Music for the glory of God

T68mp3 t68 midi  t68 nwc

It occurred to me two valid reasons to pay attention to the "cherem."

For some reason, the religious teachers that pretend to teach and follow the holy Torah tend to be demonic. There are of course the exceptions of the genuine Litvak yeshivas in N.Y. and Bnei Brak, but the exceptions simply prove the rule,--that there is a problem. Most people would like to sweep it under the carpet, so they emphasize  the prohibition of lashon hara [slander. For the laws see the Chafetz Chaim, or the short version.] thinking that by doing so they will be immune from attack while at the same time continuing to attack baali teshuva [newly religious] and others they don't like.
[Maybe the problem has gotten worse. I am not sure. Clearly, in Europe there were rigorous standards; so the run of the mill religious teachers were in fact pretty good. Maybe it is just nowadays that people that their only qualification is that they are insane religious fanatics are the ones that get into positions of power.
In any case, because of this problem I avoid the religious world in toto.
The problem nowadays is the entire religious world. But I believe that if the excommunication of the Gra had been listened to, then this problem would not exist. 

  It occurred to me two valid reasons to pay attention to the "cherem." One reason is as Reb Chaim from Voloshin goes into in his book the נפש החיים about the problem of idolatry. (i.e. idolatry can apply to people, not just objects.) 

  Another reason is that a "cherem" has a valid halachic category of an isur neder," which means the object becomes a חפצא של איסור "forbidden object." I was in fact unaware of this last problem until I saw explained it thus in a commentary of the Rambam. (I want to mention that you can go through the entire tractate of Nedarim without being aware of this problem because the connection with cherem is never explained there openly. The commentary I saw this in is in the regular edition of the Rambam on the bottom of the page. I think it was  somewhere in the beginning of ה' שבועות or ה' נדרים.

One thing is certain. That the path of Torah is no where near the path of the insane religious world. These are two direct opposites.

music file t 67

t67 E minor

When people try to flee from the Sitra Achra [Dark Side] they often end up in some greater evil.
This happens because the great evil disguises itself in elaborate ritual observances in order to seem kosher. 

For this reason I have stressed the importance of learning the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach so as to have a good idea of what the Torah actually does require of you.

The Rambam[ה' ממרים] holds there is a difference between (1) גזרות תקנות ומנהגים [decrees and laws that were instituted by the sages] and (2) laws made as a fence for Torah.

The Rambam[ה' ממרים]  holds there is a difference between (1) גזרות תקנות ומנהגים [decrees and laws that were instituted by the sages] and (2) laws made as a fence for Torah. The prime example of the later are the 18 laws brought in the first chapter of Shabat. But the Rambam extends that to anything made as a fence.
Thus for the Rambam: laws judged by the 13 principles can be changed by  a later court of law even a small one.
Things that are תקנות גזירות ומנהגים ([decrees and laws that were instituted by the sages]) can be changed by a later court if that later court is greater in number and wisdom. Laws made  for a fence can not be changed by any court of law- ever. [The Rambam is obviously getting this last category from the first chapter of Shabat concerning the 18 decrees.]
The issue here is the Raavad who makes only two distinctions -if the law דרבנן is accepted by all Israel. If so no one can nullify it. If not, then even a small court can nullify it. So when does the גדול בחכמה ומניין become relevant to the Raavad?

The question here is אבות דר' נתן The commentary on Pirkei Avot from the amoraim [sages of the Talmud]. There it is clear that no one has the authority to make  a law as a fence for the Torah since it says doing so is like what Adam HaRishon  [the first man] did in adding to the command of God not to eat from the tree of knowledge. So what does this mean? Perhaps the Rambam saw this midrash and decided that we see from it a difference between decrees and laws that were instituted by the sages and things instituted for  a fence. However the Rambam  is saying the opposite of that braita [teaching] in so far as the laws made for  a fence are more strict.

The teaching in אבות דר' נתן is  very explicit about decrees that add laws to Torah  law. It says better a wall that is ten inches and stands, rather that a wall 100 yards and falls. This is obviously of great relevance today when people are constantly coming up with new things to add to the Law of the Torah.

The interesting thing is the fact that things learned by the 13 principles are the most lenient and can easily be changed. That is contrary to the usual way these things are understood. But it fits well with teh well known opinion of the Rambam that things derived from the 13 principles are דברי סופרים words of the scribes as he says in the ways a woman can be married.

importance of institutions.

In short I had two ideas today that intersect. One is the fact that no institution can take the place of learning Torah. You can not support some institution that you think is learning Torah. You have to do it yourself. It makes no difference where you do it. It could be on the beach. It could be at home. It could be while parachuting on the way down when you have nothing else to do before you get to the ground.

The other thing is I did want to emphasize the importance of institutions. If yeshivas today were in fact authentic Litvak yeshivas then in fact it would be a great thing to support them.
'When a father inquired about the best method of educating his son in ethical conduct, a Pythagorean replied: "Make him a citizen of a state with good laws."

This includes two levels. The state one lives in. The other is the local group one associates with.

So if one is in the area of a genuine Litvak yeshiva then great. If not then the best thing is to get the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach, a Gemara [Vilna Shas edition ONLY.], and Musar and learn them at home.
[I say Rav Shach because he is the most logically rigorous and deep. However any of the disciples of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik from Brisk are also very good., I.e. "Gedolai Litva" 

Many students have a difficult time seeing a distinction between the following two statements: a. It's true. b. It's true for me.

"Well, it's true for me ...."
Many students have a difficult time seeing a distinction between the following two statements:

a. It's true.
b. It's true for me.

But there IS a difference, and it is important to see the difference, and most people see the difference when it comes to things like mathematics, science, accounting, engineering, law, etc.

Here's the question: What does "for me" add to "It's true"? What I mean is, why would anyone say "It's true for me"? Let's say, for example, your favorite physics teacher asks you to tell her what the rate of fall is for a body located approximately at the surface of the Earth. Let's say that you are a student of physics and know with certainty, that bodies fall at 9.4 meters per second per second. If you write on your exam that bodies fall at 9.4 m/sec^2, your instructor would put an annoying red "X" next to your answer. (It should be 9.81)

"But wait a darn minute, there, ma'am: it's true for me that bodies fall at 9.4 m/sec^2!"



Relativism and Tolerance
What is the matter with the following claim:
"Different groups have different moral beliefs.
[One glance would show the absurdity of the logical extension of this argument. Disagreements in questions of history or biology or cosmology do not show that there are no facts about these subjects.]

Do you understand the reasons why such statements as "well it's true for them…" are confused and mistaken (with exceptions)?
Do you understand why such statements as "no one can tell me what to believe (or what to do)" doesn't work as a response to moral criticism? And why it isn't a very respectable or sophisticated response to differences in opinion? [Let's say a cashier in a supermarket who takes money from the cash register is approached by her boss. She defends herself: "No one can tell me what to do."
Let's say a private in the army does not know how to clean and reassemble  a rifle.He is approached by his superior officer who tries to tell him how to do it. He answers: "No one can tell me what to think."]

Do you understand the reasons why such statements as "who needs morality?" are confused and mistaken (with exceptions)?
Do you understand the difference between the law and morality and why the law is an insufficient moral guide?
Do you understand how it is that humans get their views about morality? The various stages of development that many humans experience?


Morality is a social phenomenon. Think about this. If a person is alone on some deserted island would anything that person did be moral or immoral? That person may do things that increase or decrease the chance for survival or rescue but would those acts be moral or immoral? Most of what we are concerned with in Ethics is related to the situation in which humans are living with others. Humans are social animals. Society contributes to making humans what they are. For humans there arises the question of how are humans to behave toward one another. What are the rules to be? How are we to learn of them? Why do we need them?


Consider what the world would be like if there were no traffic rules at all. Would people be able to travel by automobiles, buses and other vehicles on the roadways if there were no traffic regulations? The answer should be obvious to all rational members of the human species. Without basic rules, no matter how much some would like to avoid them or break them, there would be chaos. The fact that some people break the rules is quite clearly and obviously not sufficient to do away with the rules. The rules are needed for transportation to take place.

Why are moral rules needed? For example, why do humans need rules about keeping promises, telling the truth and private property? This answer should be fairly obvious. Without such rules people would not be able to live amongst other humans. People could not make plans, could not leave their belongings behind them wherever they went. We would not know who to trust and what to expect from others. Civilized, social life would not be possible. So, the question is :

Why should humans care about being moral?

John Mackie calls ethical intuitions 'queer' and 'utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else'. '

Behind Mackie's distaste for intuition there no doubt lies some of the strong empiricist sentiment of twentieth-century philosophy. Empiricism--roughly, the idea that all 'informative' knowledge, or knowledge of the mind-independent, language-independent world, must derive from sense perception--has been fashionable for the last century, though less so, I think, in the past decade.


Here, I will give a  counter-example to empiricism.

First example: Nothing can be both entirely red and entirely green. How do I know that? Note that the question is not how I came upon the concepts 'red' and 'green', nor how I came to understand this proposition. The question is why, having understood it, I am justified in affirming it, rather than denying it or withholding judgment. It seems to be justified intuitively, that is, simply because it seems obvious on reflection. How else might it be justified?

A naive empiricist might appeal to my experiences with colored objects: I have seen many colored objects, and none of them have ever been both red and green. One thing that makes this implausible as an explanation of how I know that nothing can be both red and green is the necessity of the judgment. Contrast the following two statements:

Nothing is both green and red.
Nothing is both green and a million miles long.

We have never observed a counter-example to either statement, so it would seem that the second is at least as well-supported by observation as the first. The second statement is probably true, since we have never observed a green object that is a million miles long, although there seems to be no reason why there couldn't be such a thing. We have a clear conception of what it would be like to observe such a thing, and it would not be senseless to look for one.But the first statement is different: we can see that there simply couldn't be a green object that is red, and it seems that no matter what our experience had been like, we would not have said that there was such an object; consequently, it would be senseless even to look for one.

I conclude with a final epistemological objection to intuitive morality. Even if moral properties are real, it does not seem that they could affect anything. They do not produce physical effects, so they do not affect our brain processes, so they probably do not affect our mental processes either.

Some philosophers maintain that knowledge of a thing requires some kind of interaction with it.
Now, this problem is not specific to moral knowledge. It is a general problem about a priori knowledge. Paul Benacerraf originally raised it as a problem about mathematics: since we have no interaction with the number 2--we do not bump into it on the street, and so on--how can we have knowledge of it?

Answer: Reason perceives universals

Universals exist necessarily. 'Universals' are abstract things (features, relationships, types) that two or more particular things or groups can have in common. For instance, yellow is a universal. It is something that lemons, the sun, and school buses, among other things, all have in common. Yellow is 'abstract' in the sense that it is not a particular object with a particular location; you will not bump into yellow, just sitting there by itself, on the street. Nevertheless, yellow certainly exists. Here is an argument for that:
1.
The following statement is true:
(Y) Yellow is a color.
2.
The truth of (Y) requires that yellow exist.
3.
Therefore, yellow exists.

Comment: Suppose I say, 'The King of Colorado is fluffy'. Since there is no king of Colorado, some would say the sentence is false; others would say it is neither true nor false. But no one thinks it would be true.

Some philosophers (the 'nominalists') say that the only thing multiple particulars have in common is that we apply the same word or idea to them. Here is an argument against that:

4.	Yellow is a color, and lemons have it.
5.	No word or idea is a color, nor do lemons 'have' words or ideas.
6.	Therefore, yellow is not a word or an idea.

Yellowness is something lemons, the sun, and so on have in common; so what they have in common is not (merely) a word or idea. Some philosophers will say I have oversimplified this issue. I say I have simplified but not oversimplified; the existence of universals is a trivial truth.

[The latter part of this essay is taken from Dr Michael Huemer.]]

The Torah's world view is Monotheism. That is: that God created the world something from nothing, and He is not the world, nor is the world Him.

The basic idea of the verse אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו (You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is no other besides Him.) is actually explained simply in the beginning of the Mishne Torah (of Maimonides). [הלכות יסודי התורה פרק א' הלכה א-ד] That is that God's existence is independent of anything else. The existence of everything else depends on the existence of God. It does not mean the way people commonly take it to mean nowadays as a support for the Bhagavad Gita.

I mean to say that the Torah's world view is that of what is called Monotheism.That is that God created the world something from nothing, and He is not the world, nor is the world Him.

This all goes to show how right Reb Israel Salanter was about Musar. For in Musar one gets the basic orientation of the Torah. 

[In Israel, in Rav Montag's yeshiva I had an opportunity to demonstrate this. I was talking with some of the "kollel-lite" guys that were learning in kollel, and this subject came up. I had two stones in my pockets. I asked them about one of them, "Is this stone godliness?" "האם האבן הזאת אלקות?" They remained uncommitted. They must have thought I had something up my sleeve. I then took out the other stone and put the first one on the floor and smashed it with the second one. It made such a noise that the entire beit midrash looked up-including Rav Montag.
I asked them, "Did it just break godliness?"האם עכשיו שיברתי אלקות? 
[I do not recommend this demonstration because part of the first stone flew out and it could have hurt someone. That would have then brought up the question: "Is godliness is dangerous?"]

Most supposed Torah scholars are demons as Reb Nachman pointed out. Once they decide to use Torah for money they lose their holy soul and become possessed by forces from the dark side.]

Not enough credit is given to Kant when it come to his insight that when pure reason goes into an area of  "the thing in itself" (dinge an sich (plural)) it comes up with self contradictions. Kant intended this insight to be expanded. Not just to be understood in the limited philosophical form he put it in.
 Thus Kant himself applied it further. He said when a person looks into his own soul and psychology that creates in him mental illness because the "self" is in the realm of the dinge an sich. [That in itself was an important insight. It was by this awareness that one is only conscious of the surface of the self--not what is inside it that gave Kant the ability to overcome solipsism.

Thus it seems clear to me why learning Torah presents the kinds of problems that one generally encounters. The reason now seems simple. It is in the realm of the dinge an sich.
The only way to come to Torah is to be able to jump over the questions. To come to appreciate Torah is much more important than the amount of time spent learning it.
The question typically are sometimes contradictions in the issue of "parnasa" how much time to spend on a livelihood as opposed to how much time spent of learning Torah. There are also questions that arise from phony people that pretend to learn Torah and yet are not at all moral or decent.[Most supposed Torah scholars are demons as Reb Nachman pointed out. Once they decide to sue Torah for money they lose their holy soul and become possessed by forces from the dark side.]
The way you can see this in the Ari [Isaac Luria] and Rav Shalom Sharabi is  the צימצום applied to all the midot (sepherot). Thus when the צימצום occurred it happened even in wisdom. So there are areas where wisdom can not venture into. [That is how the Reshash explains  the צמצום at the beginning of the נהר שלום  based on a reading of the Ari.]

One trouble is also the very common problem of people being thrown out of yeshivas. There are many causes of this-sometimes justified and sometimes not. One thing that makes this disturbing is the fact that many yeshivas present themselves as "open door" places to the public. That is the face they present when trying to collect charity. But the big picture is more simple. It is hard to merit to Torah and to do so one has to overcomes the mental blocks, questions about, "Why should one learn Torah?" So if it would not be one kind of question or problem it would be another, because there is not way to merit to Torah without jumping over the questions and ignoring them and simply saying "people are people are primates" and simply decreeing on oneself to sit and learn Torah as much and even more than what is possible.

[What I meant to say here about Rav Shalom Sharabi is that he mentions the doubt of Reb Chaim Vital about if the צמצום  was only in כלליות or also in פרטיות. And the Reshash says there that this doubt of Rav Chaim Vital was only at the beginning of his learning from the Ari, but later it was clear to him that it also applied in פרטיות. Reb Nachman brings this same point also. He says like the Reshash that the צמצום contraction happened in all the traits -for example wisdom. So there is a limit to how far reason--even pure reason can extend.]

noble savage myth

I wanted to mention that I think the problem in England is the noble savage myth that was popularized by Rousseau. They think they have found the noble savage in Muslims. They hate their Christian past but can not shake it off, so instead they cater to Muslims and by they get the feeling of spiritual release from the constraints of the Bible. I know I am not stating this properly but they main idea is I think England and France's infatuation with Muslims is highly psychological and not at all based on reason but rather the deep "Id"--more or less discovered by Nietzsche.

rebellion against religious authority

The problem of religious and secular authority and abuse of authority has been around for as long as there has been any kind of human or even primate groups. [Jane Goodall noticed this in primates.]
In history the first time this problem is recorded is in Herodotus. There the question of Democracy versus Monarchy is always just under the surface. Democracy is not a modern option. It is been around for a while. Maybe not has long as monarchy but it has been around. Athens suffered under kings and thus choose democracy. Persia had suffered under Cambyses and the Magi and thus was almost about to choose democracy at the advice of Otanes. The modern approach to democracy began with Calvin. In him and in Luther the problem of abuse of religious authority and abuse of secular authority always looms on the horizon. Calvin is the beginning of the modern day version of representative government --but with a major difference. To him there is not a separation of church an state except in functions-- not as some hypothetical legal dividing line. All are under God's Law and God's Law encompasses all facets of life. But to Calvin the option of rebellion a against  authority when it abuses God's Law always exists. [This really began with Luther in terms of rebellion against religious authority when it is abusive. To Calvin the problem is more in the area of abuse of secular authority.



The ramifications of all this took a long time to get into the Jewish world. But in time also in the Jewish world the problem of authority became an issue. And it still is.
The major reaction of abuse of religious authority is Reform Judaism. The reaction of abuse of secular authority resulted in the State of Israel. Both are results of legitimate complaints about intolerable abuses of authority by religious leader and the anti Semitic government of the Czar and Europe's monarchs.

The result today of reaction to abuse of religious authority tends to be what is called חוזר בשאלה return to question.

But the big picture is not the problem in the Jewish world of abuse of authority but rather the larger question of abuse of authority in all human history--and what is possible to do about it?

My impression is that Luther was right about what to do concerning abuse of religious authority. Though for sure he was the polar opposite of a saint, still his basic idea is valid--get back to Torah.
In other words to learn and keep Torah is an individual responsibility. How better can I put it? Though Luther was including the New Testament in his approach I still feel there is a great message in what he says. But from my point of view the main thing would be instead of the NT one should learn the  Law of Moses [Written and Oral] and keep  it. That is this depends on the individual.
That is to learn the Old Testament and the two Talmuds in depth and with rigorous painstaking work on every page.
This in fact became the approach of the Litvak yeshivas--to simply learn Torah and do what it says. This was the Litvak solution to the problem of abuse of authority. To throw out the phonies and charlatans and get back to what the Torah in fact says.

[The trouble that I see is that it takes some kind of merit to learn Torah. Without some kind of specific merit, obstacles arise that are not surmountable. The evil inclination always comes into the mind telling one how much better it is to do other things. One always finds other things preferable. So what to do? To pray to learn and appreciate Torah. Even one word of Torah is in my eyes a great merit..]

music file T 65

T65 A flat major mp3    t65 in midi   t65 nwc  t60 mp3  t60 midi   t60 nwc

T 66 music file

t66 in mp3    [t66 in midi]  [t66 in nwc]As I said before I spent a lot of time trying to learn from the greats. like Mozart. One idea I borrow here is to go to the 6th instead of the expected 5th towards the end.
Another important idea of Mozart is to leave the tonic in the bass, while the higher goes to the dominant.  I have wanted to use this idea often but was never able to until this piece  right towards the end.

a conflict between good and evil

It is not so simple that there is a conflict between good and evil in this world. There is this conflict, but there is also a conflict between social memes. Certain memes-sets of social and moral information get into people and at a certain point these values become hardwired into the person. Not just that-- but also in groups that accept a certain meme of set of values--in the history of that group you can see that set of values coming to fruition--both the good and the bad values.

So it is not just important to use reason and common sense to identify the right set of values-but also the groups and their sets of values [which are often hidden from public view.]

The trouble is even when you think you have found the right set of objective values and a good group  that will lead you to the good in this world and the next,- the dark side has found a way to penetrate that very group. The trouble in not just the attacks on the Holy Torah from outside. These attack are serious enough. But the greater danger are the attacks on Torah from the inside--people that openly hold with Torah and yet are agents of the Devil.

Some of the principles I have found to be important are sometimes tied to one particular person that embodied that value. In any case I realized I have kind of a long list so for my own sake, I want to jot down some of the things I think are of crucial importance.

(1) The Avi Ezri of Rav Shach which contains the essence of what it means "to learn Torah."
(2) To speak the truth at all cost.
(3) At the Mir in NY I learned a very importance principle of not to steal--which means in a strict sense: not to touch that which does not belong to you. [Nor to acquire things by fraud or force etc,]
(4) From the Rambam and my parents I learned the importance of learning Physics and Mathematics.
(5) From the Gra and the two great Litvak NY yeshivas (that I was in) I learned the importance of learning Torah. [That is the Oral and Written Law--Tenach(Old Testament) and the two Talmuds.]
(6) From the book of Navardok I learned the importance of trust in God without doing any effort.

[These are not just picked at random out of  a hat, but a short list of things I have seen and found to be important and that lead to the good and the light. I know there are lot of competing memes- and principles that people say are important, but these are the ones I have seen work towards the good and the light. ]
 From experience and from just being around in the world I learned that many of the other so called great principles of life or other causes are mainly fraudulent.

Rambam laws of rent ch 8. Bava Metzia pages 103-105

I think the רמב''ם probably saw this difference in what is owed in the words of רב פפא himself. That is the fact that I pointed out that רב פפא says in terms the משנה on page ק''ג ע''ב that the one can bring with a bucket means to the רמב''ם that one statement of רב פפא was referring to the work that is required to be done on the field by the מקבל and the other  statement of רב פפא concerning the difference between the first two משניות and the later ones refer to the percentage that the serf has to pay from his labor.


אני חושב הרמב''ם כנראה  ראה את ההבדל זה בדין מה הוא נוגע להתחייבות המקבל בדברי רב פפא עצמו. רב פפא אמר לגבי המשנה בעמוד ק''ג ע''ב כי אפשר להביא עם דלי.  הרמב''ם ראה האמירה זו של רב פפא שהתכוון אל העבודה שנדרשת להיעשות על המגרש על ידי המקבל. את תמצית הדוח האחרת של רב פפא לגבי ההבדל בין שתי הראשונות אל המשניות המאוחרות מתייחס לאחוז  שהצמית יש לשלם מן העבודה שלו.

בבא מציעא קד.  The question was that the רמב''ם ignores רב פפא. The answer I would like to suggest is this. The  רמב''ם when he says one does lessen the what is owed by a שוכר and  a מקבל in a year drought he means what he always means in that chapter, in reference to the מקבל it is the work that is owed by the מקבל.  But when רב פפא say all the משניות after the first two in chapter תשעה refer to either the serf מקבל or the חוכר שוכר but not both,  and thus when the later משנה says one lessens the obligation in a year of drought, that means the חוכר but the מקבל still give his percentage. As רש''י says over there. What ever the field gives out he gives from those crops the agreed upon percentage.

בבא מציעא קד. השאלה היתה כי רמב''ם מתעלם מרב ​​פפא. התשובה שאני רוצה להציע היא זו. הרמב''ם כשהוא אומר להפחית את מה שחייבים  השוכר וגם המקבל בתוך שנת בצורת, לגבי המקבל הוא מתכוון למה שהוא אומר תמיד בפרק זה, את העבודה שהוא מחוייב.  אבל כאשר רב פפא אומר כל משניות אחרי שתי הראשונות בפרק תשעה מתייחסות  לצמית (מקבל) או חוכר (שוכר) אך לא את שניהם, ולכן כאשר מאוחר יותר המשנה אומרת אחד מפחית את המחויבות  בגין שנת בצורת, כי פירושו חוכר אבל המקבל עדיין מחוייב לתת את האחוזים שלו. זה פי שרש''י אומר שם מה שהשדה נותן הוא נותן האחוז המוסכם.

I think the Rambam probably saw this in the words of Rav Papa himself. That is the fact that I pointed out that Rav Papa says in terms the Mishna on page 103 that the one can bring with a bucket means to the Rambam that one statement of Rav Papa was referring to the work that is required to be done on teh field by the serf and the other  statement of Rav Papa concerning the difference between the first two mishnas and the later one refer to the percentage that the serf has to pay from his labor.

Bava Metzia page 104. Rambam laws of renting, chapter 8.

I do not have any Gemara nor Rambam. So my comments here need rechecking. But it occurred to me vaguely yesterday and became more crystallized today an idea I had to answer a problem in the Rambam. The question was that the Rambam ignores Rav Papa in Bava Metzia page 104. The answer I would like to suggest is this. The Rambam when he says one does lessen what is owed by a renter and  a serf in a year drought he means what he always means in that chapter. In reference to the serf it means the work that is owed by the serf.  But when Rav Papa says, "All the mishnas after the first two in chapter 9 refer to either the serf or the renter but not both," and thus when the later mishna says one lessens the obligation in a year of drought, that means the renter but the serf still give his percentage. As Rashi says over there. "What ever the field gives out, he gives from those crops the agreed upon percentage."



[This whole is based on the idea that when the Rambam talks about what one lessens for the מקבל he always talks about work, not %. ]




I owe credit to David Bronson who pointed out this remarkably fact about this fact  about the what the Rambam means by lessening what the serf is obligated. But to use that fact to answer this question on the Rambam only occurred to me in a vague way yesterday and the day before, and today became more clear.

Hegel locates a kind of step between the state and the family where one becomes an ethical individual.

(1) Hegel locates a kind of step between the state and the family where one becomes an ethical individual. To me it seems this is in its best sense what a genuine Litvak Yeshiva is supposed to be.

(2) To Hegel to middle step is important because it mediates between the state and the individual. For to Hegel the state can only work if made up of ethical people, and these come about by mean of that middle step.

That is to Hegel freedom can only exist in a ethical state. But an ethical state can only exist if it i made of ethical individuals. So the state is important to him but not like it is to Plato, for Hegel requires freedom of the individual. --Unlike what most people think Hegel was about.

The left used Hegel and thus his name got mixed up with them. And individuals like Schopenhauer, Leonard Nelson, and Nietzsche did nothing to improve his reputation. But in my mind Hegel is of as great importance as Kant
  

learning fast

I have been recommending learning fast  for quite some time already.

This comes from the Talmud itself.


This was mentioned  by Reb Nahman often and is brought in Sichot HaRan chapter 76.

And I have mentioned a few times that this method has been helpful for me..
But there are places in Reb Nachman' Magnum Opus that also hint to this idea without stating it openly. על ידי אמצעות הדיבור יכולים לבא להבנת התורה לעומקה Volume I:12
בעבר הנהר ישבו אבותיך מעולם יהודיים נקראים עבריים על שם עבר הנהר ש קופצים על הקושיות לבא לאמונה
To skip over the difficulties in understanding and just to go on--go וייטר.




[Jews are called "Hebrew" because they skip over the difficulties to come to faith. That Reb Nachman derives from the verse "Your forefathers lived across {בעבר} from the Jordan River "
Also in Vol. II he talks about the idea of "כסדר" "in order" as being from the side of kindness and not in order being from judgment.
From all that one can see him hinting to this idea of just saying the words in order and going on.

However I did add to this a kind of way of review in which after about 100 page or so, I go back and review in reverse order. That is: let's say I got to chapter 10. Then I do chapter 9 and then 8 and then 7. etc. Feynman also I think advised some kind of approach like this to one person asking him advice on learning.

[Clearly Reb Nachman was referring to learning Torah but I also applied this to Physics and Math. This is based a reading of the Rambam in the Guide but also in Mishne Torah.]

In terms of Gemara I think the best thing is to be in a genuine Litvak Yeshiva (not copy cat yeshivas that are there just for the government stipend). It is hard (impossible) to come to understand the Gemara without that basic Litvak background. But in any case, I also think that just saying the words and going on makes sense. That is this: to do a 1/2 page of Gemara per day with Rashi and Tosphot and Maharaha.[That is about 40 minutes.]
[One could also just learn at home and to  learn "how to learn" he should learn the tremendous book the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach]

The unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy, and the unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics.

(1) It is important to have a set of values one strives for and also to be reasonable sure that that set in fact leads to good results. One might hear a promise from people he respects that "If you do such and such a practice on a constant basis, such and such good things will be the result". Often these are false promises.

(2) In terms of areas of study  also, it is important to identify areas of study that deliver what they promise. As Steven Weinberg [theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles,] has pointed out on the unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy, and the unreasonable effectiveness of Mathematics. Here he suggested that certain fields deliver much more than what they promise and other fields deliver considerably less that what they promise.


(3) Though the Rambam did emphasize learning the Oral and Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics, my feeling is that philosophy today is much worse than a waste of time. It positively ruins one' common sense. [Of course the Rambam was anyway only referring to the Metaphysics of Aristotle, not just to any book that talk about that subject.]

(4) I used to think that at least Enlightenment Philosophy did bring about a remarkable change --representative government until it became clear to me that it did no such thing. Enlightenment philosophers did intend to take power from kings and princes and give it to the the pseudo intellectuals intellectuals like psychologists. But they did not come up with any good idea about representative government. On the contrary they came up with a  host of really bad ideas the ruined Western society the more they took root. You can blame the Islamic invasion of England and Europe to the pernicious lie about the "noble savage." that was thought u by Enlightenment philosopher.

(5) Musar also seems to promise much more than it is able to deliver. That is the study of Medieval books of Ethics. This was made into a mass movement by Reb Israel Salanter, but it does not seem that it deliver the promised result--good midot (good character).

(6) Calvin was the one that thought up and institute representative government, not any philosopher.

attachment with God is the highest value

 For you might say that attachment with God is the highest value, so once one has come to any level of that (even just a drop of the Infinite Light), that that should be that. He has come to the goal. But apparently things do not work like that. One can have that highest value, but without balance, it seems inevitable that one (or at least I) will lose it.

To anyone familiar with the book of Reb Chaim From Voloshin,[נפש החיים] this will come  as no surprise. He already stated this fact long ago about the importance of learning Torah. He puts it slightly differently.

The way he puts it is based on the Gemara Yerushalmi  where it says that all the mitzvot do not equal the value of just one single word of learning Torah.[That in turn is based on the Mishna over there in Peah]. The way Reb Chaim puts it is this that even if one fulfills all the other mitzvot with the highest level of Love and Fear of God and Attachment with God and true Devekut.--that does not equal the value of learning one single word of Torah. At first glance it is hard to understand this, but now I get the idea. The devekut only comes through learning Torah.


[The challenge now would be to see if there is any possible integration of Dr Ross's Kantian system with Hegel? ]

I am not suggesting anything that would fix things at this point. Rather I take the basic balanced approach of the Rambam of learning the Oral and Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics as being the ideal to strive for.

T 62   t62 in midi This is called Bflat but that is because of how it starts but the actual key is F

restrictions that are not obligated according to the Torah

There is a  major thing -- an idea of Reb Nachman about not being מחמיר שום חומרא כלל (i.e. not being strict about anything). This sounds like a trivial idea until you realize that the basic framework of the Jewish religious world is completely made up of חומרות ( restrictions  that are not obligated according to the Torah).

They pretend as if those prohibitions are obligations, and yet prohibitions that are actually forbidden they ignore.

The trouble with this is it is אבן מכשול, a stumbling block in front of the blind. People think they have to be part of the religious world in order to keep the Torah. The opposite is true. The entire religious world in made up restrictions that are  made up out of thin air, or sometimes have some basis in one posek [medieval authority] but most other poskim (medieval authorities) allow it.

[This idea come in Reb Nachman's Magnum Opus in Volume 2, chapter 44 and in one other place that I forget [I think it is Volume 2, chapter 87]. It also is in Sichot HaRan.] [Though Breslov is insane, it is still permitted and  a good thing to learn from Reb Nachman. Rav Isaac Hutner did so and Bava Sali also. But without the context of the Gra, people latch onto misleading statements in his writings.]

This idea is related to another very important idea I wanted to mention,the fact that a cartel of unscrupulous charlatans have taken over the title of ordination and this is a problem from several angles. One is the obvious fact that it is fraud. There is no authentic ordination. That is why only very early Talmudic sages are referred to a having ordination. After R. Yochanan it is rare. And it disappeared completely in the middle of the Talmud period--though Hillel II did have it.

Personally, I do not appreciate being victimized by someone who while posing as an authority disseminates error, however trivial it may seem. And it i not just myself and others that I know who have been victimized. The real number no one knows. And the damage they cause is horrific and yet no one can talk about it because they are fearful of the prohibition against lashon hara. These religious teachers are the most destructive force on earth against Jewish families.
It is not that Reform or Conservative Jews are doing everything right. Rather that they have discovered the rot that lies underneath the facade of holiness of the religious world


So people that make their money by mean of this kind of fraud have to come up with fraudulent restrictions. The most obvious example is in food preparation,-- which is one big scam. But there are many other areas. In short, if you would take out the restrictions that are made up out of thin air, nothing would be left of the entire edifice.--And maybe then you would have time to figure out what the Torah actually requires of you. [To know what the Torah does in fact require, I found the basic set of Musar books from the Middle Ages to be extremely helpful, i.e. חובות לבבות, אורחות צדיקים, שערי תשובה, מסילת ישרים (שהוא אחרי ימי הביניים), שמנה פרקים לרמב''ם










The trouble is this. Ruler-ship, authority, is not something that one ought to grab. The reason being  that it is the same as stealing. Since ruler-ship is שווה כסף--worth money. Thus if it is offered one can accept it, but to take it without it being offered is theft.

The simpler belief system wins.

Steven Dutch suggested that the simpler belief system wins.
The more convoluted it gets,-- the less people go for it. This seems to me to make sense. After all, in Rome when there was competition between Christianity and the Roman gods, the simplest thing was to go with Christianity. Later on there was much effort put into showing how Christianity is reasonable --or at least defensible by some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages. Later on Luther's ideas were also on the side of making things simple. Sola Scriptura is certainly on the side of making things reasonable and simple.

So what weakens Christianity today--if you go by this argument of Steven Dutch -is that it got to be too convoluted.

 

You need not that things should be easy. You also do not need to water things down. But you do need the belief system should make sense and not be self contradictory. It also should make moral sense.

It should not demand things that are prima facie [on the face of it] not moral. [In its origin Christianity succeeded, not because it was easy but because it was hard and demanding.]

Some of the weak points are the Trinity. If you hold by Sola Scriptura, then that is one thing that would have to be let go of. Paul himself is another example of a weak link in the whole chain. The prime opponent  of Peter and James all of a sudden becomes an authority? That is like having Karl Marx give lectures on the benefits of Capitalism.

Some of the positive points are Anselm and Aquinas and Hegel. That is to simplify the belief system does not mean it has to be without depth. Just that it should not be convoluted.

God made everything something from nothing. That is to say: He made the world and He is not the world.

"Thou shalt remember the Lord your God because it is He who gives you strength." (Deuteronomy)
The basic idea here is this: God made everything something from nothing. That is to say: He made the world and He is not the world. Thus space- time is also His creation.Thus he is not absent from space. But he is not in space either. The entire concept of space simply does not apply to Him. Trying to apply the concept of space to God is like mixing apple and oranges.

There is lot to go into about this but to be short I wanted to bring from the very important commentary with no named author on the first four chapters of the Mishne Torah. There he brings the contradiction in the verses. One says, "Do the commandments in order to fear and love God." The other says, "Fear and love God in order to do his commandments." He answers: There are two kind of fear. One is fear of punishment. The other is awe. Thus the verse intend to tell us to come to the lower fear in order to do His commandments;-- and to do his commandments in order to come to the higher awe of God. Thus the purpose of the commandments are to fear and love God.

This is a great Title D Minor This was written in my parent's home. As you can tell there is something otherworldly about it.


T61 D major [This piece is more recent]

T63

The Jewish religious world is plagued by impious, insane, irreverent unholy leaders

The Jewish religious world is plagued by impious, insane, irreverent unholy leaders to whom there is no obligation of obedience. In other times and places, people that taught Torah deserved respect, but today they are all liars and thieves..
Today, whatever any teacher of Torah says in the name of Torah, it is most likely that the opposite is the case. The  "kollels" are not different. Dens of thieves. [They lie about Torah to gain money people's obedience.]

There are I should mention a few islands of Torah like Ponovitch and the great NY Litvak yeshivas, but these kinds of places are rare, and they do no ask or require any kind of authority. The "prime directive" is  simply this: "Whatever the Torah says, that is what we try to do." That is- there is no attempt to usurp authority from the Torah to themselves.


[This is relevant to the issue of representative government. That is the people in power ought to be people that have been elected by the people, not those who by other means have seized power. ]

In an ethical society it is simple to say what a man ought to do--obey the rules. This is how I thought of the religious world during my yeshiva days. Then it became clear that the religious world is highly unethical. In an unethical society it is also simple to say what a man ought to do--disobey the rules,  and to break the rules, to leave it, and to leave as much destruction in his wake as possible.

In an effort to live an ethical life, one has to take into account the society he lives in. Therefore once it is clear that the religious world is highly unethical (as is well known to everyone that exists inside it) it becomes an obligation to leave it. And to make known that their facade of keeping Torah is a ruse and a scam.

What would a society look like that actually kept Torah? I am not sure, but my impression is it would be close to what the Religious Zionist groups are like. Maybe that is not perfect, but the basic approach of the "Bnei Akiva" is about as good an approximation to Torah as I can tell.

What is the essential problem in the Jewish religious world? Reb Nachman, as is well known, attributed the problem to Torah scholars that are demonic. That is they are possessed by the forces of evil. That  is one possibility. Another is more concrete--the usurpation of power. The ruling mafia who pretend to know Torah simply have grabbed power. They award each other credentials--none of which have any validity. Not only is their "ordination" a complete scam and against halacha in which the only authentic ordination ceased to exist in the middle of the Talmud period. But they do not even know what they pretend to know.

t59 music file

T59 D Major

In a deeper sense what you see is that the realm of the "dinge an sich" (the thing in itself) (non phenomenal reality. Reality beyond appearance.) is as hidden as Kant thought it was. Thus what parades as holiness is often the opposite and what looks to be from the Dark Side is sometimes from the Realm of the Divine. Outward appearances not withstanding. Doctrines as also no indication at all. Purity of doctrine and depth of teachings can disguise evil and wicked hearts as we see in the Jewish religious world so often.

If things would have gone  according to plan, I would be finding arguments to support the idea of simply trusting in God and learning Torah. The reason I am not avidly advocating this is I found a surprising thing. (I still advocate trusting in God and learning Torah, but with the reservation and knowledge that this does not always seem to be on the inside what it is on the outside.) It was this. When I was in the Mir yeshiva in NY, every day came a different person from Israel asking for charity to support his yeshiva in Israel where he was doing all he could so that anyone who wants to learn Torah would have a place to do so. But not just there. The Lakewood Kollel in Los Angeles were asking me the exact same thing when I was living in Beverly Hills.
Much to my chagrin  and dismay, when I returned to Los Angeles--but this time without money, they did everything they could to convince my wife to leave me. So I figured at that point maybe Lakewood is just not so great. So I returned to Israel. And there I figured I would just sit an learn Torah in any Beith Midrash without asking for anything. That was after all exactly what every single person from Israel was saying anyone could do--just walk in and learn Torah and that was the entire purpose according to them for the very existence of their yeshivas. To my utter amazement every single yeshiva that had made this claim of being open for the public for anyone who wanted to learn Torah threw me out from the top of the staircase down into the alley.

It is not that I disagree with the importance of sitting and learning. After all God did not abandon me and even granted to me to learn Torah even after all that. But one thing I did see. The religious world is highly anti-Torah and wicked.

I did also have to make some modifications in my world view after seeing the astounding hypocrisy of the religious world and frankly straight forward sadistic people dressed in religious garb claiming to be keeping Torah.

But since this blog is about world view issues I do not have a lot to add, but just for public information in what ways have I changed my world view to correspond to the facts and reality?
The main difference is I have had to go with the explicit opinion of the Rambam and the implicit opinion of my parents concerning the importance of  Physics, and Metaphysics.  These bring to fear and love of God to the Rambam, and are in themselves the fulfillment of those commandments so  I think without those two aspects of Torah, people go astray.
In any case, there is some deep seated wickedness in the religious world which causes them some kind of evil inclination to hurt others and then to look for excuses to blame the people they hurt.
The major source of wickedness however I did not see in Litvak place but rather the cults that the Gra put into cherem excommunication. It is just the sickness of those cults seems to have deeply infected the Litvak world also
As bad as the Lakewood group was, it still did not come anywhere near the shear sadistic wickedness I saw the the groups the Gra excommunicated. Little in the world can compare to the shear amount of Sadism I saw in those groups. All in the meantime making a song and dance about how they keep Torah. Frankly I think there are few groups in the world that present the astounding amount of sadism that I saw in the religious world. Hurting people from the shear delight of doing so.
So in short, despite their claims, I do not think they are keeping the holy Torah.

I believe this problem was actually seen by the Rambam himself who also wrote that using Torah to make money or as a means to making a living causes one to lose his portion in the next world and in Heaven, plus he was not shy about his advocacy of Physics and Metaphysics. I can not help but wonder if perhaps he linked these two issues in the same way I have here--that is in seeing the learning of Physics and Metaphysics as a kind of cure for the problem of people using Torah for money and thus losing their menschlichkeit human decency?



In any case I do not see the religious world as keeping the Torah at all. Rather I think Reform and Conservative Judaism are much closer to the path of Torah. Fanatic rituals do not make one righteous in the eyes of God.

Pagan religions

The basic difference between the belief system of the Torah and pagan religion is not just in the
number of gods. The basic differences in world view is what caused the Gra to see groups slipping pagan religion into the Torah world, and to put them into excommunication.

These group might be called "pagan Judaism," since they make a show of their Jewish rituals, but their practice and beliefs are pagan. They worship others gods (i.e.  men that they believe control theworld).
Pagan religions contain theogonies, birth of a god, "theogony", accounts of the births of gods. Thus in Pagan Judaism there are also celebrations of the birth of their gods. In Torah, God controls the world but is separate from it. In pagan Judaism, their views change according to whom they are talking to but mainly their views go according to the Bhagavad Gita and Hindu religion.

But the way people get hooked is that they are fed droplets of the belief system. Only small amounts. So by the time they see the abuse  and get abused themselves they are already hooked.

t60 D Minor  This is an edited version with a final part in 6/8 time. The idea to end with 6/8 time  is an idea of Mozart in one of his B flat symphonies or serenades. [I forget which.] 

the amazing amount of destruction of the mind that seems to come along with learning Jewish mystics

Based on the amazing amount of destruction of the mind that seems to come along with learning Jewish mystics (mainly in the area of delusions of vast knowledge and self assumed holiness and pride) and based on the problem that the Zohar was not presented accurately, but put into writing as being from R. Shimon ben Yochai, I wonder if perhaps it would be  a good idea just to delete everything based on that from the Jewish canon of books that relate to the concept of  "learning Torah."

Compromise and tolerance seems in the end to bring to acceptance and to me it seems that most of this mystic stuff brings to terrible  things.

[Still there are some people I have much respect for like the Ari and Reb Nachman. Still the thing to do is simply to learn them on the side for those people that feel a need but not as part of the program of learning Torah]

The point is if one wants to accept on himself the yoke of Torah it is important to know what counts as legitimate torah

Sadly the doctrines of these group are presented in droplets—and when it was too late, one is already hooked. Too much occult has gotten into the religious world.

Too much occult has  gotten into the religious world. See Deuteronomy 11 and 18.
It is one thing to obey the Law of Moses, but quite another to be doing the occultism that is the most essential part of the religious world.

The New Age is being taught as Torah. The ancient practices of witchcraft and contacting the dead, are common and they show great signs.

Counterfeit spirituality is the major test of these days.

[New Age is however not new. It is old occult practices that is being taught as Torah true spirituality. And people with some unfulfilled need flock to this.
But this side of things [the other side] is sadlly adept as disguising itself as true Torah.
Sadly the doctrines of these group are presented in droplets—and when it was too late, one is already hooked. 


But even if one is aware of this fact, it is hard to know how to deal with it. I myself got caught up in it for years after I saw that it seemed to have a stamp of approval from great Litvak Tzadikim.  To take a step to remove all occult from one's life would involve removing a great deal of what is considered perfectly authentic and legitimate Torah. This is  a test I am afraid is too great for me to stand in. After all it comes down to a person accepting a world view as part of their mental framework. To try to uproot that after it has become hardwired into one's psyche must cause damage. How can one uproot this?

Take pagan religion and put a few Jewish rituals on it to provide cover and you get the religious world today.

Musar Book Obligations of the Heart. That Bell's Inequality proves Kant. Reality is subjective.The electron has no objective time frame or space frame until it is measured.

 Matter and צורה equal עצם and טופס or מצב according to the חובות לבבות
This comes from  Aristotle equates עצם with צורה. The question of the third man that was asked by Aristotle and also Plato himself. Based on an computer algorithm  I answered: "the third איש" is not a איש. That is a good answer to some degree. But it leaves me wondering. Why  is a איש considered a איש because יש לו חלק of this צורת of איש which is itself not a man?  That is my answer does not seem to answer the question but rather evade it.
One could ask here the question that היפוליטוס  asks on Aristotle שאלה זו. That is  בהמיות as such does not exist. So how can it be the motivating force that makes animals exist? The fact is Aristotle tries to avoid this by equating form with species, not with genus. To Aristotle  the form is the essence, not that which is stable under שינויים. But it also seems to be a good question. You could put it in this way. The individual animal depends on the צורה for its existence, but the צורה itself depends on each individual animal for it's existence. So which one is it? Another issue is in his book, the Metaphysics  Aristotle equates substance with form. The problem  is that this does not correspond to Aristotle's'  book, the Categories where primary substance is the פרט. Also  there is an essential סתירה within the Metaphysics itself. Up until the later chapters Aristotle argues substance is a universal. Then at the end he argues forcefully against this.   Another issue. There are two separate answers for the חובות לבבות. One is that he simply means like Aristotle that substance is form. The other answer is form and matter equal together substance and mode. But form by itself does not equal substance. But that is a different answer. That would mean  is matter just a טופס. In my final answer there I go into the Kantian approach and bring a proof from the fact that Nature violates Bell's inequality. That seems like a good answer but goes with the idea that substance is essence, not that which survives under changes. That is Aristotle's approach  and it leaves out the need for time. Bell's Inequality proves Kant. Reality is subjective. The electron has no objective time frame or space frame until it is measured.
But the rules of reality are objective. That is to say universals are objective. An example would be Schrodinger's equation. This shows Aristotle was right that the main reality of this world is universals

  צורה עם חומר שווים לעצם וטופס (או מצב) לפי החובות הלבבות. זה מגיע מאריסטו שמשווה עצם עם צורה. יש שאלה של האיש השלישי שהתבקשה על ידי אריסטו וגם אפלטון עצמו. בהתבסס על אלגוריתם מחשב עניתי: "את האיש השלישי" אינו איש. זוהי תשובה טובה במידה מסוימת. אבל זה משאיר אותי תוהה. למה איש נחשב איש כי יש לו חלק עם צורה זו של איש אשר הוא עצמו לא יאש? תשובתי לא נראית לענות על השאלה אלא משתמטת ממנה. אפשר לשאול כאן את השאלה שהיפוליטוס שואל על אריסטו. כלומר בהמיות  אינה דבר קיים. אז איך זה יכול להיות הכוח המניע שגורם לחיה להתקיים? העובדה היא אריסטו מנסה למנוע שאה זאת על ידי השוואת צורה עם מין, לא עם סוג (גנוס). לאריסטו הצורה היא המהות, לא דבר אשר הוא יציב תחת שינויים. אבל זו  נראית שאלה טובה. אתה יכול לומר את זה ככה. חית הפרט תלוי בצורה לקיומה, אז איך צורה עצמה תלויה בחיה פרטית לקיומה. אז איזה מהם הוא נכון? סוגיה נוספת. בספר המטאפיסיקה אריסטו משווה עצם עם טופס. הבעיה היא שזה לא מתאים לספר של אריסטו הקטגוריות שעצם עיקרי הוא הפרט. כמו כן קיימת סתירה הכרחית בתוך מטאפיזיקה עצמה. עד הפרקים המאוחרים אריסטו טוען חומר הוא אוניברסלי. אז בסוף הוא טוען בתקיפות נגד זה. עוד נושא. ישנן שתי תשובות נפרדות עבור חובות לבבות . האחת היא כי הוא פשוט אומר כמו אריסטו כי עצם הוא צורה. התשובה השנייה היא צורה וחומר יחד שווים לעצם ומצב. אבל הצורה כשלעצמו אינה שווה לעצם. עוד דבר. בתשובה הסופית שלי אני נכנס לגישה קנטיאנית ומביא הוכחה מן העובדה כי הטבע מפרה את השוויון של בל. זה נראה כמו תשובה טובה אבל הולך עם הרעיון כי עצם הוא מהות, לא דבר אשר שורד תחת שינויים. זו השקפת העולם של אריסטו שהיא מזניחה את הצורך בהשקעת זמן. שוויון בל מוכיח קאנט. המציאות היא סובייקטיבית. לאלקטרון אין מרחב זמן או מקום אובייקטיבית עד שהוא נמדד. אבל הכללים של מציאות הם אובייקטיביים. כלומר האוניברסלים הם אובייקטיביים. דוגמה לכך תהיה המשוואה של שרדינגר.

So it looks like the idea of Aristotle of having substance equal species or universals makes sense

t60 mp3   t60 midi  t60 nwc

A lot depends on the social meme. There are social memes that bring out the worst in people, and other ones which tend to bring out the best. A lot of the good in the West I think was a result of combining a lot of good ideas together into one social meme--that is the unique combination of the Middle Ages of combing reason and revelation. This was not at all obvious as being a good thing as Hippolytus and Kierkegaard went in quite a different direction. But some time after Plotinus this began to be an accepted approach. It is well accepted that Paul got most of his ideas from Philo so the idea of combing faith with reason is an early approach. In any case whether because of Maimonides or Anselm, the basic approach is unique to the West. And this I think brings out the best in people across  the board. 

To a large degree I accept this approach of Maimonides though a lot of people disagreed with it.
But in my effort to combine Reason with Revelation I found a certain amount of difficulty. One is this: In the Rambam Maimonides program one learns the Written and Oral Law completely and also Physics and the Metaphysics of Aristotle. The trouble for me is that after the first hour in the morning i have trouble concentrating on the mathematics that is a necessary component of Physics. So I try to devote the first hour to that since without doing so, I would not be able to learn at all. Another issue for me is in understanding the Rambam. So I found that when I had a copy of the Avi Ezri that it was helpful to go through it straight because  frankly with that most of what the Rambam says in Mishna Torah is incomprehensible to me. 

A lot of how one's life goes depends on prior commitment. Ideally this should happen on the 13th birthday for boys and the 12th for girls.  The idea is to commit oneself to follow the Law of God the Written and Oral Law of Moses.
Another way of putting this to to follow God, the truth and the moral law. In any case, if one missed the chance to do that then, still every day at its beginning gives  new opportunity to do this. That means one can follow what he knows to be right of what people around him think is right.

Bob Dillon did this commitment type of thing and devoted himself to the prince of this world, which accounts for his success in this world.Often success in this world can be attributed to the person having made commitment to the prince of this world at a young age.  [Or the divinity that is found in this world--which is Satan.]

To some degree I think I made a good choice to try to find the "Truth" which at an early age. A bad decision was I think when I got married with Leah, that I did not make learning Torah the goal of our marriage. I think that that lack of commitment in the very beginning caused the problems that came later. Still I have never been able to get back to learning Torah as being the goal of life because of the kinds of people that populate that section of humanity.So my own doubts have lead to a lack of commitment. I found some compromise with the Rambam that as such that Physics and Metaphysics are part of that goal of learning Torah


My immediate motivation for this essay was that I noticed Bob Dillion's commitment to the Sitra Achra which gave him his success. Also I saw an essay on the problem in the Left of not making a distinction between means and ends. It hit me right then that that was something i should have done at the very beginning of my marriage.

Maybe I was myself confused about that issue. After all learning Torah as the goal does not really come up until Reb Haim from Voloshin. You just do not see it beforehand stressed in the same way. And that I think led to my own falling from that ideal.

There are rules about how to treat slaves. There were places where slaves were not treated well, and for those places it is good that slavery was abolished. 
There is nothing wrong with slavery if one obeys the rules about how to treat slaves. The rules are well defined in Exodus 22. The War on the South was a War against the Torah.

Same goes with serfs--as long as serfs were treated right. But freeing the serfs in Russia did nothing to hep the serfs who suffered the most after that. Not just in the Russian Revolution, but even immediately  condition deteriorated considerably.

[However there were places where serfs were not treated well. But then the remedy would have been to enforce laws about their treatment.]


Serfdom in Europe was due to an arrangement made by people. After the fall of Rome, Europe was in chaos. You had random bands of criminals just basically going around and looting and raping and murdering. To remedy that situation, people became serfs around a feudal lord around his castle. In exchange, they gave a percentage of their crops to the lord. That is what is nowadays known as taxes.
That is-serfdom was a negotiated deal.

Nowadays, white people in the USA are working to support blacks without any kind of reimbursement or exchange. That is the basic definition of slavery. This is the welfare system. Where are the black protet against this kind of slavery?

The Bible is not primarily concerned with politics

The Bible is not primarily concerned with politics. In fact, politics was mainly a subject in ancient Greece where individual towns had to decide on some form of  a constitution. In other places, where there were monarchs, this issue rarely came up..

Still in history you see the issue come up from time to time. In fact in ancient Persia this was an issue right at the time of the rise of the Four Kings. To Herodotus, one of the options the ruling elite were considering in Persia was the approach of Democracy. In Rome obviously this was an important issue in the founding of Rome as an independent state. So they came up with their balance of powers between the plebeians and the Patricians  who were part of the Senate. But the plebeians were anything but an unprotected class.

In any case, in the Roman Empire, politics faded and also in Europe. But in place of politics came Law. Justinian and the Visigoth Code.

And in the Torah world, defining the Law of Moses --what books should be included in the canon became an important issue during the Roman Empire. And also defining what the practice of Torah is. But politics was basically untouched except for the rule דינא דמלכותא דינא- ''The law of the state is the law.''
Only in modern times has politics became a major issue uprooting even Torah for most Reform Jews. That is for most Reform Jews, Torah is optional, not obligatory-- while politics  --Social-Justice-- takes the place of Torah. That leaves most Reform Jews in a mild state of confusion --since "social justice" is rarely true justice. [Still, the Torah world itself is far from a state of justice either. It is highly abusive, and has been infiltrated by evil forces.]
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Just for public information I want to  add that in Torah there are two ways of choosing a monarch, One way is by an accepted prophet.  The other way is the Sanhedrin. The trouble is that neither exist today. Prophecy ceased as the Talmud says after the end of the first Temple.  And the Sanhedrin can only be made up from people that have authentic ordination from Sinai-- which the Talmud also says stopped during the period of the Talmud itself. [Ordination seems to have puttered out slowly.]

In Europe, the home owners were granted power by the princes over the Jewish community. That was called the Kahal. That existed until around 1800 when the kahal was nullified by the tzar. Sefardim were ruled by the local wise man, the local Torah scholar who was recognized as such by the authorities.

Today both these approaches seem poor. The best idea in my opinion is simply to support the State of Israel that look to me to be the most practical approach to creating stability and justice in  the Land of Israel. And this approach is what I recommend to anyone listening to me.

I am not ignoring the problems of being in Israel. I am just trying to give a short introduction to the issues involved. Often it can be unbearable and one is forced to leave just to be able to survive. Often you find yourself with neighbors  that will stop at nothing to get rid of you. So Israel can be a complicated subject. In particular it should be known that Sephardim will generally try to drive out any Ashkenazi Jew that tries to live near them. [It is worse if they are religious but this phenomenon exists even with secular Sephardim. They will always find some reason but the reason they find is always just an excuse. In reality they just do not want an Ashkenaiz near them.

Most cults today in fact derive their power by means of falsifying definitions.

The basic "meme" (unit of social information) of Litvak yeshivas is just one thing: Learn Torah.
The basic emphasis on this comes from the Gra.

The trouble here is that different groups try to jump on the bandwagon by "fudge words." That is: they try to redefine that the word "Torah" means.

And in truth, it is hard to get a good closed definition with a clear boundary. What you want to do is to have a definition such that everything inside the definition is Torah,-- and everything outside of it is not. Otherwise the very concept itself of learning Torah is meaningless. It can mean whatever any conniving charlatan wants it to means. Most cults today in fact derive their power by means of this falsifying of definitions.

In a way this is relevant to what I was thinking yesterday to bring up the concept of ספרים חיצוניים which is the Rif and Rosh means books that explain the Torah not according to the Chazal {קבלת חז''ל}.

The importance of learning Torah depends entirely on the definition. To me the Rambam made this issue clear in one of his letters where he writes: כמו שאין תוספת וגירעון בתורה שבכתב כמו כן אין תוספת וגירעון בתורה שבעל פה. "Just as there is no adding or subtracting from the written Law so there is no adding or subtracting from the Oral Law." [In other words "Torah" is a closed set of books.]

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So, if you add these two factors together you get an important combination that cancels most cults. For most cults thrive on fudging the definition of "Torah" to change it into books that explain the Torah not according to Chazal but come up with their own explanations. And then they change the definition of outside books from  "books that explain the Torah not according to Chazal but come up with their own explanations" into books of Science. Thus by fudging these two factors they change attempt to fool people into thinking that what they are doing is valid according to Torah.

Torah and Aristotle. While Saadia Gaon and the Rambam dealt with problems concerning the seeming contradiction between Torah and Aristotle still internal problems were not a major concern.

In Torah there are questions that come up  concerning the simple explanation. While Saadia Gaon and the Rambam dealt with problems concerning the seeming contradiction between Torah and Aristotle still internal problems were not a major concern. [In Aristotle himself]  The way to deal with a lot of the more obvious problems is usually resort to  the Ari. [The Ari is Neo Platonic. However of you look at the Reshash/ Sar Shalom Sharabi you will see that after the time of the revival of the dead the world will be like Aristotle. ] This has the advantage that you are not making the Torah to be allegories which is already the path that Philo used, and does not at all seem convincing. With the Ari rather there is the possibility of seeing how the Torah refers to realities that  are more real than this world. [At least this works for me.]

There is also an approach I borrow from the Kant school of thought as developed by Dr. Kelley Ross. That is: the world of the dinge an sich is simply not accessible to human intellect. Dinge an sich are all areas of a priori knowledge that do not come under the title of conditions of possibility of  experience [not possible experience. ]

So the question comes up how to learn the Ari without falling into the strange cults that claim him as their authority? That is : How to listen to the Gra, when everyone else seems to be ignoring him?

[Because of the great value of Dr Kelley Ross's ideas and Hegel's it would be a great idea to try to reconcile these two approaches.]

I learned in high school and later in yeshiva a good deal of Leftist literature. The Communist Manifesto in high school [on my own.] That was not assigned reading. In yeshiva between the morning and afternoon sessions, I read the major work of Sartre and read about Lenin. In high school, Camus was assigned reading. It is impossible to project myself now into my past and decide what I was thinking, but fro my actions I think it is clear that I was not impressed with Left wing thinking. I definitely was going more in the direction of the Rationalists--but had never gotten enough time to get into the debate between them and the Empiricists and to see how Kant tried to resolve it. In any case, even back then I think I had seen that there was something remarkably superficial about Left Wing thinking.

I might be attributing to myself more common sense than I have  a right to. Because what ever sense I had then seems to have abandoned me in later years when I more or less lest the straight Litvak yeshiva path.

It seems more likely to say I was impressed with my parents home and with the way American society was in those days. And I simply saw these alternative claims to making Utopia as being highly unrealistic.

In any case Leftist and Religious thinking always seemed to be about undermining social order and bringing about chaos so that they could come in and impose their own social order with them on top. Left wing thinking and the religious world both seem to me until this very day to be all about trying to destroy decent society and to bring about dis-stabilization so that they can impose their own authority
So even though I could discern the hidden authoritarian agenda of Left Wing Thinking I did not see this in the Jewish religious world, until too late.   But the agenda is the same. The means however are different. The claimed doctrines all seem to have the same purpose of breaking the ties that bond one with his parents and society in order to be able to come in later and impose their own authority.

r99 F major [Rough draft]


t58 D major

Occult practices and beliefs get into the religious world by means of the slippery slope.

Occult practices and beliefs get into the religious world by means of the slippery slope. That is by fudging definitions about faith in Torah, and bringing statements that support some of the crack head beliefs that were said by supposedly great men. It is a kind of conspiracy that began long ago to sneak in occultism into the Torah world.

The effort to get occultism into Litvak (Lithuanian)Yeshivas is mainly because they are the gold standard of what qualifies as legitimate and authentic Torah.
Thus you can find elements of the occult in even well known Litvak Yeshivas. the only one that I know excludes all these elements rigorously is the yeshiva of Rav Zilverman in the Old City of Jerusalem which goes strictly by the Gra. I was pretty friendly with the rosh yeshiva there already for about 26 years and though I did not learn there myself I have been pretty well impressed with the place. The name is not so well known, but just for the record the name is Aderet Eliyahu.


The great yeshivas like Ponovitch and Brisk are, as a rule, places where you can get into only f you already know how to learn. But Rav Zilverman's place starts at beginner levels.


I should mention that I have heard there are other start-up places that go by the Gra. 

Intensity of religious devotion

Intensity of religious devotion can be a great thing if one is on the path of truth and light and a terrible thing if one is on the path of darkness and evil.So the first thing one must do is to learn to discern between the holy and the unholy, though the unholy is easy to discern in fact. The more they are religious in appearance, the more you know they are from the Realm of Evil and Darkness. The prophet asks: "What does God ask from you? but to love compassion and justice הצנע לכת עם אלהיך to walk modestly with your God." (note 1) So if people are making a public announcement about how religious they are, then you know they are not doing the prime directive of God. Therefore it is easy to discern that they are from the Realm of Darkness.  

(note 1)  The entire verse is this: מה השם אלהיך שואל ממך כי עם אהבת חסד ועשות משפט והצנע לכת עם אלהיך.

However the basic question remains for oneself: how to discern between good and evil, right and wrong, in the  same area of value?
What are the minimum or maximum requirements of the Torah. Clearly the fanatic religious world is off on some lunatic LSD trip, but still that leaves the question open. The fact that many do Torah wrong does not tell me how to do it right. The best approach in my opinion is that of the Rambam who at least stated clearly his four fold approach of learning the Written and Oral Torah [the two Talmuds,] the Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle. This seems to be close to the path of my parents. Most other paths I have seen as producing really evil people is religious disguise.

There is nothing wrong with intensity of devotion if one is on a basically good path. For example, let's say that one is in a straight Lithuanian kind of yeshiva that goes strictly by the path of the Gra. In that case there would be nothing wrong with being a fanatic. Being fanatic is learning + keeping Torah is a good thing. There are dangers there also, but still the idea is once one is on a good path, one must stick with it and not leave--even for other paths which seem to be good.

The contemporary Jewish religious world  is an occult practice. Although varied in its beliefs from group to group, the occult usually encompass the views of honoring corpses of their leaders  as sacred, monism (all is one energy), polytheism (many spiritual powers), and pantheism (all is God/Goddess),  or panentheism (God/Goddess is contained within the world), communing with the dead.

This is in steady and stark contrast to Torah which is Monotheism, which is the belief that God created the world and He is not the world.

T58 D major

pillorying of white people--being done by other white people.

My impression of the USA (before there was lots of energy put into making it black) was highly positive. And High School taught as much. Later, I got more involved in Talmud,  and that was in Queens [NY] and later in Brooklyn,- so being involved in that I simply paid zero attention  to politics. But in the meantime (--when I was not looking), things just went downhill. So coming out of my shell in the 1990's, I was pretty horrified at what I have seen of the USA. 
My impression is that values changed. Instead of positive values, "Truth, Justice and the American Way" (as Superman so aptly put it), I saw pillorying of white people--being done by other white people.  This was done to appease the savage.  But also this is what Churches were teaching as being moral.

Learning Physics along with the idea of trust in God

I have hoped for myself to combine the idea of the Rambam [which was shared by other Rishonim] about the importance of learning Physics along with the idea of trust in God, and learning extremely quickly. I already know that the idea of trust in God was expanded by the book Obligations of the Heart to Olam Haba [the next world]. That is he says [in one place that as one must trust in God for success and happiness in this world  must he trust in God to reward him for his good deeds in teh next world.] And I already know that the disciple of Israel Salanter, Yoseph Horwitz, this to extend the idea of trust  to limit the השתדלות as much as possible. That is he agrees that some minimum amount of effort is required by he desires to get that minimum down to as low a minimum as possible [שאוף לאפס as mathematicians like to call it.
So in my case, I try to learn fast by just saying the words and going on and to extend the idea of trust in God to this area also--that is to not look at whether I understand or not, but just to believe that what I am supposed to understand I will and not to do ריבוי השתדלות over much effort.

[THIS is not to negate the idea of review.  It is rather one kind of learning normally called bekiut in Litvak yeshivas. But there is also "iyun" in depth learning which if I am without a learning partner usually means to of lots of review].


[It is true that to the Rambam, Physics was meant to be learned after finishing the Oral and Written Law. It is the way the Rambam understood מעשה בראשית and מעשה מרכבה. [The work of Creation and the work of the Divine Chariot which are in fact dealt with in the Gemara in חגיגה.] [The opinion of the Rambam can be seen also in the book חובות לבבות Obligations of the Heart שער הבחינה i think at the beginning of ch. 3]