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group think is automatically is invalid and an indication of falsehood.

In Southern California it was generally thought that the fact that everyone thinks one way is more of an indication that they are wrong. That is to say that group-think is automatically assumed to be invalid and an indication of falsehood.

This goes with a general American trait of distrust of experts.

So what Americans do with questions in which that come up that they have no experience in?   They would look at the type of credentials if relevant to the question at hand.

This was the basic cause of the Renaissance. While on one hand the Feudal system was necessary for civilization to start over after the fall of Rome, still at some point the system seemed useless in dealing with the issues of the 1200's and 1300's. So people started thinking in terms of the value of extremism. Not a synthesis of faith and reason.  Not the value of fitting in. Rather the opposite. The value of thinking differently.
 The problem in the USA today is group-think.

Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind says there is some kind of impasse that is inherent in the very foundations of the USA itself. Some problem that started at the very core of the Enlightenment. Throwing out Kings and Princes and Priests and placing "the people" or intellectuals had its own cause of different kinds of problems. Not the same kinds. The only way forward is not by "group think".

[He does mention Kant and Hegel, but from what I can see he thought both were on the side of the Enlightenment, and not exactly the way forward.]

If Allan Bloom is right then this time period is that of a great opportunity of going further or going backwards into the cave of Plato and extinction. Mad Max. What I think is a remnant of people will go forward, while many (and maybe even most) will fall back into darkness.

[It is curious why after going through all the contradiction of Enlightenment versus Anti Enlightenment that Allan Bloom stops right at Kant and Hegel. Why did he not go on?]

I do however have a few suggestions for going forward.
(1) Learning Math and Physics according to two principles. Saying the words as fast as possible and going on until one finishes the book. Then go back and do it again 4 times.
Also learning in depth which means review.
This does not depend on IQ, since it is a part of simply learning Torah which.
In terms of learning Torah the best idea is to go the same thing with Rav Shach's Avi Ezri.
(2) In terms of Political Theory I think the founding fathers of the USA got it right --as well as can be done.
(3) But one's focus ought to be on personal improvement. The Ten Commandments. Not correcting the world.
(4). Trust in God. Even if one goes with trust with effort still not to overdo the effort thing.
(5) Self sufficiency. Not to depend on handouts.
(6) Rav Avraham Abulafia's books [from the Middle Ages] I think are important.

Freeman Dyson's book on Advanced Quantum Mechanics I tried getting through twice. But there is a second half in which he derives the results of Schwinger which I found very hard. [He was in the news because he died yesterday so I was reminded that I probably need to get through his book a few more times.]

Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind the the problem in USA universities [in the humanities and social studies] as being a basic problem that he traces back to the very core of the problems that were raised by Hobbes and the other Enlightenment philosophers. So the problem now is not just universities but it graduated into politics. But the issues have not gone away of been resolved. He was not advocating a return the the faith and reason approach of the Middle Ages and barely mentions Kant or Hegel. He simply says we have met a road block and how we deal with it will determine the future.

He certainly saw the reasons why the newer approach of the Renaissance had to begin. There were enough problems with kings and priests to warrant a new approach. But that new approach has approached a road block.

So what is "Bitachon" [trust in God]?

Navardok, the Chazon Ish and the very first Musar book the Obligations of the Heart and the Gra [the Gaon of Vilna] all deal with this question. But what is the conclusion?
At least we get some clarity when at least we define things as a מחלוקת ראשונים [an argument between the medieval authorities]. When at least you have come to that point where you can say "it is an argument among first authorities" you have reached a conclusion.[Because after that no matter how many argument you will bring to one side, teh fact remains that the other side is also valid and that you simply have not thought of the arguments on that side --yet.\
So the issue of trust with effort or without effort [בטחון עם השתדלות או ביטחון בלי השתדלות] is simple and clear. It is an argument among rishonim [first authorities].
But that still leaves the question what it actually is? Is it that you will get your needs? That does not seem to always be the case. but you can answer that most people that do not get their needs met simply do not have trust. Or enough trust.
However to me it seems that the basic idea is that one thinks and feels that God will make things work out in the way that is right in his eyes.

In particular that is the way it looks like the Chazon Ish explains the issue.

This all may sound all just in the air, but when I was at the Mir in NY, the basic approach of trust in God was very practical. People simply learned Torah and hoped and expected that God would take care of everything else. So they were not learning Torah for the sake making money. Rather they were learning for its own sake. And so if in fact at one point they needed to go out to find some "making a  living" activity, that was thought to not be a contradiction to teh idea of trust. It was simply trust with effort. However using Torah as a  means to make money was definitely looked down upon.  [It was almost thought of as a kind of defilement]. No one in that category had teh slightest respect from anyone.

But there is no obligation to give anything to a divorced woman

The obligation to feed one's wife is one kind of obligation. To  the Rif and most Rishonim it is from the sages, not the Torah. To the Rambam, it is from the Torah. There is also an obligation for a widow to be feed until she remarries. But there is no obligation to give anything to a divorced woman except the Ketubah itself. There is nothing called "Mezonot" "Food". This fact has always bothered me about courts that do not see the difference between divorced women and widows.

In any case, I wanted to introduce the subject of a case where you have a few widows. [I.e. the same husband married them all at different times.]

[Rambam laws of marriage 18 law 14] They all get the ketubah according to the time they were married but mezonot/food they all get at the same time.
The Ravvad says the reason is the obligation of the Ketubah is because they were married. The obligation of Mezonot is because he died. So it is like "borrowed and borrowed and then bought" [at the end of Bava Batra] where all get the same.
Rav Shach I see deals with this issue.

I would like to go into some of the problems of the Middle Ages in order to show that sometimes going to the extreme is the proper thing to do. What I mean is that the Middle Ages was basically exemplified by the focus on Reason and Faith which more or less meant authority belonged to kings and priests.

These lost a great deal of their authority when they seemed incapable of solving problems. The Black Plague would be the best example, but there were  more.  

So the Renaissance began-- which meant more or less, "Let's go to extremes, and then see maybe that will get us somewhere." [Take your pick of many examples of such thinking.]

To some degree you see this in Rav Nahman [Uman and Breslov] in his idea that Torah scholars tend to have a problem of "תלמידי חכמים שדיים והודאיים" (Torah scholars which are demons) which his brings directly from the Zohar [Pinhas]. [See Rav Nahman's LeM I:8, I:12, I:28, I:61, II:1, II:8.]
I have tried to soften the blow of Rav Nahman by explaining this in terms of Jung's archetypes. But it occurred to me that Rav Nahman did not want anyone to soften the blow. He wanted his point to be open and explicit.
That means he did not intend it to be a nice idea revolving in some "mind space". He meant his statement to cause  actions. Sp what kind of actions was he thinking?

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The Middle Ages had some great points. Civilization could not have risen without the Feudal system. Also there were amazing thinkers. Aquinas, Anselm, Tosphot, Saadia Gaon, the authors of Musar.
But the drawbacks were real. They were not just made up by later generations.

One of the many great ideas of the Middle Ages was faith with reason. But at some point when people were seeing the limits of that they decided the middle of the road approach was not getting anywhere. They decided extremes was the only way. Some choice extremes in one direction and others in other directions.
I think the basic general approach is the middle of the road, but there does come a time and place when extreme action or thought is called for. The Renaissance was mostly about seeking the extreme. As x goes to infinity.
One example of the advantage of extremism is what I mentioned before about two kinds of learning. One going fast--saying the words and going on until you finish the book many times. The other is in depth learning. I think both are necessary.

There is some debate today about universities and some say they do not teach much. You can see this in Michael Huemer. But the problem was already seen by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind and he saw the issue in a wider context--an issue about the Enlightenment itself.
For there were people from the very beginning of the Enlightenment that were against the whole movement. [Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels where he saw the rule of the intellectuals as them siting on some floating Island and ruling over us plebeians.]

I myself do not see much of an answer. However I can see that even in the Middle Ages before any of that started there already was this issue about Faith and Reason. But the Middle Ages had more or less come to the conclusion that you need both and some kind of synthesis between them.
I would point out that Hegel came closest to defending faith and reason in the most rigorous possible system--if not for the fact that he has been used ever since then for the exact opposite.
Faith with reason in the middle ages was the idea that both are compatible, but no one made the whole into a organic whole.

Leonard Nelson also has a clear defense of faith [That is the Kant Friesian School] but I can not tell if the difference between him and Hegel is all that significant. [The dinge an sich with Nelson is detected by a third faculty of the mind immediate non intuitive knowledge.  It does not seem all that different than Hegel'e getting to God through the dialectic.]
[I think that in terms of STEM universities are doing great. Allan Bloom was talking about the other insane departments.]

So you have in Rav Nahman [of Uman] [Sicha 76] a clear emphasis on learning as fast as possible. Not just say the words but say the words with "Great speed".  But you also see in his Sefer HaMidot an emphasis on review.
So one way to deal with this is like I was doing in Shar Yashuv--learn each paragraph twice and then go on. Even when I started to learn in depth I also tended to do this same thing.

But that was not really like the general way of learning at the Mir. In the Mir [New York] the morning was devoted to getting as deep as possible. [It was famous for that with Rav Shmuel Berenbaum's classes being considered the deepest in the world.] The afternoon was for fast learning. And that aspect of either part of the Mir I never got to. I was really not on the intellectual level to get as deep into the Sugia/subject as the classes of Rav Shmuel were. But nor was I on the level of doing the fast kind of learning that people were doing in the afternoon.
So I had my middle of the road approach. I would learn the Gemara with Tosphot and the Maharasha and maybe the Pnei Yehushua sometimes and then just go on. I never got into the deep aspects of learning that you can see for yourself in books like the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and the chidushim of Rav Haim of Brisk.

So now it seems to me that if possible the way of having two different kinds of sessions is the best idea--like they were doing in the Mir. One in depth with lots of review and the other fast. And later I in began to apply both methods to learning Math and Physics. And I can see that both are necessary.
[It took me some time to find the rishonim that held that Physics is part of Torah. That was not well known at the Mir at the time.]

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To me it seems clear that trust in God is not just depending that whatever God wants, that is what will happen.  You can see this in verses. והבוטח בהשם חסד יסובבנו Psalms 16. he who trusts in God, kindness will surround him. So it is not just depending on the Divine Decree. Nor is it saying whatever God wants will happen. Rather the idea is that it is like a filter for polarized light. It lets in only kindness and keeps out the other stuff.
But it also is not trust in order to get things. It is rather indirect. One trusts in God and thus God helps. But it is not trust so that God will help.

Just to be clear. The basic issues about trust come originally from the Obligations of the Hearts by Ibn Pakuda.  חובות לבבות. Later the major sources are the books of Navardok, the Chazon Ish. Rav Nahman does not spend a lot of time on the issue,- but brings a lot of clarity to the issue.
Those four are the basic sources. For some reason the Gra says a remarkable statement about Bitachon. He says the entire purpose of giving the Torah is so that people will trust in God.
he also has that famous statement in his commentary on Proverbs 3 that one should trust in God with no effort. [This seems to be an argument between Ibn Pakuda and the Gra].

The Gra hold trust with no effort. Ibn Pakuda holds with effort. The way of the Gra seems to be that you do only what is required by the Torah and God will do the rest. [That was also how trust/bitachon was understand at the Mir in NY. There the idea was understood that you learn Torah and expect God to take care of your needs. This was in fact very practical. And it was never used as a reason not to do kindness. ]

There is an argument between the "Rishonim" [mediaeval authorities] about the usual law that money that someone has stays where it is unless another party brings a proof. המוציא מחבירו עליו הראיה. The question is what happens if the other party grabs it after there is already raised a doubt.
See Bava Mezia page 6b and 7a.
There is a "teaching" that raises the question if a sheep or goat or cow has given birth before.  Then it gives birth. If it would be known that the calf was first born then it is given to a priest. And sacrificed.
But if there is a doubt then it stays with the owner but it can not be used for work or sheared for wool. So one one hand it is like a first born in that shearing and work are forbidden. But it is like a non first born in that the owners keep it.
The Gemara says the reason it stays with the owner is that money that someone has stays where it is unless another party brings a proof. המוציא מחבירו עליו הראיה. So if a priest would grab it it would stay by the priest. Raba says we would take it away.
[Actually what Raba meant is the very issue at hand. Rav Shach says what he actually said was that even if we would say you take it away from the priest even so it would be forbidden in work and shearing.

I was in a store that sells "Felafel" (which is a kind of national food in Israel which was originally an Arabic dish) and the owner was asking me about my background. And in the conversation came up his observation that: "The Torah is holy and good but the religious people are f...ked  up."

The point he was making about someone else that works in that store. He said that the religious not only are messed up but that they mess up others.
There is a kind of mental force I think he was implying.

The idea is the more holy the Torah is, the easier it is to get off track. I mean that when you have a numinous area of value [holy and great], if not taken exactly right, it turns into the opposite.
That is why the authentic approach of the Gra, Rav Israel Salanter and Rav Shach is important. Authenticity is the issue.

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There are a few basic principles of action. But to combine them into a cohesive whole seems hard to do. Like Michael Huemer said there does not seem to be an algorithm  of morality. Even though he holds bu objective morality he doubts that there is a formula how to figure out the right thing in any given situation.

You might try to pick on one basic principle, and that makes sense to some degree.
Still what I think is that morality is an organic whole. There are principles that fit together like parts of a human body. Each part has its own function.

Rav Haim Kinyevsky, [one of the great Litvak sages] said that when any group  emphasizes any one basic principle, always the result is the exact opposite. Rather you need balance

To me this issue seems to be something like what Hegel was doing. Thinking that he could make sense of the big picture and showing the inner connections of everything with everything else and by a process of dialectic to get from Being to God [the absolute Idea]. [I imagine he did not want to use the word God to identify the Absolute Idea.]


The possibility to have some kind of algorithm of action seem to be along the lines of Kelley Ross building on Leonard Nelson.[That is the Kant Fries School of thought] [That is Kelley Ross has an array of values that looks like the half circle of angular momentum.] That is you start with all form and no content --formal logic. Then work up towards more numinous content but less form. That is Math proper since it can not be reduced to pure logic. And you work up until more numinous content like Music and Justice. until you get to God--all numinous but no form

Rav Shach brings in Laws of Acquisition a debate between almost all other Rishonim against the Rambam. The issue is תופס אחר שנולד הספק אם מוציאים מידו.

The Gemara this is based on is Bava Metzia 6b.
Rav Hanania said to Raba there is a outside teaching [a teaching that is legitimate, but not part of the Mishna] הספיקות נכנסים לדיר להתעשר [doubtful animals go into the barn to be counted for maasar the tithe of animals.]
That is to say, if you have an ass that has given birth. If it is the first born, you take a sheep and redeem it, and give the sheep to a priest. But if you do not know if your ass has given birth before. So it is a doubt. But you redeem it anyway. And the sheep now is counted as regular property of the Israeli. [So it counts when you need to take every tenth animal and give as tithe.]

The gemara asks  what happens if a priest grabs a doubtful case of a regular sheep that has given birth and there also you do not know if it has given birth before. It is forbidden to use as if we knew it is holy. So you learn that if  priest grabs it you do not take it away.
But Raba disagrees. And that is where Rav Hanania comes in.
Most Rishonim understand that Rav Hanaia is bringing a proof that if one grabs something of value after there has already been known that the case is a doubt, then you take it away.
Rav Shach however says it is possible to understand that Gemara as supporting the idea that the fact of the animal being forbidden to use is not because the priest has a hand in it. For even if the law would be that you take it away of the priest it, still it would be holy because it is holiness that comes by itself. And that is the case Rav Hanania is  coming to support.

trust in God [Bitachon]

The idea of trust in God is only for the sake of getting stuff. It is a value in itself.
I think one ought to pray to merit to trust.
That is just like you do not see belief in God as being for the sake of something or for getting something. Rather you see it as a belief in a fact. So I see trust as being even more or a positive value.



But how to go about it seems hard to know. I do not think the issue is as is usually thought to be that of trust as opposed to effort. But if you think about people that did trust in God, you do not see the issue of trust with effort ever coming up. Ever. It rather is always they do what they must do and trust in God to help. If they do not absolutely have to then they do not. Like the Pilgrims coming to Plymouth Rock and beginning the stream of people coming to America. They were not thinking about trust in God and effort. They were thinking they needed to live with their beliefs and to raise their children right-so they had no choice but to come to America. England was always impossible. It was either prison or conform. Amsterdam was impossible because of the negative free thinking influences on their children. So they has no choise. But within that doing what they had to do they trusted that God would help.

Navardok I should add was based on teh idea of trust [Bitachon] in God. That is just learn Torah and God will do the rest.

The question is the base line. Would everything be perfect if not for some oppressing group. So everyone would rise to prosperity and happiness if not for the group keeping them down. Or is the natural state of people being down and so when one group rise you see something unusual that must be due to some kind of inner strength.

That is my thought about different forms of Marxism that attribute the idea that all people are not prosperous to discrimination. 

Wherever England has touched, you find economic prosperity, higher standards of living than anywhere else

Wherever England has touched, any place that was a colony of England, you find economic prosperity, higher standards of living than anywhere else;- civilization, tall building, clean streets, people cooperation.

The USA, Australia, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Israel. You can not see that with anyone else.
What is it about the English?

You can possibly say it is one clause in the Magna Carta. No free man shall be fined, imprisoned or ruined in any way without a due process. That is, --the due process was not the judgment of the king or even the Parliament, but of a jury.

98% of the population were English. But were free. So even though the barons and lords were Norman, this was for the people, not just the rulers.

The strange thing about this is that you find the exact opposite effect with Socialism. Any place it touches, where there was once prosperity, high standards of living you then find everything falling apart.  

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Foundational-ism is something that Hegel goes against. That there are some ideas that one starts with that are beyond reproach or correction. That is not the same kind of foundational kind of belief that Michael Huemer starts with.  With Huemer, you start with prima facie evidence. And if afterwards new evidence comes to light that shows you have to bring corrections to your beginning belief, then you do so. And how do you know which is more likely? That is by probability.
I do not see that Hegel would have disagreed with this.
Hegel never went into the question rationalism as opposed to empiricism in the first place.
Nor did he think he could derive all science by pure reason with no empirical input. [You gave to see John McTaggart to see these points. It is hard to see them in Hegel himself.]

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There is a verse that is often taken to mean something it does not say. אתה הראתה לדעת כי השם הוא האלהים אין עוד מלבדו. "You were shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him." Which means: There is no other god besides God, the First Cause. The reason I say this is two fold. One is simple grammar. If the words "אין עוד מלבדו" would be by themselves in the verse, then that would perhaps be different. However in the context of the verse, the meaning is the Lord is God, there is no other god besides Him.

The other reason I say this is in the actual meaning of the verse. In that verse in Deuteronomy Moses is talking to Klal Israel and telling them you were shown at Mount Sinai to see and to know something. What was that? That was that the Lord is the true God and there is no other gods besides Him. That is the simple explanation of what Israel saw at Mount Sinai. Not that there were shown that there is nothing. 

The basic idea of the Torah is that God created the world from nothing. Ex Nihilo. And all Rishonim agree that that is the point of Torah.

There is an argument between almost all other Rishonim and the Rambam concerning the question if one grabs a doubt.  The Rashba is usually in the side of the other rishonim in this kind of argument but in this case he brings a case for the Rambam and the Gra also.
The issue comes from a Gemara in Bava Metzia . R. Hanania said to Raba: there is a braita that supports your view that says the doubts go into the stall to be taken for the tithe. So if a kohen would grab a doubt and we would not take it out of his hand then one would be taking tithe by the money of a kohen.
The Rashba says that  that is only in the case of the first born of an ass which is at first owned by the Israeli. That is the status of the first owner causes us to say we would take it out of the hand of the kohen.

This comes up in the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach in laws of acquisition 3 law 9. I mean to go into this in a little more detail.

Hegel I think goes in reputation up and down

Hegel I think goes in reputation up and down sky high for about ten years and then sinks to the basement for another ten years,-- and then back up again etc. He has been doing this for the last two hundred years. It all started right after he was gone. For the first ten years after that he was the king of the mountain. Then the Prussian government brought in Schelling to knock him of his pedestal. Then back and forth it went with all kinds of permutations.
I can not figure this out. At least once Plato and Aristotle were accepted, they more or less stayed that way.

One odd thing about Hegel was the use that Marx made of him to turn his approach into its opposite. That does not invalidate him but it is one odd thing. And then you get the English enthusiastic people all heads over heels about Hegel until WWI. And then suddenly Hegel is responsible for WWI. [Not that people in Germany were even reading him at that point. When WWI started Nietzsche was the big thing in Germany, not Hegel.  With WWII it became even easier to blame everything on Hegel.

Now one one hand you have Leonard Nelson and the Kant Fries School and the Intuitionists like GE Moore which have great value, but that does not  seem to diminish Hegel just because they have other good points.

E.g. Hobhouse has a whole book against the Metaphysical view of the State which is against ideas about the state that some people were basing on Hegel.
In any case, One thing he knocks is the statement of Hegel that "matter is gravity" and Hegel compares that with people in their essence are free. So Hobhouse knocks [among other things] this idea that matter is gravity. This was certainly hard to see in the time of Hobhouse but now that we know that matter is made of strings the same as gravity it is harder to see what the complaint about Hegel is.  [I ought to add while that Leonard Nelson had a different view than Hegel about a lot of things still his main argument was against the Neo-Kantians of the Marburg school. And Husserl,]

[I think it is best to think of Hegel kind of neo Kantian thought. Not the peak and top, but nor the bottom.

The way of learning in depth I have nothing to add to the basic approach of the great Litvak {Lithuanian} type of yeshivas. They have already adopted the two clearly best ways of doing this.
Either the global type of approach pioneered by Rav Haim of Brisk and Rav Shach. The other the sort of kind of detailed learning I heard in Shar Yashuv from Naphtali Yeager and later by David Bronson.
I tried in my two books on Shas to embody both types.
However in terms of learning fast I do think that the basic idea of Rav Nahman of Breslov is something that people ought to do. Say the words and go on. In that way you can finish at least once in your life, the entire Gemara with Tosphot, the Yerushalmi with the Pnei Moshe and Karban HaEdah and get through the entire writings of the Ari and Remak and all the Midrashim and all the books of Rav Haim of Brisk and Rav Shach and the entire body of Mathematics and Physics which is  apart of Torah. Without this method of Rav Nahman, I think getting through this is inconceivable. 

Does a document of a sale count as money? The Rashba, an important Rishon, holds no.

The Rashba (and Ramban [Rav Moshe ben Nahman. Nahmanides]) held a document is not money.
See the nook of the Rashba on Tractate Kidushin page 5 and also page 47.
 You see this in Kidushin and Pidion HaBen. The question that Rav Shach brings is from Bava Batra where the Rashba apparently holds a document of obligation should be considered as an exchange of money. [This Rashba is not the same one called the Rashba in Tospfot.]

The actual subject is famous. You have a cases where a slave is owned by two owners. Then one lets him go. So now he is half slave and half free. Now a slave becomes obligated in all commandments  when he is freed. [As a slave he is only obligated in commandments that a woman is obligated in.]
The question to the House of Hillel seems clear. He works for himself one day and then the next he workers for his owner. It goes back and forth every other day. But the students of Shamai asked but what about getting married? He can not marry a fee woman because he is half slave and he can not marry a woman slave because he is half free. So the owner has to let him go and the slave writes a document that he is obligated in the amount the owner is losing. The Rashba holds this is good. But why if the document is not money?
Rav Shach answers this in this way. The reason you need more than a document to be counted as money in terms of Kidushin and in businesses deals is that you need a buyer and a seller. For example lets says one would give money so that a field should be "hefker", well that would not work for this reason. But freeing of a slave is "pedia" letting go, or redeeming. It is not a business deal. Once the owner lets go, even if the reason is simply that he got a document saying that the slave will eventually pay him back that is enough.

[Actually this subject may not be famous since clearly Abraham Lincoln was unaware of it. Detroit would look different today of only Abe Lincoln had learned the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.]

Why you can ask is this just when freedom is so important? Because everyone has their place and ought to fit into their place. Obligation is part of freedom as Hegel goes into. See his discussion in History.

[The reason this same reasoning does not apply to pidion ha'Ben or Kidushin is clear that in neither of these last two case do you have a חלות state of being that is already here in potential  but just waiting for something to trigger it so that it can become real.]

I have tried to present a case that learning Physics and Mathematics is a part of learning Torah based on an array of Rishonim [mediaeval authorities.] That means it does not depend on whether you are smart or not.
I also added to this the idea of the Gra about trust in God with no effort. That would apply even to learning that you just say the words in order and do not worry if you understand or not. You just believe that God will help you, and that eventually you will understand.
And not just that, but I think this kind of learning strengthens trust in God. I mean that searching for methods of learning is a kind of ריבוי השתדלות "over amount of effort".

[The idea of doing a minimum amount of effort I got from Rav Nahman of Breslov [Sichot HaRan 76]. He explains the idea of trust in God that you make a vessel in which the blessing can enter and then cease. Anything beyond that is ריבוי השתדלות too much effort which implies lack of trust in God.

ideas about trust in God are brought in the major book of Navardok מדריגת האדם "The Level of Man" but I found a lot of help in understanding the subject in the LeM of Rav Nahman.

Tolerance can not be a prime positive value.

Tolerance is not  prime positive value. The reason is that everyone has some out-group that they do not tolerate. The out-group for tolerant people is intolerant people. So tolerant people have a group they do not tolerate, i.e the intolerant. So the tolerant people are intolerant. So tolerant people can not allow themselves to be tolerated,- since they are not tolerant [of the intolerant].

If you hold that people ought to be decent and kind and honest, then you ought to postulate those as primary values.

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The Cold War was easy to figure out. USA values opposed to Communism. Where ever you were on that spectrum it was easy to see what the issues were. Now things seem a lot more hard to see.

When the issue was  about Communism I at least could read the basic books and see where I held on that issue. [I did not think Communism made much sense. However I did not think it was as terrible as some made it out to be either. The oddest thing in Uman was every single person I meet and asked about how things were back then always told me "Things were better then".]


As for myself, I figure my parents had things right. Be a "mensch" (decent human being). Be self reliant. Basic American values. But they taught by doing and almost never by words. I also ought to add that when the USA needed my Dad he volunteered for the USAF,  and afterwards helped with inventing stuff.  [Infrared Camera, the second camera on the U-2 (not the first team but the second team)) and then the satellites that used Infra red and then laser communication.]
 In any case I hope this gives the basic idea. I mean to say that in the USA there was a set of basic values that are not easy to explain now that most of them have been forgotten.

In terms of trust in God, I would like to add this idea of Kant--that you are not aware of what goes on under the surface of consciousness. You can be aware of what you are now thinking. And you can recall what you were thinking before. But under that surface you do not know what is going on. And I would like to add that you have a certain amount of control over what you are thinking about. While you might not have absolute control all teh time but at least some part of the time , you can control what you are thinking about. So you can think to yourself that God will help you. And you can replace negative thoughts with that positive thought.

Faith and trust depend on one's words.

In terms of trust in God I wanted to mention that Rav Nahman of Breslov says in LeM Vol II, chapter 44 and later the idea that "faith depends on the mouth." [That is,-- saying words of faith in God counts as faith itself, and also brings one to faith. So one has to be very careful never to say words of denying faith-- even if one does not mean them. [The next place this is brought I think is around LeM Vol II. 86.]
So I wanted to add an idea that since we know that faith and trust in God are connected that therefore trust in God also depends on one's words. That is just saying words of trust in God like "God will help me. God will protect me. God will guide me," is in itself counted as trust in God and also brings one to trust even when at first one does not have it.

  The most famous issue concerning trust in God is when does one do "effort" [Hishtadlut]? This is an argument among rishonim [first authorities. i.e. authors from the Middle Ages] And it is a known fact that concerning any argument among rishonim each is "the words of the Living God" so you do not expect to find a resolution. [note 1] [The way this is referred to in Hebrew is "a machloket Rishonim" "argument of first authorities". Once you have gotten to the point something is a Machloket Rishonim that is the resolution of the discussion.]
  For example if you find an argument between the Ri and Rabbainu Tam you do not expect to find a complete solution. You rather expect to find support for one or the other. You never expect to disprove one or the other. If one thinks he has disproved a Rishon that means he is either stupid or insane. [note 2]
  [It would be like today if someone says they can accurately predicate the value of  a stock or the whole stock market in the ten ten years. They simply means the fellow thinks he is a lot smarter than he really is.]
[I do not know the reason for this. It probably has to do with a fact noted by Michael Huemer that the logic of the Middle Ages was always logically rigorous. The problems had to do with the beginning axioms. After the Middle Ages the axioms always sound a lot better but the logic is almost always circular.

Notes:

[note 1] The idea of "these and these are the words of the living God" comes from the Gemara in terms of arguments among the sages of the Gemara or Mishna. The idea is that even if it has been decided that the law is like or or the other, that does not mean the other was wrong. Rather "both are the words of the living God" even though the law was decided by one.]

[note 2] This does not apply to "achronim" people that wrote after the Beit Yoseph [Rav Yoseph Karo].[After the Middle Ages] They can be wrong and often are.

how to encourage devotion towards God while being aware of the pitfalls? My own experience is that Torah scholars tend to be demons. The exception is the true and authentic ones that are learning Torah for it own sake.

Even though I hold highly of the importance of learning and keeping Torah, the trouble is that there are obstacles such as the agents if the dark side. This was clearly the point of Rav Nahman when he referred to the Torah scholars that are demons.  Clearly his intention was to increase devotion to God--not to diminish it. So his question was how to encourage devotion towards God while being aware of the pitfalls? His choice was this approach to openly warn people. This is unusual I admit.

However the only people that I have heard of that take this warning to heart is the Na Nach group.

My own experience is that Torah scholars tend to be demons. The exception is the true and authentic ones that are learning Torah for it own sake.

Trust in God

The two modern books on Trust in God are from Navardok and the Chazon Ish. So based on what I learned from them I have been thinking for about a week what trust in God really means.
I mean to say that it is not the issue of when to do "Hishtadelut" [put out effort to get your needs] and when not. Rather I have wondered what the basic idea of trust is in the first place.
It can not be the thought that God controls events because that is just faith. And it can not be that God controls events in your own life because that is also just faith. But it can not be knowledge that things will be good, because often they are not. So what is it?

I think trust in God means the thought and feeling that "God will help me"  even when reason says He will not or does not care.

[That is here is a case like the idea of Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross that faith [immediate non intuitive knowledge] is not a faculty of reason and can be counter reason. [Based in Kant about the limits of reason. That leaves Kant with trouble about knowledge that is not based on reason nor empirical evidence. So Fries decided there is a third faculty of knowledge not based on either one. But his approach also had problems until Leonard Nelson modified it. However I forget off hand what the problems were or how they were answered.]

Kelley Ross [The Kant Fries School] is different from Michael Huemer [Intuitionists] but not that very different. With Kelley Ross you have knowledge not based on Reason or senses. Faith. But with Michael Huemer you know things because he expands the role of Reason.

Carl Jung might provide some insight into what Rav Nahman of Breslov meant by Torah Scholars that are demons

The problem that Rav Nahman is pointing out about Torah scholars that are demons is referring to a problem that  exists in the religious world. That the people that are at the top are demons. This filters down into the entire religious world.
I mean to say that Rav Nahman is not saying that every single Torah scholar is a demon. Rather just those at the top.

You would have to understand this I think in the way of Carl Jung about arch types. That is these people start out with human souls. But then they get attracted by the money and  the ability show themselves as experts in Torah. So slowly they lose their human souls and get possessed by an arch type "Torah Scholar Demon".

The idea would be along the lines that Rav Nahman referred to in a different context that the Satan found it difficult to trick and seduce people into evil and so he needed assistants. So he sends his demons to posses the souls of Torah scholars to make his job easier.

{This theme comes from the Zohar and Gemara itself but are mentioned only briefly. Rav Nahman however mentions this throughout the LeM.]


To me it seems that it really ought not to be hard to figure out who is a a true Torah scholars from the realm of holiness. Off hand it ought to be simple. Anyone following the straight path of Torah--i.e the path of the Gra and Rav Shach is from the realm of holiness. And I really would go with this assessment except for the trouble that somehow it seems the Dark Side has managed to infiltrate even the straight and narrow Torah world of the path of the Gra. So a simple assessment seems no longer possible. [I myself had a great time in both Litvak yeshivas that I went to, but if things are the same today as back then I am not so sure.]

Deuteronomy 21 about the case of a dead person found outside a city and no one knows who killed him. You bring a calf as a atonement.

What I have not figured out in Rav Shach on the Rambam in Laws about Murderers and Guarding of One's Life [chapter 9 law number 6] is probably simple to see but I have been perplexed about this. He needs that the Rambam should ignore our Gemara [Bava batra chapter 2] that says you only measure towards the close city in the mountains. If we are talking about a person that was murdered where there are lost of cities around you by the largest city. Not the closest. The Rambam ignores that Gemara and says you always go by the largest city.
The way Rav Shach answers this Rambam is perplexing to me.
The basic idea Rav Shach  borrows from is 10 stores. Some sell permitted meat and some sell forbidden meat. If one goes into one store to buy food and forgot which one he does not go by the majority because כל קבוע כמחצה על מחצה דמי "Things that are set in place you consider to be half and half." That is you do not go by the majority. But if the meat is found outside the stores then you go by the majority. So we already have a way to understand things. Our Gemara that is looking for a reason to ignore the largest city and go by the closest can be going parallel to the case of one buys in a store but forgot which one. There you do not go by the majority or largest.
But the Rambam has some other reason to think our case is like finding meat outside the stores.
So he has a ready made answer. The Yerushalmi in which there is a argument if the calf [Egla Arufa] is brought for the murderer or the murdered.We can say the question is from where did the murdered come from. Or the murderer. In either case this is where seem fuzzy to me. What Rav Shach wants to do is to say the Gemara that says you go by the closest is because it is going like the Yerushalmi. And the Rambam would claim he is going like our Gemara.
This is hard for me to get. The Yerushalmi says it is for the murderer. And there we would say it is a case of half and half. [This is what Rav Shach wants.] And our Gemara would say the calf [that is brought into a wadi and killed] would say we go by the murdered. And that would be like the case the meat is found outside the stores where we go by the majority.
On one hand the idea of applying the Gemara abut ten stores [from Hulin chapter 7] makes some degree of sense because of the difference between when to use majority and when not. But on the other hand the  gemara in Bava Batra does not at all seem clear to mean to only measure close when it is  a city in the mountains. Plus the verse itself says to measure to the nearby city. If the way the achronim are understanding this sugia that it is referring to a city that is by itself in the mountains it seems to make no sense to measure to a nearby city when there is no other one.

[My own guess about this problem would be to look at Kapach. [i.e the original Rambam that was from Yemen back at the time of the Rambam. Sometimes there are slight differences which clear up all teh problems.]]

The basic problem that Rav Nahman of Breslov refers to in terms of Torah Scholars that are demons is not easy to understand in today's terminology. No one really thinks that anyone walking around is actually a demon in disguise. But that might be more of a problem with modern thinking more than with Rav Nahman. And in fact modern world view change every ten years. For example Freud used to be thought to be obvious and common sense. Now totally discredited. Existentialism also was the big thing. Now obsolete.

השמטות של שמואל הורוויץ [the left out portions of the Life of Rav Nahman] were not ever included in the Chayee Moharan as being Not Politically Correct. But there you can find signs of how to tell.[So it is not just up to your own discretion. Rather Rav Nahman did give more details--but until now have not been widely known.]

There was in fact never done a thoroughly academic version of any of the books of Rav Nahman and so grave mistakes have been made by people that published them. [Mistakes that were not done by intention but still drastically grievous.]

Avi Preder [part of the Na Nach group] and David Bronson [in Uman] are more "in the know" but most in Breslov have not done the research to be able to tell.

Bitachon in God [Trust in God]`

Bitachon in God [Trust in God] has nothing to do with how many rituals one does. Just the opposite.
But on the other hand one does not hear much about trust in God in the Reform world. The Chazon Ish has the logical approach to Bitachon that I have heard of. It is not that you assume God will help. Rather it is a feeling that God is guiding things in the right way.\
Rav Nahman also has in his stories a few examples of this. The famous "Story abut Trust" however for me did not bring out this point as much as another story I think I saw in the "Chayee Moharan."
There was merchant who had a giant diamond. He booked passage on a ship. He was treated like royalty. But the diamond fell into the sea. Still he pretended he still had it and by his keeping strong and not losing faith that things would work out OK then in fact they worked out.

The advantages of trust in God are first of all something that Rav Nahman said: "By trust in God good thoughts are drawn to you."

This is the advantage of inner peace.
However I realize that it is possible for one to imagine that he is trusting in God when in fact he is depending on the system. That is self delusion.

I am I admit not sure about the whole idea of "kollel". But whatever one says about it, the point is being religious has nothing to do with trust in God.\ Being religious means presenting a facade of religiosity in order to gain money and power.

מחלוקת בין רב שך ואת החזון איש

קיימת מחלוקת בין רב שך ואת החזון איש (יד החזקה הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה" הלכה ט) בעניין הרוצח בשוגג והוא בדרכו אל עיר המקלט והוא נהרג על ידי גואל הדם. מחוצה לו שהוא אינו בטוח שאינו יכול להיהרג. אז בואו נגיד שהוא נהרג, אבל המקרה טרם הגיע לבית המשפט. בפסוקים עצמם אתה רואה לדילמה הזאת. הפסוק אומר שהוא צריך להגיע לעיר המקלט להיות בטוח עוד לפני שבית המשפט דן במקרה שלו. כלומר בפסוק עצמו ישנם שני מקרים. אחד שבו הוא בא לדין והורשע של הריגה בשוגג ואז חוזר לעיר המקלט, והמקרה השני הוא שרץ אל עיר מקלט ישיר. אבל איך אתה יודע את מעמדו החוקי אלא אם המקרה כבר הובא לבית המשפט? זה הוא הנקודה המדויקת של רב שך. חזון איש עם זאת סבור גואל הדם אינו אשם ברצח אם הוא הורג את הרוצח בשוגג עוד לפני שהמקרה נפנה אל בית המשפט. כלומר, חזון איש חושב כי המצב הוא שבית המשפט צריך להחליט אם הרצח היה בשוגג או בכוונה אפילו בלי כך שהרוצח הוא בבית המשפט. בית המשפט יש רק לשפוט את המקרה כמיטב הם יכולים לראות את העובדות. היה הגנת רצח בכוונה או בשוגג או מזיד. אפילו בלי שהרוצח בשוגג שם בבית המשפט, הם יכולים להחליט. רב שך מסכים עם זה. אבל הנקודה של רב שך היא כי לפני המקרה המשפט רוצח בשוגג אינו גברא קטילא (אינו מישהו שגואל הדם יכול להרוג), גם אם במקרה הוא הובא לבית המשפט והחליט מאוחר שהוא רוצח בשוגג. אבל לפני המקרה הוא סתם בנאדם רגיל.





רב שך מביא ראיה כי בית משפט זה שרואה מישהו הורג מישהו אחר לא יכול להיות שופטים כי הם לא יכולים לראות צד זכות. [מכות י''ב] עכשיו תוספות מבינים שזה אומר שהם יכולים להיות מוטים. אבל רב שך מראה כי לרמב''ם מחזיק מסיבה אחרת. זה מה שאתה צריך החלטת פסק הדין של בית המשפט. בלי זה רוצח בשוגג אינו בר קטלא כי הוא אפילו לא חייב מיתה עד קיים פסק דין. השאלה על זה היא כי לאחר שבית המשפט החליט כי הוא היה רוצח בשוגג, אז גואל הדם היה ככל שאני יכול להגיד מוצדק. זה לא נראה מקביל בדיוק למקרה של בית המשפט שראה מקרה של רצח. זהו מקרה של מעתה ועד להבא. המקרה רב שך מביא הוכחה צריך ללכת למפרע.אבל ההוכחה הראשונה של רב שך נראית חזקה. ישנו מקרה של עדים זוממים. הם אמרו מי שהוא נרצח על ביום ראשון. ואז באו עדים אחרים ואמרו "איך הייתה להם יכולת לראות את זה? היית איתנו כל אותו היום במקום אחר." אז הסט הראשון נהרג כי הם רצו להרוג. אבל הסט השני אמרו שהרוצח עשה את הרצח לפני יום ראשון, ולכן חייב מיתה ביום ראשון. רואים שבלי פסק לט היה בר קטלא.

מחלוקת between רב שך and the חזון איש

There is an מחלוקת between רב שך and the חזון איש In Laws about Murder in the יד החזקה הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה' הלכה ט about הרוצח בשוגג and he is on his way to a refuge city and he is killed by the גואל הדם. It seems like an obvious question. The murderer is on his way to the עיר מקלט. Outside of it he is not safe and can be killed. So let's say he was killed, but the case had not yet come to court.
In the actual verses themselves you see this quandary. The verse says he has to get to the עיר מקלט to be safe even before the court has tried his case. That is to say in the verse itself there are two cases. One in which he is tried and found guilty of man slaughter by accident, and the other case is he is running to the עיר מקלט. In both cases he is safe only there. But how do you know his legal status unless the case has already been brought to court?
That is the exact point of רב שך. The חזון איש however thinks the גואל הדם is not guilty of murder if he kills the הרוצח בשוגג even before the case has gone to court. That means the חזון איש is thinking that you do not have a situation where the court has to decide if the murder was accidental or with intention even without the murderer being in court. The court has just to judge the case as best they can see the facts. Was the original murder intentional or accidental or self defense [permitted]. Even without הרוצח בשוגג being there, they can decide. רב שך agrees with this. But the point of רב שך is that  before the court case the רוצח בשוגג is not a גברא קטילא קטל is not someone that the גואל הדם can kill, even if the case is brought to court and decided later that he was a רוצח בשוגג. But before the case he is just a regular guy.
רב שך brings a proof that a court of law that sees someone kill someone else can not become judges because they can not see merit in the guy. [מכות י''ב] Now תוספות understands that to mean they can be biased. But רב שך shows that the רמב''ם holds a different reason. That you need a  פסק דין decision of the court. Without that the רוצח בשוגג is not a  בר קטלא that is not even חייב מיתה until there is a פסק דין. The question about this is that after the court has decided that he was a רוצח בשוגג, then the גואל הדם was as far as I can tell justified. This does not seem exactly parallel to the case of the court that saw some doing murder. That is a case of from now until the future. The case רב שך is bringing a proof for has to go in the past. למפרע.The first proof of רב שך seems stronger. There is a case of עדים זוממים. They said so-and-so murdered on Sunday. Then came other witnesses and said "How could you have seen that? You were with us that whole day somewhere else." So the first set are killed because they wanted to kill. But this applies even if the second set said the murderer did in fact murder but he did so before יום ראשון.






קיימת מחלוקת בין רב שך ואת החזון איש (יד החזקה הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה" הלכה ט) בעניין הרוצח בשוגג והוא בדרכו אל עיר מקלט והוא נהרג על ידי גואל הדם. הרוצח הוא בדרכו אל עיר מקלט. מחוצה לו שהוא אינו בטוח יכול להיהרג. אז בואו נגיד שהוא נהרג, אבל המקרה טרם הגיע לבית המשפט. בפסוקים עצמם אתה רואה לדילמה הזאת. הפסוק אומר שהוא צריך להגיע לעיר המקלט להיות בטוח עוד לפני שבית המשפט דן במקרה שלו. כלומר בפסוק עצמו ישנם שני מקרים. אחת שבה הוא בא לדין והורשע של הריגה בשוגג, והמקרה השני הוא רץ אל עיר מקלט. אבל איך אתה יודע את מעמדו החוקי אלא אם המקרה כבר הובא לבית המשפט? זה הוא הנקודה המדויקת של רב שך. חזון איש עם זאת סבור גואל הדם אינו אשם ברצח אם הוא הורג את הרוצח בשוגג עוד לפני המקרה נפנה אל בית המשפט. כלומר, חזון איש חושב כי המצב הוא שבית המשפט צריך להחליט אם הרצח היה בשוגג או בכוונה אפילו בלי כך שהרוצח הוא בבית המשפט. בית המשפט יש רק לשפוט את המקרה כמיטב הם יכולים לראות את העובדות. היה הגנת רצח בכוונה או בשוגג או מזיד. אפילו בלי שהרוצח בשוגג שם בבית המשפט, הם יכולים להחליט. רב שך מסכים עם זה. אבל הנקודה של רב שך היא כי לפני המקרה המשפט רוצח בשוגג אינו גברא קטילא (אינו מישהו שגואל הדם יכול להרוג), גם אם במקרה הוא הובא לבית המשפט והחליט מאוחר שהוא רוצח בשוגג. אבל לפני המקרה הוא סתם בנאדם רגיל.





רב שך מביא ראיה כי בית משפט זה שרואה מישהו הורג מישהו אחר לא יכול להיות שופטים כי הם לא יכולים לראות צד זכות. [מכות י''ב] עכשיו תוספות מבינים שזה אומר שהם יכולים להיות מוטים. אבל רב שך מראה כי לרמב''ם מחזיק מסיבה אחרת. זה מה שאתה צריך החלטת פסק הדין של בית המשפט. בלי זה רוצח בשוגג אינו בר קטלא כי הוא אפילו לא חייב מיתה עד קיים פסק דין. השאלה על זה היא כי לאחר שבית המשפט החליט כי הוא היה רוצח בשוגג, אז גואל הדם היה ככל שאני יכול להגיד מוצדק. זה לא נראה מקביל בדיוק למקרה של בית המשפט שראה מקרה של רצח. זהו מקרה של מעתה ועד להבא. המקרה רב שך מביא הוכחה צריך ללכת למפרע.אבל ההוכחה הראשונה של רב שך נראית חזקה. ישנו מקרה של עדים זוממים. הם אמרו מי שהוא נרצח על ביום ראשון. ואז באו עדים אחרים ואמרו "איך הייתה להם יכולת לראות את זה? היית איתנו כל אותו היום במקום אחר." אז הסט הראשון נהרג כי הם רצו להרוג. אבל הסט השני אמרו שהרוצח עשה את הרצח לפני יום ראשון, ולכן חייב מיתה ביום ראשון. רואים שבלי פסק לט היה בר קטלא.

philosophy interesting

On one hand I find philosophy interesting because at least ancient philosophy deals with the humanizing questions that matter. Justice. Beauty. Menchlichkeit [to be a mensch/decent human being]. However the frustrating thing about it is no conclusion. So you can ask why waste the time?

People of the Middle Ages that wrote the great Musar books were definitely depending on Aristotle. Especially Ibn Pakuda. [author of the Obligations of the Heat חובות לבבות ]. But if you look at the Obligations of the Heat חובות לבבות Hovot Levavot] right at the beginning, [end of Shaar I.] you can see that he is along the lines of Neo Platonics. [That system of Plotinus had a kind of synthesis between Plato and Aristotle.]

Some rishonim [mediaeval authorities] put metaphysics and physics in the category of learning the command to learn all the time. That usually means Gemara, but they expand that definition [to include some subjects that are considered secular but not all. Physics and the Metaphysics of Aristotle is open in the Rambam that they are part of learning Torah. But other secular subjects are forbidden, e.g. literature. which he forbids in the commentary on the Mishna in Perek Helek.

Dr Michael Huemer brings the idea that philosophers have said a great deal of nonsense. But on the other hand you can look at it like Ayn Rand--that where philosophers go that is where people go afterwards. And then the ideas of the philosophers becomes common sense. And after the ideas are common sense then you go back and look at the person that introduced the concept in the first place and see that he was just going around it. He was fishing for it because he was the first one to think of it. So now it looks naive. But that is only because his original idea became thanks to him common sense.
[My feeling about Philosophy is to learn Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel.]

A number of more modern thinkers have taken note that most of 20th Century Philosophy is "obviously false" in the words of John Searle. And that is good in terms of clearing the field. But it does not go much further.
Some modern people deserve good mention.
Scruton I have no recollection of hearing about until he was gone. But now I see a lot of important ideas.
Ed Feser is working on the issue of a synthesis of Aristotle and modern Physics.
Leonard Nelson had a kind of understanding on Kant which seems to get around a lot of the problems in Kant. [That is on Kelley Ross's web site]
Hegel also seems in need of explaining and Mc Taggart does a nice job.

But none of this would be interesting to me if not for that fact that they all seem to me to be revolving around a single point-faith.

Rav Shach and the Chazon Ish [In Laws about Murder in the Yad HaChazaka הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה' הלכה ט]

There is an argument between Rav Shach and the Chazon Ish [In Laws about Murder in the Yad HaChazaka הלכות רוצח ושמירת הנפש פרק ה' הלכה ט] about when one kills someone else by accident and he is on his way to a refuge city and he is killed by the revenger. It seems like an obvious question. The murderer is on his way to the city where he will be safe. Outside of it he is not safe and can be killed. So let's say he was killed, but the case had not yet come to court.
In the actual verses themselves you see this quandary. The verse says he has to get to the city of refuge to be safe even before the court has tried his case. That is to say in the verse itself there are two cases. One in which he is tried and found guilty of man slaughter by accident and the other case is he is running to the city of safety. In both cases he is safe only there. But how do you know his legal status unless the case has already been brought to court?

[That is the exact point of Rav Shach. The Chazon Ish however thinks the revenger is not guilty of murder if he kills the murderer even before the case has gone to court. That means the Chazon Ish is thinking that you do not have habeus corpus. The court has just to judge the case as best they can see the facts. Was the original murder intentional or accidental or self defense [permitted]. Even without teh murderer being there they can decide. Rav Shach agrees with this. But the point of Rav Shach is that  before the court case the murderer is not a גברא קטילא קטל is not someone that the revenger can kill.--even if the case is brought to court and decided later that he was a murderer by accident. But before the case he is just a regular guy.
Rav Shach brings a proof that a court of law that sees someone kill someone else can not become judges because they can not see merit in the guy. [Makot 12] Tospfot understands that to mean they can be unbiased. But Rav Shach shows that the Rambam holds a different reason. That you need a "pesak din" decision of the court. Without that the murderer is not a "bar katala" בר קטלא that is not even obligated in the death penalty until there is a decision of a court.
The question about this is that after the court has decided that he was a murderer by accident then the revenger was as far as I can tell justified. This does not seem exactly parallel to the case of the court that saw some doing murder. That is a case of from now until the future. The case Rav Shach is bringing a proof for has to go in the past. למפרע.
The first proof of Rav Shach seems stronger. There is a case of false witnesses. They said so-and-so murdered on Sunday. Then came other witnesses and said "How could you have seen that? You were with us that whole day somewhere else." So the first set are killed because they wanted to kill. But this applies even if the second set said the murderer did in fact murder but he did so before Sunday. So here we see clearly what Rav Shach is saying. Even after a  pesak din the murderer does not become a איש קטילא  [condemned to die] in reverse. Only after the pesak.

The yarzeit of the wife of Rav Shach was the 18 of Shevat- I just discovered. He attributes the merit of all his learning to the fact that she took care if the parnasa [making a living] aspect of life.
This to me is kind of a reminder that when one is involved in learning Torah, it makes a lot of sense to marry as the sages said "bat talmid chacham". i.e. someone that appreciates what you are doing.
[It does not help if she says that she appreciates it. Rather she actually has to be someone that has real self sacrifice for Torah --no matter what.]
[And so you see there were people like Rav Shach that learned Torah for its own sake. Not for money.]


[I am not sure what to do if you are in a situation when there is no one to a marry except a non "bat talmid chacham." No everyone can marry the daughter of the rosh yeshiva.

[At the Mir in NY, this issue did not come up. Most people including me were just interested in learning Torah, and more or less went with the idea of trust in God --to help with making a living after getting married. So far I have not heard of anyone starving to death because of learning Torah.] [My own experience was such that as long as I trusted in God things went OK. But instantly when I decided to start making money that is when I lost everything. If that is not a lesson I do not what is.]

Steven Dutch has a nice piece on Hume. https://stevedutch.net/Pseudosc/Hume.htm
And Thomas Reid also.

But you see that Thomas Reid does not knock him nor Berkeley in such away as to say they made obvious mistakes. Rather the matter is subtle.

Also the very idea in itself that reason can not prove anything but what is self contradiction is taken as an axiom in Hume but for some reason is itself never proved. [Huemer pointed out that reason can know more things than just what is not self contradictory. (I think Bryan Caplan was the first to point out this problem in Hume.)
But how does reason know? Is it by Bayesian Probability as Huemer says? Or things that we know by non intuitive immediate knowledge as Leonard Nelson says [based on Kant and Fries]. Or is it by a dialectical process like Hegel says? 

Reform and Conservative Judaism are close to true Torah-- since there is no idolatry involved in their approach.

One issue that seems to me to be highly relevant to me is that of idolatry. This is related in an inverse way to that of trust in God. The problem with idolatry seems to be that it has changed form from worship of statues. So even if people are not worshiping Jupiter, they still might be worshiping other created beings.

This in an ironic way seems to be a problem when people become religious. Being religious you would imagine would mean more trust in God. But instead it seem to get diverted.
I can see that the Gra would have signed the letter of excommunication for this very reason. Sad that he seems to be ignored.  This is clearly a major issue in Torah. [Rav Nahman I think was not in the category of the excommunication as I have gone into before. If you want to take the time look at the books that bring the actual language.]

In terms of this issue, it looks to me based on my experience that Reform and Conservative Judaism are a lot closer to true Torah-- since there is no idolatry involved in their approach. Whatever worship they do is always directed towards God alone.

Now even if people are doing idolatry which is one of the things in the Torah that there is a death penalty for, that does not mean you can kill them. There is a for any death penalty the need of a court of law of 23 judges or the 71 judges of the great court in Jerusalem. Still from the fact that idolatry is serious enough to warrant a death penalty, you can see that it is nothing to play around with or to ignore. So the fact that the signature of the Gra on that letter of excommunication is ignored seems to me to be not a good reason for you to ignore it.

[However you can wonder about Eliyahu the prophet on Mount Carmel that after that test of the prophets of the Baal told the people to take the false prophets down to the river and slaughter them.
Where was a court of law to try the case?]


And besides this I admit that fighting against idolatry can be a hard thing to know how to do it. Take Yoshiyahu the King that destroyed all idolatry in Israel. Well things did not exactly go so well for him afterwards. Apparently some kind of caution is needed. (There were great kings before him but none of them ever uprooted idols from all Israel. King Hizkiah only ruled over Judah and Benjamin.)

I have mentioned before that philosophy tends to go in stages. "How is change possible?" was the question for the pre Socratics. Faith and Reason was the Middle Ages. Mind -Body problem was the modern issue. This last one came to its peak with Kant and Hegel, and then everything after that is picking up the pieces.
So what is the next issue is overdue. Who knows what it will be? But I would like to suggest that these issues all came up because of some need or dire emergency. I do not however know how the problem with change came to deal with an issue then during the time of Paramenides. But the faith reason thing seems clear.
So what ever is the next issue is probably already is a gestation and slowly coming to the surface.

[The Mind Body problem that began being raised in Descartes had connection with the older question how do we know stuff being raised by Socrates.]

I would like to suggest that the major issue today is in wrong attitudes. Or what you could call evil thoughts. And the solution is trust in God. That is to say that everyone on any side of the political spectrum is aware of the problem of evil thinking. At least that is how he or she understands what is wrong with the other side of the political issues. But the connection of this to trust in God is something that almost no one is aware of. But it is a cause and effect. Trust in God brings one to good thoughts and healthy and strong attitudes. So how does one come to trust. I suggest the path of Musar of Rav Israel Salanter, i.e., to learn books of ethics right away when one gets up in the morning. Especially concerning trust in God. 
[Musar means the medieval books of Ethics. However the disciples of Rav Israel Salanter also wrote books of Musar. But those books are not the foundation in the same way that the medieval books are. Still I tried myself to get through this.]



[You can see the problem of  evil thoughts also in the triple billion dollar industry of shrinks. It is known that the whole thing is bogus, but why is it that people still spend in teh USA trillions of dollars on it. Because of evil thoughts. So the problem is clear to people. The solution is not. Unless you learn to trust in God. That was an important insight of  Navardok [i.e. that branch of Musar].

But trust in God used to be thought to mean sitting and learning and not worrying about making a living. My way of thinking is that one can learn Physics with the same intention.

The basic principle of matza is time. So you could put oatmeal into a pot and cook it, and it can not become leaven.

The basic principle of matza is time. There is no way of getting leavened bread without time by definition. So in short, oatmeal or wheat flour it can not become leaven without time. Thus you could put oatmeal into  a pot and cook it, and it can not become leaven.  Same with wheat.
And after it has gotten to be cooked, it also can not become leaven. [So you can have the regular breakfast of hot oatmeal that some people are used to. Not only can oatmeal not become hametz unless it sits in water for over 18 minutes but after it is cooked it can never become hametz ever even after a million years.]
To make you own matza to say a blessing on is simple. Get a frying pan. The only thing is if you mix wheat flour and water to make maza to say the hagada, then there is this issue. If the mix flows like a pancake, then it is not bread but cake. To say the blessing, "Who brings forth bread" it has to be thick enough that it does not flow.
[This can be hard to decide. What if it flows a little, but not like a pancake?]

w 40 E Flat Major  w40 midi  w40 nwc

The basic books of how to learn Torah are actually available. One could get a Avi Ezri of Rav Shach, the Hidushei HaRambam by Rav Haim of Brisk and his disciples, the Birkat Shmuel and Shaari Yosher, and the Hidushei HaGarnat by Naphtali Troup. And then just plow through them.

This is in fact what I was trying to do in Uman during a period I was isolated there.

Of course it is helpful to be either recall the actual Gemaras they are talking about, or at least be able to look up the basic subject. However I have to add that the Avi Ezri brings down the basic Gemara itself with such clarity that you can almost bypass the intermediate steps.

[To some degree you can do this also with Rav Chaim of Brisk,-- except that his is less clear than Rav Shach.] When I had the Avi Ezri I would go through each piece a few times. About once a day for a few days. That was not exactly the same as learning "beiyun" [in depth] . But it was not "bekiut" [fast learning] either. It was just this sort of middle way that seemed to work for me.

[Especially given the fact that my time was very limited. For someone with the merit of sitting and learning Torah all day I have no idea how I would go about learning Rav Haim or Rav Shach. I might just take one afternoon to go through a whole piece a few times instead of spreading it over a few days.]

the big picture in learning Torah.

Why do you need the big picture in learning Torah. I mean to say why emphasize learning fast when it is known that one gets only a rough idea? [As you see in Sicha 76 of Rav Nahman of Breslov to say the words and go on.] Because you need the small pieces of the big picture but also the overview.
You can see this by this example. This is not a car.

 


This is a car:

On the blog of Michael Huemer there is a comment that compares changes in philosophy to changes in science.  And I have been wondering about that. After all, changes in science are because of new evidence. But that does not mean that philosophy is just speculation. Rather philosophy has a different kind of task--to get the big picture and make sense out of it.
And also I might mention that in fact changes in science are not just because of new evidence. Rather taking a look at Einstein. There was a contradiction between Maxwell and Newton. A certain kind of sense caused Einstein to choose Maxwell and to modify Newton. And Copernicus was not accepted because of new evidence. Rather his approach was simple as opposed to having to add more rings. It was the math that appealed to people--not new evidence. In the editions of his books, it is the math pages that are greased from fingers going over and over them.


[But sometimes it is experiments that do say something. The black box causing the Plank h bar. The success of QM to explain the spectrum of light coming out of excited atoms. String theory from things spinning around faster when they have more mass.]

w39 e major i recall this song i might have written some version of it a few years ago.

w37

Thinking about theological questions can cause a person to go nuts. However you can tell something about a religious belief because of the general kind of people that follow it.

I think that in Kant there is a kind of skepticism about any kind of thinking outside the realm of "conditions of possible experience" which limits what we can reason about. It is not just that you see this in his system but also in his separate writings about Swedenborg. All together you get the idea that he accepts there are metaphysical realities but best not to reason about what there is no way of testing.

[In a later essay, he held that even thinking about theological questions can cause a person to go nuts. So it was not just an idea that he had that Reason when going into areas of unconditioned realities comes up with self contradictions but specially any person doing so would also end up insane.]

I think that this that Kant noticed about the effect of thinking about spiritual things [making people insane] must have been noticed by him in his daily conversations. He was a great "socializer" as is not well known.

[ Rav Nahman's belief in the limits of wisdom is one of his most famous doctrines [I think it is mainly in LeM vol II]. There is a place in the "Hashmatot" at the end of the LeM [not printed in all editions] where he says openly that to wisdom was set a limit so that it could not expand beyond that limit.]

It is well known in the Lithuanian Yeshiva world that thinking about spiritual things is discouraged. Simply one ought to learn Gemara in depth and that is that.

[In short the less there is of this, the better.]


Also I am not saying that Kant needs to be taken here without a grain of salt. He certainly has a point. However it was Hegel who felt the dinge an sich is possible to get to and I also happen to have a lot of respect for a mystic of the Middle Ages Rav Avraham Abulafia. His approach to Jesus is certainly an eye opener. His basic idea is that Jesus would be someone along the lines of Joseph in Egypt. He calls him the חותם של יום הששי which you would think would refer to Yoseph, i.e. Foundation of Emanation. So why or in what way does Jesus fill that same job description?]



However there are ways of testing: It is not as if all religious systems are beyond testing. Not exactly scientific testing in a microscope. But rather in terms of character. And of course even with that people have free will so you can not get an exact  result. For example it is rather clear that Nazi doctrines  had something to do with WWII. So sometimes results can indicate something about a set of doctrines. You can see this also in Dante. The different levels of hell all have to do with traits of character. And clearly I have  a feeling that Rav Nahman was right about a lot of stuff and the Gra and Rav Shach. So I do attribute to them a kind of sixth sense--an immediate non intuitive knowledge [not sensed with the five sense--but perhaps still sensed?]

So you can tell something about a religious belief because of the general kind of people that follow it.

Kant morals are universals

Kant was trying to capture something mentioned in the essay, “Why I am not an Objectivist” [by Dr. Huemer] i.e. that morals are universals. But they are different than universal laws. They are “oughts” not “is”. That is at least what I think he was trying to get at. [nd we can know universals as shown in the Critique about synthetic a prior which is equivalent to universals.--also as shown by Dr. Huemer in "Why I am not an Objectivist"

Hegel

 Hegel has this idea that there is kind of progress in philosophy in such that they are trying to progress towards a kind of understanding of the world --which means they are trying to question assumptions and also to build up sometimes their own system.

 Hegel was not unlike most other philosophers was not anti Christian though he is often thought to be. Just the opposite. He was doing in his way what Aquinas was doing. Except to me it seems he sees the world as an organic whole.

The reason Kelley Ross [The Kant Friesian School] and many others  are not happy with Hegel I think comes from politics. And in fact it does not seem that politics was Hegel's forte. As far as politics goes I think the founding fathers of the USA were much better. The problem with the Constitution of the USA is what the founding fathers said about it in the first place. It can only work for a certain kind of person.  That might explain some of the more difficult to understand aspects of the USA today. 

Ayn Rand

According to Ayn Rand. philosophy trickles down to the general world view of people--if it is accepted in the first place as legitimate. So you don't know the assumptions of people  before there is philosophy. It might be wildly insane. There is a sort of background of assumptions that people start with. So though philosophers now might seem off, that might be after there is already a background of rationality. 

w38  w38 midi   w38 nwc

The importance of the path of the Gra and Rav Shach is  not based on thinking they got everything right. Rather that they were the best in one area of value--understanding and keeping Torah. That does not assume that they could compose like Mozart. In fact I found it hard to keep all the Torah with the kind of greatness they brought to that endeavor.  But I realize they that is one area of value that they got right.

A theory of several areas of value is certainly brought in Ibn Pakuda in the Obligations of the Heart. You can see this also in Kelley Ross [The Kant-Fries School]. There were originally some problems in the Friesian approach that were later fixed by Leonard Nelson, and after that Kelley Ross made a kind of system out of the whole thing. It is a kind of rival to Hegel's system. [Which is better from a philosophical point of view I have no idea. Both have advantages. But in any case with both you have this idea of several areas of value.
(Hegel also has a many area of value system, except his values all approach God. It is different from Leonard Nelson in significant ways but also shares a lot of basic values.]

We know from Rav Nahman that there are Torah scholars that are demons [LeM I:12.]. But how can they trick others? People are so easy to swindle because of the victim's own moral defects.  When good judgment and moral sense are subjected and by lust or greed or sloth or vanity or anger, the one swindled participates willingly in his own undoing.  In the end he swindles himself. 

There is a transcendent aspect of human life. There are however different sources of transcendence. Not all are good. So it makes sense that Rav Nahman would warn about this. Clearly also the Gra and Rav Shach also warned about this, but for some reason their warnings seems to go ignored.

Learning in depth

Learning in depth I think is an aspect of the path of the Gra. The most important of the books on learning in depth are all from the path of the Gra. Not just after Rav Haim from Brisk but even before him. Might as well make a list. The Hidushei HaRambam of Rav Haim of Brisk. Shimon Shkopf the Shaari Yosher. R Akiva Eigger. Netivot HaMishpat. Baruch Ber of the Birkat Shmuel. Ketzot HaChoshen. The Musar movement. Naftali Troup. Aruch Hashulchan. The two commentaries on the Yerushalmi, Pnei Moshe and Karban Eda both direct disciples of the Gra  The peak is of course the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. But besides that there are countless of deep and great books by the great people of the Lithuanian Yeshivas which are all of amazing depth.
But I have to add that the path of the Gra to a large degree meant trust in God. People were not worried about making a living. Trust and learning Torah in depth are the two pillars of the path of the Gra.

[My thought is to at minimum get the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and do each section many times until it becomes clear.] 

Saadia Gaon in raised the two most famous objections on Jesus: (1) nullification of the commandments; (2) Divinity.
To answer the first objection it is possible to point out bahnsen The Theonomic Position

I have known about this essay for about two or three years but never thought to mention it. It seems important but I guess my blog was about other issues. So it simply never occurred to me to bring it up.
The other objection I have mentioned that "I am" (When Jesus stood before the Roman judge he was asked, "Who are you?" He said, "I am".)  is not the same thing as "אהיה אשר אהיה" "I will be that which I will be" [Which is the name of God at the Burning Bush].[That is the usual source for the claim. That is that "I am" refers to the name of God.] [The idea that Jesus is always refers to "the son of man", does not in itself seem to have any implication along these lines. So the critique of Saadia Gaon is a critique on the church rather than on Jesus. [And Avraham Abulafia also was critical of the Church, but about Jesus himself he said very positive things.]

So to me pursuing truth is more important that being "politically correct." PC means any mention of Jesus has to be with some insult. You might get away with saying something nice as long as you insult him afterwards.. But that has nothing to do with pursuing truth.



Here is a middle part of that paper of Bahnsen:

it would be senseless to think that Christ came in order to cancel mankind’s responsibility to keep them. It is theologically incredible that the mission of Christ was to make it morally acceptable now for men to blaspheme, murder, rape, steal, gossip, or envy! Christ did not come to change our evaluation of God’s laws from that of holy to unholy, obligatory to optional, or perfect to flawed. Listen to His own testimony:

Do not begin to think that I came to abrogate the Law or the Prophets; I came not to abrogate but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, until all things have happened, not one jot or tittle shall by any means pass away from the law. Therefore, whoever shall break one of these least commandments and teach men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:17-19).

Several points about the interpretation of this passage should be rather clear. (1) Christ twice denied that His advent had the purpose of abrogating the Old Testament commandments. (2) Until the expiration of the physical universe, not even a letter or stroke of the law will pass away. And (3) therefore God’s disapprobation rests upon anyone who teaches that even the least of the Old Testament laws may be broken.¹⁶

¹⁶ Attempts are sometimes made to evade the thrust of this text by editing out its reference to the moral demands of the Old Testament—contrary to what is obvious from its context (5:16, 20, 21-48; 6:1, 10, 33; 7:12, 20-21, 26) and semantics (“the law” in v. 18, “commandment” in v. 19). Other attempts are made to extract an abrogating of the law’s moral demands from the word “fulfill” (v. 17) or the phrase “until all things have happened” (v. 18). This, however, renders the verses self-contradictory in what they assert.

In all of its minute detail (every jot and tittle) the law of God, down to its least significant provision, should be reckoned to have an abiding validity—until and unless the Lawgiver reveals otherwise.

Rav Nahman deals with the issue that sometimes עת לעשות להשם הפרו תורתיך ואמרו חז''ל פעמים ביטולה של תורה זה הוא קיומה The verse in Psalms says It is time to do for God because they have nullified your commandments. And the Sages said sometimes the nullification of Torah is the fulfillment.

Rav Nahman brings this in that same Torah lesson I mentioned before LeM vol I:76.
This is how some rishonim understand Eliyahu on Mount Carmel. Not as "by prophecy" but rather because sometimes the nullification is the cause of the fulfillment.

Since the very same people that claim to represent Torah are in the category of "Torah scholars that are demons" that Rav Nahman brings in LeM I:12 the very need to keep Torah requires one to make this statement of Rav Nahman into a guiding principle. 

[In Exodus Moshe told Pharaoh the reason they had to leave Egypt to bring sacrifice- after all why could he not have found a park or some private home? Because there was idolatry there. Thus there was no possibility to bring a sacrifice to God anywhere that would be acceptable to God.  

There is a future looking point of view in which one learns from past great people but does not assume that they got everything right. You need some way of combining the good that you learn from past great people and also gain some kind of sense of "birur" to take the wheat from the chaff. Or even to tell who really is a good person worthy to learn from.

But even if you find great people in the past and you can combine all their good ideas that still does not take care of the job of the present of looking into the future. Being future oriented.

I have so many thoughts in this direction it is hard to be able to put it all down-.

One side issue is this very process of "Birur"(choosing). This whole idea here is certainly related to Hegel except in a slightly different way. With Hegel you have thesis anti thesis and then synthesis. But Birur is not the same since choosing is simply deciding what is good and valid in the first place and rejecting the rest.