religious teachers

religious teachers . I never thought they were anything but dressing up like holy people in order to make money. I never thought they knew Torah. Still there are people that go by same name but are in fact devoted to Torah These honest and decent people for some reason have not seen fit to disassociate themselves  from frauds.

There is a custom in the authentic Lithuanian yeshiva world to call people Reb just like you could say Mr Smith. Thus we have even the greatest of Torah scholars being called as "Mr Smith" as in "Reb Chaim" [that is Chaim Soloveitchik] or the "Chafetz Chaim." Or "Reb Moshe" [Moshe Feintstein]. "Reb Aaron" [Aaron Kotler]. But this is only a custom. [That is "Reb" is the same as "Mr."]

Sephardim have a custom that is also admirable. For authentic Torah Scholars they use the name the Talmud gives them: "Rav." So for the greatest Sephardi Torah Scholar we have "Rav Ovadia Joseph."

Gentiles for some reason have not learned to make this distinction, nor have most secular Jews. I have no idea why this is.
But my guess is that the true Torah scholars never made it their business to make this distinction which leaves all us simple Jews in a award position. It is almost impossible to tell who is real and who is putting on an act.
So why do not the true scholars speak up? I could not even begin to guess. It is like unspoken rule.

In the name of all of us simple Jews, I ask the true Torah scholars to help us to make this important distinction. Because without it everyone suffers.

But the silence of Torah scholars is puzzling in more ways than one. Everyone reading this probably knows just what I mean and has encountered this in many other ways. Maybe there is something good about their silence I do not know. But I speak my mind.

A man meets God. The experience is strange. He picks up a book and discovers that for millenia others have had the exact same experience.

https://dougwils.com/

From this link
Try this.

A man meets God. The experience is strange. He picks up a book and discovers that for millenia others have had the exact same experience.

He realizes that he has a 'map of the experience' so to speak. Curious, he digs deeper and discovers principles about this strange thing he was not aware of. The man tests them empirically and they are true.

Being social a social creature, he talks to others who have had the same and similar experience.

Along comes a random heathen man who attempts to cast doubt on the veracity of the experience by pointing to the book. The man looks at the heathen and shakes his head. "you miss the point. you invert the phenomena. you are looking at this wrong. you do not see. "

The differences between Kant and Hegel can be ironed out.  [If anyone is at all interested.]
The way is simple by an idea from the Rambam. Reason itself needs to be revealed.
You have the same unconditioned realities of Kant. But these unconditioned realities are a hierarchy. The same hierarchy of Hegel. But instead of their being perceived by reason they can only be revealed by the will of God. This was not I think the new idea of the Rambam. You can see this in the חובות לבבות Obligations of the Heart by Ibn Pakuda, the judge. I assume he might have gotten it from even earlier sources.

That is you could build a Kant-Hegelian system. You would preserve the ding an sich the Reality and realities that are not perceivable by reason but rather are revealed.--Or the way Plato would say it "Remembered." [See the Meno. And this is not like the Neo Platonic school that did not have anything like unconditioned realities. This rather would be straight back to Plato.]

You would also have to realize the absolute Spirit of Hegel is not the same thing as the First Cause as the Rambam also noted a long time before them.

I am the hierarchy of Hegel is not the same kind of thing that I am thinking of here. Here I am thinking of Kelly Ross hierarchy of Ur Contingency. But in any case you get the idea.

You might not think this is a big deal but I see it as very important for many reasons. One side issue that people might consider is that freedom has not much going for it from a John Lock perspective. If you think individual freedom is important you do need to find a better basis for it outside of the blank slate.

Government I thought was only granted certain powers in the Constitution. Even without the idea of rights, I would think that it has no power except what was agreed upon by the States. 
But it takes power anyway. I think if freedom and individual rights had more of an intellectual backing then people would be less willing to grant unlimited powers to government. 
Their power ought to be limited by reason of natural rights.


You really can not take Hegel alone in that he is definitely  on the side of Aristotle. To him the individual is the same as Aristotle's prime substance-- that is basically just nothing but a vessel prepared to contain some universals. So you need Plato's ideas  and Kant's autonomy of the individual.

That is you need to take Hegel the same way Plotinus took Aristotle as modifying and explaining Plato. You need Hegel to help fill in the whole picture.

Roosh put this upon his site so I thought to do the same

Bezmenov   Link to Roosh

My comments: That is great that you saw that fellow's utubes. I thought he was totally forgotten. He was absolutely right and I wish more people had heeded his warning. Sadly the KGB got to him. They found him because he was on the radio in Canada.
There was a KGB agent whose job was to monitor the radio in the USA England and Canada and report anything significant to his bosses. Well that is how they found him. He sadlly did not last long after that. It would be great if people were more aware of what he said.

A comment:

Anyone know how, or even WHEN, Bezmenov died?

I once posted a question on Yahoo Answers asking "how did Yuri Bezmenov die?" and I was immediately BANNED.

Bezmenov's Wikipedia entry mentions nothing about his death, and there seems to be nothing anywhere online about it. 

• Me:

  There was a blog called "The Useless Dissent" that I had a link a long time ago. I was sure that Bezmenov was right and shocked that no one paid attention to him. Someone from the KGB worked at listening to broadcasts from the USA and Canada. He heard him and passed the information on to his superior. Bezmenov was then killed as the regular policy was in those days. There was more info a few years ago, but info on the internet tends to disappear quickly. Some information was never put on line and you had to know the people involved to put the picture together.

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If you look up Scientology you might be able to find a link to the English translation of a document that provided the handbook of the KGB for subverting the USA that Scientology utilized in pursuing its own goals.

The people in the KGB that were not directly involved did not think the KGB had the resources to subvert the USA by the strategies outlined by Bezmenov. But I think that they were simply compartmentalized and did not see the big strategy.

How likely is it the Left after perverting the USA, will give up power willingly? Thus, I suggest to all Americans to arm themselves. Thus to make sure that if martial law is declared, and the election of Trump is invalidated, then regular Americans have  away of defending themselves.

World view issues have always been important to me and when I was young I looked into a lot. West  and East. Mainly I settled on the Oral and Written Law.  The Oral Law has no claim to divinity except in so far as it is accurate in its rigorous in its analysis of the verse of the Torah. In so far as it is objectively accurate to that degree it partakes of the holiness of Torah. But as a philosophical backing of Torah I have taken it as an axiom that Saadia Gaon and the Rambam knew what kind of world view was implicit in Torah.
And their approach while having some implications of mystic experience is not mystical but philosophical-and thus subject to the same kind of critique that any philosophical world view is subject to. So Torah has to stand up to critique. The way I have defended Torah is mainly by defending the Rambam's exposition of it in the Guide.

But as a rule I should say almost all world views I have encountered have serious problems with them. Some are obviously circular reasoning. Some are less obviously so.

On choosing a good wife. essay from a blog

On choosing a good wife.

 Is she a good follower? Or does she constantly buck authority when a decision is made. How she interacts with authority is a good indicator, especially with her father.

Generally speaking, the “actions” of someone are a fair indicator of the state of their heart although I would state that attitude is a better indicator. Heart intentions always lead to actions. If there is good fruit from the actions, then it’s most likely their heart is in a good place.

However, actions can indeed be deceptive. This is why when you vet for a wife I suggest mainly vetting for character along with actions. How do you vet for character?

Character is really only revealed in difficult and/or morally compromising situations. Thus, the “real” person you’re looking at is:

• What they do when they’re angry?
• What do they do when they’ve been proven wrong?
• When they are at fault do they apologize and make amends or double down?
• How do they react under pressure filled situations?
• Are they gracious and humble?
• What do they do when someone is harassing them?
• How do they treat the people that do bad or evil to them?
• How does a girlfriend react when she’s angry with you AND you ask her to do something?
• Does she actually “follow” or retain control by “letting you lead?”

These are the types of things that are difficult but reveal a mature character:

As we live in first world countries, there are not many instances where actual life threatening difficulties befall us. Hence, we need to be vigilant in understanding that the few places where you can view someone’s character is what they are really like underneath the surface. Do not brush character concerns under the rug as these are the types of things that come back to haunt you.

What type of attitude do they take in all of these situations?

In marriage there is much good, but there’s always going to be difficulty. How are they going to respond to that when things get rough? Are they going to quit or reveal their bad character like they did in certain circumstances prior to marriage? Or are they going to reveal their good character, tough it out, and submit to God and to you?

Attitude reveals the heart’s desire. Are they for God AND for you, or are they against you? Sadly, women can be for God and against you because they can be deceived. You need to make sure that this is not the case, and that she will not persist in such a deception.

Finally, is she teachable and does she learn from her mistakes?

In marriage, both the husband and wife will grow and change over time. The most important thing is if she is teachable and willing to learn from her mistakes and not make them again.

If she is unteachable then it’s a waste of your time. Likewise, if she repeats the same mistakes over and over… you know what the Proverbs has to say about a fool and his folly.

These types of things are partly revelations of character. Teachability and learning from mistakes is a critical factor  because these are some of the concepts that underlie repentance. She may be  good otherwise, but can she also display these traits when she is with you. That is the question.

In my weltanschauung   the ethics of the Torah is root of the universe. This idea came about  from learning Musar [Ethics of the Torah], but I saw it later in Shalom Sharabi.
That is at least something I saw in the Alter of Slobadka openly. אור צפון. The Hidden Light. That was one of the writings of the disciples of  Reb Israel Salanter.  I saw this  right smack at the beginning in a very powerful way. I forget how he put it but it was along the lines that the sin of Adam was in character.