed in the Bible. Most of it was modeled on the  Fundamental Constitutions  of Carolina written by John Locke and there there was a requirement to be part of a church --any church. Plus, John Locke saw the danger of Islam and said openly not to let any of them in (in his Two Treaties).

I think this is a very significant election because it will determine if the American Republic can survive, or will be washed away by barbarian hordes.   And if America falls to the barbarians, that is the end of Western Civilization.


 I did not go much into John Locke but I do think his approach is right but with a kind of modification based on Kant. Kant and Locke have a lot in common but to defend Locke one would need the ideas of Kant.



Habermas  also noted that John Locke needs "retuning." But he did not suggest anything. My suggestion is to go with Kant. Habermas himself just mentioned this in his critique on Rawl's theory of justice.

  Still John Locke needs reworking from the standpoint of Kant. Kelley Ross has already done work in that direction. But for my part I just want to say that John Locke and Kant do have a point of agreement. That is to say: what is the main question on John Locke? It is that it looks like his political are ideas is based on his empirical viewpoint. The defense is that first of all John Locke's political ideas work even better in the framework of Kant--the self being the ding an sich. And besides that Kant defends empirical-ism from the aspect of phenomenon anyway. It is only wrong if you assume all knowledge has to come from empirical means

Sin

To some degree, I feel like I ought to repent on my sins. What brings me to that conclusion is the fact that things get more and more מצומצם constricted. That is at what the Talmud says "אין יסורים בלא עוון" [''There are no troubles without sin.'']
That is.--  sin might not be the cause of the trouble - but if there was not a sin, then the trouble could not reach the person.

So when I try to consider my own sins, it occurs to me the main thing seems be things along the lines of  not appreciating what I had. For example-- my parents, the Mirrer yeshiva in NY, Eretz Israel, the אור אין סוף, learning Gemara etc. I mean I do not think the lack of appreciation is as serious as the lack of continuing in the good things that I could have reasonably been expected to continue in.

This of course is not news. 

However the reason I bring this up is that this idea gives a way to judge others on the scales of merit. For after all what is a wicked person? It does not matter if their wickedness comes from their accepting a social meme from their parents or environment or free will. The fact of their being wicked comes from a simple thing--doing less than what they could reasonably have been expected to do and understand. Therefore even the most wicked people in the world are really not all that different from me.

I had an idea of repenting on my sins a few years back. I think it was, in fact, four years ago. The idea I came up with then was to learn Musar [Ethical books from the Middle Ages.] I am not sure if that helped much. And it did not last long. Still it seems to me to be the best thing that I can figure out. One advantage of Musar I think is that there are lots of things that at one time I considered to be great mitzvas and later understood they were terrible sins. The basic books of Musar from the middle ages are about as straight and simple as  possible in explaining simply what God does and does not require based on the Law of Moses. So there is less leeway for mistakes. It is straight Torah. It is different from what came later which tend to be not very well thought out religious fanaticism. 

miracles from the Dark Side.

Some people would object to  this but I have found it helpful for me to get perspective on cult goings on in the Jewish world by looking at parallel movements in the wider world. I think noticed someone mention this concerning people involved in Eastern cults.

Professor Moshe Idel coined the term ecstatic Kabalah but in essence this does not do justice the the phenomenon. Straight Torah can lead to genuine mystic experience I think. But mystics even from the middle ages do not seem to have powers any different than Hindu gurus. As I said it is helpful to do some comparing of the cult you are in with other cults that make the exact same claims and have the same miracles from the Dark Side.