The issue of Ethics and Musar

The issue of Ethics and Musar was never emphasized in either yeshiva. Mainly yeshiva was for learning Talmud. Period. Shar Yashuv in Far Rockaway was not a Musar Yeshiva at all. Reb Freifeld did give talks once a week about world view issues. The Mir however was a Musar yeshiva but in a practical sense that meant learning Ethics 35 minutes per day. 20 minutes before the afternoon prayer and 15 minutes before the evening prayer.

But I was turned on by Musar. To me it answered some basic questions and issues. E.g what am I doing here? The reason is some people go to yeshiva for various reasons that did not apply in my case. I had a happy home. I was accepted into UCLA before I had gone to NY. There was no reason for me to be in yeshiva at all except one thing alone --the search for Truth.

So learning Gemara (i.e.Talmud) all day you can understand was a good and great thing --but it needed a context.

Why is it relevant?

Some yeshivas did not introduce Musar because I think they were afraid of spin. That is people going off into some wild tangent, as did happen with me.
But eventually the general consensus got to be to be  a kind of compromise--not too much Musar and not too little. And that is the basic approach of good yeshivas today.

And this is the approach I think is right.

What makes this difficult to advocate is the same problem you have with all institutions. Only the top ten percent will have any real quality. Everything under that will be pure bureaucracy of no value what so ever.

The Rambam  holds by R. Natan in Bava Kama page 53a.
[A ox knocks a person into  a pit. The person that dug the pit and the owner of the ox each pays half. But we do not know if that means each is obligated in the full damages or only half. The difference is if let's say the ox had no owner. Would the person that dug the pit pay full damages?

But what was unclear if if one page 19a if the string and the chicken both have an owner if both pay 1/2.

But  the Rambam does not fit the Gemara there at all on page 19.
What I had to do to get the Rambam to fit was to say he changed the order of the questions of the Gemara so that Rav Huna was coming to answer the question איש בור ולא שור בורץ, [This might have been the actual version of the Rambam or that he himself because of some questions that I mentioned at the and of my essay he might have decided to change the version on his own.]


But there are two possibilities for Rabbi Natan. One is  when זה וזה גורם then each one is liable for all the damages. The other is that each one is liable to half the damages. So now we know that the Rambam holds the later way. Because in the case on page 19 if the string has no owner, the owner of the chicken pays only half, not full damages.
All I am saying here is just that if we say the Rambam was thinking of the law of Rabbi Natan and the sugia on page 19 as being related we come out with lots of nice results. Too many to go into here. But without this idea then  our sugia on page 19 is not what the Rambam was saying.

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I admit we do not have to say this. We could say the whole סוגיה on page י''ט is talking about דרך שינוי and then the two סוגיות will be unrelated. Fine. And that is clearly how the רא''ש understood it. But that will leave u in a position of not understanding the רמב''ם nor having any way to get him to click with our גמרא. Or we could say like I wrote and live happily ever after.





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What we know to the רמב''ם is he holds by רבי נתן in בבא קמא page נ''ג. But what was unclear was on page י''ט ע''א if the חוט and the chicken both have an owner if both pay a half.
From the language of the Rambam alone it could be that if there is an owner of the חוט Then only he pays damages at all. The reason is the only time the Rambam says the owner of the chicken pays is when there is no owner to the string.


But  the רמב''ם does not fit the גמרא there at all on page י''ט.
What I had to do to get the רמב''ם to fit was to say he changed the order of the questions of the גמרא so that רב הונא was coming to answer the question איש בור ולא שור בורץ. This might have been the actual version of the רמב''ם or that he himself because of some questions that I mentioned t the and of my essay he might have decided to change the version on his own.


But there are two possibilities for רבי נתן. One is  when זה וזה גורם then each one is liable for all the damages. The other is that each one is liable for half the damages. So now we know that the רמב''ם holds the last way. Because in the case on page י''ט if the string has no owner, the owner of the chicken pays only half, not full damages.

_________________________________________________________________________________ מה שאנחנו יודעים על הרמב''ם הוא שהוא מחזיק  בשיטת רבי נתן בבבא קמא דף נ''ג. אבל מה שלא היה ברור היה בעמוד י''ט ע''א אם החוט והתרנגולת  יש להן בעלים אם שניהם משלמים חצי. מלשון הרמב"ם לבד זה יכול להיות שאם יש בעלים של חוט ואז רק הוא משלם פיצויים בכלל. הסיבה לכך היא שהפעם היחידה שהרמב"ם אומר בעלים של העוף משלמים הוא כשאין בעלים לחוט
 הרמב''ם אינו תואם עם הגמרא  בעמוד י''ט. מה שהייתי צריך לעשות כדי להתאים את הרמב''ם היה לומר שהוא שינה את סדר השאלות של גמרא כך שרב הונא בא לענות על השאלה של "איש בור ולא שור בור". ייתכן שזו היתה הגירסה בפועל של רמב''ם או שהוא עצמו בגלל כמה שאלות שהזכרתי אולי החליט לשנות את הגרסה. אבל יש שתי אפשרויות עבור רבי נתן . אחת היא כאשר זה וזה גורם אז כל אחד מהם הוא אחראי לכל הנזקים. השני הוא שכל אחד עלול לחצי הנזקים. אז עכשיו אנחנו יודעים כי רמב''ם מחזיק הדרך האחרונה. כי במקרה בעמוד י''ט אם לחוט אין בעלים, הבעלים של העוף משלמים רק חצי, לא מלוא הנזקים

I was thinking of writing about my yeshiva years. 


 The yeshiva high school experience tends to be different from the Beit Midrash  type of experience. 
I only went to yeshiva during the Beit Midrash [18-26] years. Not high school. But I went to Reb Simcha Wassermann's yeshiva in the afternoon after school (during my high school years).

 The main thing about yeshiva is it is a powerful all encompassing experience. It is when I really got into the Torah in a way that was different than just intellectual. 
[The intellectual aspect I must admit must seem dry to people. But there is a deep energy inside the Oral and Written Law that you need to dig into in order to find.]





The basic information is that I was at Shar Yashuv for 3.5 years. 


After my first year, I was home during the summer, and that was the time I called my future wife that renewed the friendship we had had during high school. My telling her about the amazing world of yeshiva definitely lit a fuse under her. She really like hearing about how great learning Torah is. 

But Far Rockaway was  not considered in those days an Ivy League school. So I set my sights on the yeshiva that in those day had the reputation of having the deepest Torah giant in the world and that was the Reb Shmuel Berenabum at the Mir. 

Rav Shach [author of the Avi Ezri] was considered the greatest Torah scholar along with Rav Kinevsky [the author of the Kehilat Yaakov] But Reb Shmuel had the reputation of being the deepest thinker. People said about him "If you can understand his classes you can understand anything." I can not say what the difference is but I am just saying over how people thought about Rav Shach as compared to Rav Berenabum.

The was definitely a kind of atmosphere in both yeshiva that was what you would expect to find in the Garden of Eden. Some unearthly beauty. But it had a kind of numinous property which would not be the same kind of thing would feel when listening to Mozart. 


The first yeshiva learned only Gemara. It was not a Musar Yeshiva. The Mir however was a Musar yeshiva and learned about 35 minutes of Musar per day. 

In any case, there were always cults around trying to get recruits. I myself fell for their tactics. They were using the Trojan horse strategy. They would use some kind of bait to convince people that by joining their cult everything would be so much better. To me today, it seems very Satanic, but in those days there were very few warning signs. Just like in Eastern cults, like Adi Da. They had a very respectable public image that hid the deep dirt inside them.
 Only now I know the truth. But if I try to tell people no one listens because cults always work on their public image to seem respectable.

I mentioned trust in God a few times in connection with the idea of learning Torah. That was in fact the foundation stone of the Navardok yeshivas. But if you actually read the חובות לבבות [Chovot Lavavot Duties of the Heart] you can see that he expands the idea of trust in God much wider.
I mean to say that there was an idea in yeshiva "Learn Torah and God will do the rest," (but there was also the idea of השתדלות doing some effort.) But this was a more narrow than the actual idea of trust in the books of Musar. Musar expanded the idea of trust to this world and the next. That is even in terms of the next world the idea was to do your best here and to be confident that things will go OK up there. I was thinking that you could even expand the idea to learning Torah itself. You just do the learning as best as you can and accept that what you understand, you understand and what you do not, then you just go on.

[This would be like you see in the Gemara in Shabat 63 and also in tractate Avoda Zara לעולם לגרס אדם אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר forever one should just say the words of his learning  even though he forgets and even though he does not know what he is saying. I had seen this idea in a secular context but at some point I got to know Reb Simcha Wasserman [the son of Reb Elchanan Wasserman] and he gave to me the Musar book אורחות צדיקים The English title I am not sure of. It might be Paths of the Righteous--maybe. (That book goes into this in great length in שער התורה).]

 Part of the reason Americans feel betrayed by the Establishment is that many Americans went to high school and know the  basic principles upon which the USA was founded.  And they know these principles have been betrayed.

The Constitution of the USA is a good argument for Trump.

That means protection of your life and family and property is the only job of government. To protect the plain old working guy from crime from within society and from foreign invaders. Certainly it is not to bring in foreign invaders and to take your taxes to pay welfare. Nor is it the job of government to take your money and give it to people that refuse to work. [Nor is it the job of government to force people to pay for the queer choices of others. If they want to get Aids and die that is their choice. The government has no business forcing to to pay for it.]



The establishment has violated these principles.  That is both the Democrats and the G.O.P., in a way that the average working class American can feel extremely betrayed.

And the Constitution has halachic validity as it is a contract. Contracts are valid documents and have legal force in Torah law.

And outside of that it can be shown that the Constitution has philosophical validity as it embodies principles that are defensible by means of reason. That is it takes the best from Pericles's Athens, John Lock and Montesquieu and combines them in a way that bring these principles into action.

Part of the reason Americans feel betrayed by the Establishment is that many Americans went to high school and know the  basic principles upon which the USA was founded.  And they know these principles have been betrayed.

And for the general public I should mention that the basic principles of the USA are actually well founded philosophical principles. But more Americans are aware of them because many people learned about thee ideas that got incorporated into the Constitution when in high school. Just for  a fast refresher that means limited government, private property, civil space of private affairs where government has no business [Hobbes], rights to your own stuff and family. Even the USSR never had free stuff. If a person did not work in the USSR he did not collect an unemployment check. He went straight to jail.  [Check it out. I ought to know.]
Everyone was required to have a workbook that showed his present employer. A month that nothing was written there was enough to send  a person to a soviet work camp. And believe me when people had to find work they found all kinds of creative ways to do so.

I was looking at my notes on Bava Kama [in the little booklet that God granted to me to write on the Talmud] and I noticed that there was some points about the Rambam I had not made clear. I might try right now to clarify them but without any Gemara I can not check my work. In any case what I wanted to say was this.

Talmud Bava Kama 19b.
The case is a chicken with a string attached to its foot. A vessel gets caught in the string and breaks.
The Rambam deals with two cases. One is when the string has an owner in which case the owner pays half if someone tied the string on purpose. The other case is when the string has no owner. Then the owner of the chicken pays half if someone tied the string on purpose.



What if the string and the chicken both have owners?
There are several possible meanings of the Rambam. One is both pay half. (This would be like Rabi Natan on Bava Kama page 59.) One is that the owner of the string alone pays half.

The problem that I addressed in my notes was that the Rambam does not correspond to our Gemara at all. I did not even bring up the issue of these last two possibilities because there is nothing in that Rambam which fits with our Gemara. The way I dealt with that was at first to try tofind some way to get them to fit together. Then I saw the Gra wrote about this Rambam "it is not understandable" I realized there was no way to get them to fit. [The Gra wrote that in his commentary on the Shulchan Aruch which brings the words of the Rambam word for word.]

So what I wanted to say now was the I thought either the Rambam had a different version or that because of the question I wrote at the end of my notes that he decided himself the true version was different than what was in front of him. Based on that I reconstructed what I thought was the Rambam's version.

This is all old hat. I wrote all of this before. But what I wanted to add was two points. The first I already added to my notes. It is that according the version I think was the Rambam' version it does come out that both would pay half so full damages would be paid. [But this is still debatable. Even in my version it could be that since it is a Not common thing the total amount would be half damages.]
But furthermore if both pay half then this comes out like Rabi Natan on page 59 and that is a good result.
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The רמב''ם deals with two cases. One is when the string has an owner in which case the owner pays half if someone tied the חוט on purpose. The other case is when the חוט has no owner. Then the owner of the chicken pays half if someone tied the חוט on purpose.

What if the string and the chicken both have owners?
There are several possible meanings of the רמב''ם. One is both pay half. This would be like רבי נתן on בבא קמא דף נ''ט . One is that the owner of the string alone pays half.

But furthermore if both pay half then this comes out like רבי נתן on דף נ''ג and that is a good result.


הרמב''ם עוסק בשני מקרים. האחד הוא כאשר לחוט יש בעלים ובמקרה הזה הבעלים משלמים חצי אם מישהו קשר את החוט בכוונה. המקרה השני הוא כאשר לחוט אין בעלים. ואז בעלים של העוף משלמים חצי אם מישהו קשר את החוט בכוונה. מה אם החוט ואת העוף לשניהם יש בעלים? ישנן מספר משמעויות אפשריות של הרמב''ם. אחת הוא שכל אחד משלם חצי. זה יהיה כמו רבי נתן על בבא קמא דף נ''ג. האחרת היא כי הבעלים של החוט לבד משלמים חצי. לפי מה שכתבתי שהיא גירסת הרמב''ם יוצא כמו רבי נתן.

Some people concentrate on the Chafetz Chaim's books of ethics. This is a good idea. It apparently was something Reb Israel Abuchatzaira [Bava Sali] was thinking. Bava Sali did not have pictures of tzadikim in his home except for one alone. The only picture in his home was of the Chafetz Chaim.

His books can certainly be taken as a part of Musar, but they are not the whole picture.

Reb Elchanan Wasserman incidentally told the Chafetz Chaim about a yeshiva he was starting  someplace. The Chafetz Chaim asked him if the students learned Musar. Reb Elchanan said "No." The Chafetz Chaim then said, "If so,  it is better if there was no yeshiva."


I should mention that Reb Elchanan's work the Koveitz Shiurim is very common in yeshivas. I used to hang out with Reb Elchanan's son, Reb Simcha Wasserman. (That is I went there after school and also during the summers and ate by him on Shabat, etc.) But I never got into the Koveitz Shiurim. When I was younger, I mainly concentrated on the Achronim from that middle period, like the Pnei Yehoshua, the Maharsha, etc. I admit today that I probably should have looked more at the basic gedolai Lita [sages of Lithuania] like the school of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and the Koveitz Shiurim.[Today I think even one essay from Rav Shach, or Reb Chaim or Reb Elchanan contains already inside of it a good deal of Shas.]

Reb Shmuel Berenabum [the Rosh yeshiva of the Mir in NY] learned the Musar books of the Chafetz Chaim during the Musar sessions.

The granddaughters of Bava Sali started a session in their schools (where they were students) to have a whole list of people that would agree to learn the Chafetz Chaim every day and that list was xeroxed so everyone on the list after their learning would pray a short prayer for all the other people to find their true Zivug [spouse]. From what I heard at the time most people on that list got married in short order.
[The words "Chafetz Chaim" is inter-changeable with the person or the book.]

For the Public: Chafetz Chaim means a book about the law of the Bible-  not to slander. [Leviticus.] The author wrote more than just that one book, so I refer to the larger set in the above essay. His actual name was Israel Meir HaCohen. Bava Sali refers to a person that was a saint. Many people went to him in the last years of his life for advice and blessings and his name is very well respected. Elchanan Wassermann's book is on the Talmud and it is considered easier  that the Chidushei HaRambam of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik. I find Rav Shach's book to have that same quality of being deep but also easy to read.