Pretended Virtue. [Pseudo Virtue]

Nothing is quite as evil as pretended virtue.
I was looking at the Obligations of the Heart section 5. He says there the pretender worse than an idolater of stars. For the idolater worships that which does not disobey God, but the pretender worships human beings who do disobey God.
For that reason I avoid the religious world s much as possible. Ever since the religious world ignored the Gra and Rav Shahk (i.e.  the signature of the Gra on the excommunication], they have all fallen deeply into idolatry of worship of human beings.

I would not be very motivated to bring this up except that I saw also in the Obligations of the Heart in the very end and also in the section before the last section this idea of telling people the truth whether they accept it or not. 

In Shar Yashuv [my first yeshiva in NY, Far Rockaway]

In Shar Yashuv [my first yeshiva in NY, Far Rockaway] and also in the Mir Yeshiva in NY there was a general approach that said if you devote your life to learning Torah and trust in God, He will take care of everything.

 Just last night I was reading the חובות לבבות [Obligations of the Heart] that more or less was saying a similar kind of thing. [The idea of the Obligations of the Heart is when one accepts the yoke of service towards God, then God takes care of things. Certainly not in the way you would expect--but still  in his own way.]

This idea stuck with me. I still think it is true. I see very little reason to devote time toward making money. I still think that the claim is true--trust in God and you will be helped.

But my idea of what constitutes learning Torah has expanded to include Physics and Metaphysics.

That is the Physics thing is stated openly by Maimonides but this approach definitely think this is something that my parents were trying to convene to me without saying so openly.
You can see variations of this in the Gra, and מעלות המדות- Saadia Gaon, and חובות הלבבות


[Not saying the Ramban (Nahmanides- Moshe ben Nahman) would have agreed or many of the other Rishonim.]

The Obligations of the Heart divides wisdom into three parts natural,  applied, and חכמת האלהות.{The author uses the Arabic term for "metaphysics"} Ibn Tibon calls the second division חכמת השימוש. So  this is not what we would usually call the seven wisdoms. That is I think the Obligations of the Heart is creating a new category of wisdoms that use natural science in order to make practical stuff. [He must have been aware of Sancta Sofia.He might also have been thinking about medicine.]


At any rate, I am pretty sure that The Obligations of the Heart and Maimonides are both thinking of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

Christians obviously when they think about serving God are  thinking more along lines of charity. But I think the same principle applies. You do you best to figure out what the service of God is for you in your situation and do it and then leave everything else in your life up to God.


People   in the Mir yeshiva and Far Rockaway were certainly not thinking about Physics and Metaphysics as being a part of learning Torah because the entire approach to Torah really went into two directions. One the more rational Maimonides approach and the mystical approach of Nahmanides. The world of Litvak yeshivas definitely goes in the direction of Nahmanides.

I asked Rav Eliyahu Silverman the rosh yeshiva of Aderet Eliyahu in Old City of Jerusalem (a yeshiva that goes by the Gra) if learning Electrical Engineering is included in the Rambam's idea of learning Physics and he said yes.

סור מרע [turn way from evil] comes before עשה טוב [do good].

סור מרע [turn way from evil] comes before עשה טוב [do good]. The implication is that it is more important to identify actions to avoid, and only then to concentrate on figuring out what actions to hold onto.

I think this is probably not hard if one can think about his or her mistakes in life. If one can figure out what one's mistakes were, and then try to find the common denominator, that already gives a good idea of what kinds of actions one needs to avoid.


In my own life, I have found more or less a set of basic principles some of which came from my parents, some from the Mir in NY and Reb Shmuel Berenbaum. Some from Shar Yashuv. And others from experience. But they are like a ship and rudder and compass and other navigational aids in a stormy sea in which I really have no idea of what is coming.

Time exists.

I thought it was Kant who thought that  time only exists on the level of phenomenon, not dinge an sich? In any case, I recall vaguely that thefact that Nature violates  Bell's inequality shows that either locality is not true, or that things have no classical values until they interact with other things or are measured. Since locality is true as shown by GPS satellites, therefore things have no absolute values in space or time until they interact. But they have probabilistic values. That is the way I tend to look at this. But then if this is true, then time exists. Locality implies causes must come before effects.
I think also Dr Kelley Ross has an essay on time in which he mentions McTaggart.

[This was my thought after I saw an essay by Edward Fesser]


[I ought to mention that not just observation but also simple interaction with other stuff can cause a collapse of the wave function.]

the universe might be a stretched membrane

Just off hand it seems to me that the universe might be  a stretched membrane. It could be that that is what String Theory is saying anyway. But to me it occurred that if the universe is a stretched membrane, that is space time continuum, that would account for the form of some partial differential equations that describe physical phenomenon that have variable coefficients.

This you can see in the stretched membrane over a drum. The PDE's that occur also have variable coefficients. 

Learning what to avoid seems to be just as important as learning what to emphasize.

I think people have a general condition that precedes each  sin. And another kind of precondition that is necessary before they do some good. It is not the same for each person.
This may sound speculative but to a large degree this can be seen in large groups where some particular kind of evil exits.

Thinking in analogies always has a kind of danger.  We see this in Freud who took the analogy of  a steam engine and applied it to people with sublimation of energy and letting off steam etc.

Still this idea of a person having a particular kind of stumbling block seems accurate to me.

We see also  in good and great people that at some point they became aware of what areas they needed to concentrate on and what areas to avoid.


My thoughts on this are based somewhat on Thomas Reid, Hobhouse and also noticing in 2-d waves that every wave has a kind of equation in which there is a single coefficient for each terms.


So how can you tell  what particular areas you need to concentrate on on?

You might have noticed that certain saints concentrated on not speaking slander, or lies, and the Gra concentrated on learning Torah. Navardok on trust. It is hard to know the areas one is weak in and what are one's strong points.

I have tried to develop an approach based somewhat on my parents and on principles I gained from being in the Mir in NY and also experience.

Learning what to avoid seems to be just as important as learning what to emphasize.

I think the best approach to Israel is a combination of learning the Avi Ezri of Rav Shakh along with Physics and Math and a vocation. I mean to say that we can see that Israel is highly connected to the idea of Torah with Derek Ererz.[the way of the earth is the way matter acts by forces acting on it. This is the "hidden Torah" the Torah that is hidden in the world of Creation.]
Israel [as is well known from Rav Moshe ben Nahman [Nahmanides]] is very important. But there is a certain kind of combination of Torah along with the "way of the Earth" that staying in Israel seems to depend on..

[First blog entry in Israel]

I really do not mean just the Avi Ezri. Rather I am thinking of the whole approach starting with Reb Haim Solovietchik. That is basically the Litvak Yeshiva approach. However, I think along with that  one ought to go serve in the IDF and learn a vocation so as not to be using Torah as a mode of making cash which to be forbidden according to the Torah itself.

Still, in terms of learning and understanding Torah ,I think Rav Shakh's Avi Ezri is the best thing out there. [However it does require a certain amount of background in Gemara.]