religious world

What is the basic problem with baali teshuva (newly religious people) is simple. Either they are loyal to their parents and friends. Then they are not baali teshuva. Or they are not loyal to their family and friends. Then all the more so they are worthless when it comes to commitment. If they can drop their own family and friends then what is their commitment to anything worth?

That being said the religious world itself is a nightmare of backstabbing hypocrites. Neither the FFB (frum religious  from birth) nor the Baali Teshuva have anything going for them. The FFB think by birth they are the intellectual superiors of  the whole world. The truth is the FFB and the Baali Teshuva deserve the hell they make for each other.
Of course both groups are highly deluded.
Which brings me to the point I often make that the only place you can find authentic Torah is in a Lithuanian yeshiva. There the baali teshuva are taught a balanced set of values that includes loyalty to parents and family. And there the FFB tend to be more aware of their own limitations.

c from this lethal combination of FFB and Baali Teshuva. It is mainly one large idolatrous cult with lots of little variations. But they don't think they are doing idolatry because of the excuse of doing lots of rituals. So when they worship their leaders they think that is not idolatry.

Ideas in Talmud edited  Ideas in Bava Metzia

As you can tell, I am mainly learning in the way I learned in Shar Yashuv by the rosh yeshiva Naphtali Yeager.  I concentrate on "לחשבן את הסוגיא" to calculate the subject.   However I do look at Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and Rav Shach {Elazar Menachem Shach.} but only in so far as they help me understand the subject matter on the page of the Gemara. This is also how my learning partner, David learns.

I admit I can not say how people were learning in the Mir Yeshiva in NY. By the time I got there I was already trying to get through Shas. Plus the in depth study I did was mainly concentrated on the Pnei Yeshoshua and the Maharsha which is certainly not what anyone else was doing. People in general were just preparing in the morning for the classes of the Roshei Yeshiva. And each class was different. You can see the first years classes in the book the Sukat David.
Reb Shmuel Berenbaum however was different. Mainly this is what he would do--take a look at the Mishna laMelech on the Rambam so to the issues that come up in any particular sugia. Those were the areas he would concentrate on. But his answers were based on a a kind of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik kind of approach.

Here is part of a letter I got:

"Would you be able to help me look at some questions regarding the Talmud and the New Testament?  I know that you really respect the Talmud and grow inspiration from it.  Would you say that all Halacha is inspired by the Holy Spirit?  

If so, does the Halacha and the inspiration of it include the statements in the Gemara and in the rest of the sages that seem to refer to Yeshua/Yeshu?  Yeshua affirms the people sitting on the seat of Moshe and says about the Prushim to do as they say, but not to do as they do.  If so, Yeshua would confirm the command of heeding to the sages also in regard to their statements about himself?  Do I have to accept them?  Are they really talking about him?  What do you think?  Do you accept them like the rest of the oral Torah, or would you consider these statements as human additions produced in a different spirit than the rest of the Gmara?  Do you regard it as binding?  Yes or no? Why or why not?"

My answer--


The major thing I find important about halacah is the idea of looking at the Torah in a rigorous painstaking way, plus the idea that morality can be known by reason. The main point of the Talmud is to understand how to keep the written law.  Not every word has to be understood to be divine. But inside of the Talmud is the "Oral Law." In any case reason does have a place in understanding how to keep the Torah. The Rambam has that even Avraham the patriarch only understood natural law after it was revealed. Reason also is a kind of revelation.
The human attempt to greet God's word I think evokes a response from Him. So when I was at the Mir and also in my first yeshiva I felt there was some kind of amazing spirit. But I admit this can depend on the individual.

I am thinking mainly that reason can know morality. 

The critiques in the Talmud would have to be about a different individual according to the time line given there. Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Perachia was around 200 BC. He would have had to been a drop too old to have been the teacher of Yeshua. 
The pairs start at the beginning of the second Temple and go up until the end. And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachia was in the middle.

As you can see in the above letter I was trying to hint at the Kantian school of which the Rambam was clearly an early predecessor. But it was late and I did not want to make the letter too long.

I am also thinking about the fact that we give different weight values to different midrashim in the Gemara itself. For example pairs. זוגות, at the end of Pesachim. No one pays the slightest attention to that Gemara even though the Gemara itself is explicit. Also cures.

The idea of how much weight to give to different values seems important to me. Thus in the Torah we have the Ten Commandments which clearly have most of the weight. yet often one or more are ignored because of something that clearly has less weight. And moreover- even among the  other 613 the Torah gives weighted values to different functions. To love and fear God and to be attached to Him are the stated purpose of all the other mitzvot, The verse says in Deuteronomy do the mitzvot in order to love and fear God and to be attached with him.  This is one reason why Musar and the books of the rishonim on the philosophy of the Torah are important to learn. They indicate the weight of each value in Torah. Without them one can mix this up.
 Mainly when people want to pervert the Torah they start with this. They change the order of what is considered more important in Torah.  To make cults they take some doctrine that is either not in Torah at all or something trivial and make it is be of super importance as if it was some secret teaching.

People have a right to protect their lives and property. This should go without saying.

Heather McDonald  on criminal illegal aliens.

People have a right to protect their lives and property. This should go without saying.

Getting married and having children seems to be  a regular part of the yeshiva experience.
You might not get the best shiduch that you think you deserve, but the tendency is to find a good marriage partner.

But the yeshiva world is highly sensitive to factors of social desirability. Especially on the East Coast.

Age and what kind of family one comes from are very important factors.

My own experience with this was that I saw when I got to yeshiva (in NY) people were getting married right and left. Every few days there was another "Vort." This went on a few times per week.
[A Vort is the announcement of  a marriage engagement. But the actual event of the Vort is a meal after Shabat. on Saturday night.



Of course coming from California I had no idea what to expect when I got to yeshiva. But I also got the shiduch"bug." The only reason I was there was because I wanted to learn the Oral Law. But this Shiduch thing was infectious. So after some time people were interested in offering shiduchim to me. The only thing was the Rosh Yeshiva had dibs on me (for one of his daughters). So I had to wait until he felt the time was right to make what was unofficial to be official. However, I screwed things up because I was unfamiliar with social norms on the East Coast.  Not only that but I no longer found any favor in the eyes of the Rosh Yeshiva. So I went to the Mir. But in the Mir I had no social standing.
[I should mention I have no grudge about the Shiduch thing. First of all God gave me a great Shiduch later in any case. And as far as I can see I am not much of Rosh Yeshiva material. As Rav Freifeld saw in me eventually that I am just too wild and searching. --free thinking I guess you could call it. I go by reason and evidence. Not tradition--unless tradition happens to agree with reason and evidence.]



So it is not necessarily easy. Certainly in my case the whole business was a disaster. Still a nice girl I knew in CA came out back East and started chasing me, thank God! Not that I was so happy about it at the time. I still was in the impression I had good possibilities at the Mir. Still this girl from CA turned out to be  a great shiduch for me.

Why is all this important? Because today the social structures of the world are collapsing. So in the larger world even if one is what should be considered a good partner that will not necessarily result in n anything. Also there the problem of cults that use the instability of the larger society as a means of attracting converts as they present themselves as a better option.


At any rate, after my wife left, I decided I was not going to depend on anyone's favors and I found myself a nice girlfriend. Still I do not think this is best idea idea as a rule.  [The girl friend option  is an option because of Chronicles I 2:46. That is the Caleb the friend of Joshua had a few girl friends and wives. That is the פלגש is not reserved for kings alone contrary to the Rambam as the Gra pointed out in his commentary on Shulchan Aruch. 

The religious world outside yeshiva is of course just cults. So if one is not in an actual Lithuanian yeshiva it is best to seek one's spouse among classmates in university.

An integral domain has sub domains. All together you get ten. We know there is an close connection between groups and manifolds. Can you have a kind of Mayer-Vietoris sequence between domains?
What I mean is let's say you have a map from an integral domain to a commutative ring, and another map to another commutative ring. And then you have a map from either commutative ring into a larger group.  So now can you put an "H" (homology groups) in front of each map? and if so would this work for all the sub-rings underneath the integral domain?

For example could you do the same with a Noetherian Ring and another Noetherian Ring. And you have an intersection between them. And you map into some larger ring. Can you apply the Mayer Vietoris  theorem? Or would there be an obstruction?




Apparently someone has already dealt with this question at this link


I put this on the internet because I do not want to ask a math or physics professor this question unless I think about it some more.

How to learn Musar [ethics]

How to learn Musar [ethics]? You would think this would be simple after all the effort put into the idea by Reb Israel Salanter.
 Some people emphasized one particular area of value. A good example is the Hafez Haim.
[Not to slander.]


What to me makes sense is in fact to take the Musar books of the rishonim [medieval writers] and plow through them. But to get a wider perspective what  I think is the best thing is to have one session of going through all the works of classical Musar [about 30 books] and another session of going through the writings of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. Plus one more session in classical Jewish world view issues like the Guide for the Perplexed of the Rambam and the Faiths and Doctrines by Saadia Gaon  . What happens is that this last step is omitted by most people and the result is people end up with view totally contrary to Torah,-- but think their views are from the Torah.

To learn Musar in yeshivas at all was subject to debate. But what I am suggesting is  a further step to add השקפה. World view issues. I see this as very important because I see that without this later step people really get ideas very much opposed to the Torah but think their ideas are OK because they heard them from some delusional maniac in the name of the Torah.

I have not given this much thought but I can say based on what I have seen that Musar [learning ethics is important, but without world view it can be highly distorted.]

The Hafetz Haim's books about not to slander and general Musar are in fact a great starting place to begin with.
[I should add that not to slander does not mean you can not warn your children about bad cults. That is even if there is one or two decent people in that cult you can still say the cult is bad. The reason is there is such a thing as group behavior, a social meme. Not only that but if the social meme itself is evil, then the group itself is evil.
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Appendix: For the general public: Musar means mainly medieval books of ethics. But also refers to books by the disciples of Israel Salanter.


Most Musar books do not go into world view issues except the Obligations of the Heart who makes in he first part of his Musar book. However Rav Moshe Haim Luzato did go into world view issues in detail but not in his Mesilat Yesharim.