Dr Michael Hueemer has a tremendous amount of great ideas non his site. However I have not been able to see his point about no state having any authority.  A British philosopher Danny Frederick also has criticized this idea of Dr Huemer. The idea of government being a contract also has brought both of their critiques. But looking at the war between Sparta and Athens I can see that contract theory  and agreement to follow a certain form of government makes a big difference.  

I have been seeing interesting things in the Shulchan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo recently. I can see why my learning partner did not think to learn it unless one knows the Gemara but I have been seeing that there is a lot of interesting things there even when one has not leaned the Gemara. For example a few days ago I noticed the question is there is such a thing as giving up an obligation like a loan? This is brought in Choshen Mishpat 164 in the Taz and the Ketzot HaChoshen that are arguing about the law that the Rema brings there that there is such a thing as giving up on a loan--not forgiving it but giving up. The Rema brings a case that a Jewish town made a loan to the prince and the prince promised to reduce the taxes in return. In the end he did not reduce the taxes and the town gave up on the loan. Then the prince much later died and his son paid back the loan. I was not going to write about this but the subject is certainly interesting but also complicated and I have no had time to delve into it. 

If one has crops that he has not taken any tithe from and he puts let's say wine in a jar and closes it and calls it maasar sheni [the second maasar] then the jar itself becomes maasar sheni. [Tractate maasar sheni 3. mishna 12]

Both the Mishna Rishona [a commentary by a person named Ephraim Isaac] and the Tiferet Israel ask on this from tracatate Msaasar sheni 1 mishna 4 and 5. There it says if you buy a closed jar of wine of maasar sheni in Jerusalem the jar goes out from the category of the second maasar to become secular.

To me it seems there is a difference between calling a name of maasar sheni to crops that have not been tithed yet and buying something with maasar Sheni. So I do not see any question in the first place.

The Tiferet Israel answers this question from the mishna in which one sells closed jars in a place where one usually buys open jars, but that answer depends on there being some connection between calling a name and buying.

I was not going to write anything about this today since in the Breslov synagogue where I was trying to learn this they moved the Mishnayot to someplace and I could not look up what i wanted to find. That is the Yerushalmi Talmud itself makes this distinction that I am suggesting  in chapter one of Msaasar sheni later on in that chapter concerning a different issue. Also I had no idea i was going to be able to find a computer to write on today since the police confiscated my own. So I was hoping to do some more work on this subject before writing .

[The problem that the Tiferet Israel deals with is why are the jars not consecrated? But to me it seems the reason is the same that when buys a animal with the money of the second tithe that the leather is not consecrated.] 

There is something I noticed in Ketuboth. I had done Ketuboth as well as I could when I was in Shar Yashuv [That is Rav Friefeld's yeshiva in Far Rockaway.] Though I was just a beginner then, I still did it with most of the Tosphot and Tosphot HaRosh and some Tur Shulchan Aruch along with it. So when I got to Israel and discovered that courts were awarding מזונות ]alimony to divorced women it seemed strange to   me. There is on one hand an award of money to a widow until she collects the Ketubah. But from everything I recalled in Ketuboth that does not apply to a divorced woman. She gets the Ketubah and that is all.

A woman gets married. Her מעשה ידיה [money she makes by working] and any objects she finds go to the husband. So why does the Rashba in Ketuboth in the chapter that starts האשה שנפלו say what she finds is נכסי מלוג? [Or at least that is how the Tosphot Yom Tov quotes the Rashba].

 נכסי מלוג is property she owns before the marriage. The husband gets the profits of the property but she retains the title.

Even though Dr Kelley Ross is very critical of Hegel, still in his comments he made a very important remark about what Hegel was trying to do--to finish what Socrates had started. [I only have a few minutes on this friend's computer so I can not expand but to me it seems crystal clear]. Dr Ross [the Kant Fries School] would not have put it in that way but I am sure that is what he meant.


Since i seem to have a few more minutes let me just add that Socrates was expert in finding the hidden contradictions in every single position offered by the people he was talking with. But not in a systematic way.  But he did have a system --or at least that is what we see in the dialogues of Plato. So Hegel was making Socrates into a system and also certainly held from the Neo Platonic View in which the Good emanates the Logos which emanates Nature.[It is the same system as the Arizal except the Ari goes into more details.

Another thing about Bava Kama. An ox [tam] gores another. Each are worth 200. Since it is the first time you the owner of the gored ox gets 100. If the ox does it again to another ox it the two owners get 50 and 50. If again then 50, 25 and 25. So my question is what happens then next time? I can not figure out what kind of progression the mishna is getting at.