Just to be a little more clear about the issues I raised in my blog from yesterday I want to explain a little as best I can.

The idea of R.   Meier is this. You can not derive a plus from a minus, a yes from a no. That means let us says you have a sentence, "If it is raining it must be wet outside." To R. Meier you can not derive "If it is not raining it is dry outside." And this came up in one of my little books on Shas. But I had forgotten this whole issue about R Meir.

This comes up in the Talumd tractate "Nedarim" page 11 side A. and in the book of Rav Shach on the Rambam laws of nedarim vows chapter 1 law 18 [actually 18 through 20].

The problem in the Rambam is in law 18 he says, '"That which I will eat of yours is not secular" and then he is forbidden to eat of anything that belongs to the other person.' That is like the Sages against R Meir.. Then in law 20 he says, "That which I will eat of yours is secular or that which I will not eat of yours is secular and that is allowed to eat from the other fellow,' and that is like R Meir. So everyone wants to answer how can the Rambam decide the law in two contradictory ways? The Radvaz [Rav David ben Zimrah], the Migdal Oz [Rav Shem Tov from Spain], and Rav Elazar Shach  and Rav Yoseph Karo each try to answer this question.


I have nothing new to add here except that I can see that I really must have been a real ignoramus (am haaretz) when I was at the Mir, because this exact chapter in Nedarim is what the whole yeshiva was learning in my first six months there and I can see now that I was completely unaware of the issues that ought to be obvious to anyone learning Nedarim--but I missed all these issues.

daughter of an"am Haaretz" -ignoramus

I was surprised to see in the commentary of the Rambam on the Mishna  that one is not allowed to marry the daughter of an"am haaretz"[that is a ignoramus]. That is it is not just good advice but actual a law. Then I noticed the same thing in Mishne Torah of the Rambam. This goes to show what they used to say in the Mir Yeshiva [during the short period I was there] concerning the choice of whom to marry: "If your wife wants you to learn Torah,- you will. If she does not want it,- then you won't."

This is an important point to consider when thinking about marriage.
 When at the Mir, I was hoping for this kind of shiduch. In the meantime, the girl [whom I knew from high school] who had been writing and calling me for years to get me, just seemed to not want to give up. I tried to explain to her nicely, and not nicely, that I was not interested in her. Yet, she just did not  give up. So one day, on the phone trying to find a place for her for the Sabbath meals, I was on the phone with Arye Kaplan. He asked why I did not marry her? I said, I wished for a daughter of a person that was into learning Torah{as in the path of the Mir}. His reaction to that was that it was not possible that I would be offered anyone else in the religious world except for a baalat mum [a person with a hidden defect]. [That is to say, I should marry her since she is a good girl that I know very well. That is preferable to someone I do not know, and would find later problems with.] So I talked afterwards to Rav Getz, a good Torah scholar who learned at the Mir. He also suggested that I marry her.[I did. Soon after we went on the normal 6 dates--every motzai Shabat. And for a while I stayed at the Mir [I forget how long. Maybe two years I think. Then Israel. So for a good long time se stuck with me as I was learning Torah and she deserves credit for that,]  


I ought to add that these issues are not all that clear, since it is possible to have a girl that wants you to learn Torah even though her background might be not religious at all. And on the opposite side of things you might have  a girl from a religious background that wants one to work. But in any case, I suggest that if one is into learning Torah in the way of the Gra and the Litvak Yeshiva World. I suggest  that this issue ought to be  a first priority. For it is hard for most people to realize what the issue is all about. It is not that it is "good idea" to learn Torah. It is more or less that learning Torah is the purpose of life and of the creation of the universe. It is the first priority beyond anything else imaginable. It is hard to see this. For I myself having fallen from this ideal find it hard to describe. But in fact there is a profound truth in this that is more or less impossible to communicate to anyone who does not already feel it deep inside of him or her.
[In later times I got involved in Physics and Mathematics, yet I feel that even though these are also important, still I wish I had been able to contunue in Torah.] The thing is --it is hard to find the right balance.

Talmud Nedarim page 11

From "no" you hear "yes". That is the sages. However R. Meier hold not. This comes up in the Talmud Nedarim page 11 and in Rav Shach's Avi Ezriin laws of Nedarim chapter 1 law 18.

I had forgotten this whole issue and because of this I would like to add a comment on my little books on Bava Mezia and Shas. But I can not because the police have my computer.
There are probably tons of things going on in this chapter in the Avi Ezri -- but the first thing that occurs to me is how this relates to a comment made my my learning partner David Bronson a few years ago.

The basic idea is this.Rashi in Bava Mezia had some comment If A then B therefore if not A then not B. I objected to this because of Aristotelian logic Even if it is true that it is raining it is wet outside but there might be other reasons for it to be wet. Therefore if it is wet that does not mean it is raining. Someone might have turned on their sprinklers.
Then David noticed in laws of sacrifices this same argument came up between Rava and the gemara.

This I wrote down in my notes. But at the time I was not aware of this disagreement between the sages and R Meier. So now it looks like Rava was going like the sages and the Gemara was going like R. Meier.
And from what I can tell that is how Rav Joseph Karo answers the problem in the Rambam himself who on the surface looks like he contradicts himself between law 18 and law 20 in laws of Nedarim chapter 1.
But I was in a Lithuanian Beit Midrash today where they have a copy of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri and from my brief glance I could see that he has a different way of answering for the Rambam.
He makes a distinction beween "hatfasa" התפסה and prohibition. But I still have not had a chance to learn what Rav Shach says thoroughly.

In any case the basic idea is this לא חולין שאוכל לך אסור כחכמים. הלכה י''ח. חולין שאוכל לך מותר כר' מאיר. הלכה כ

There is something in laws of Truma of the Rambam [chapter  1] that I have a hard time with. It comes from a well known statement of Reish Lakish that if one takes the first tithe before he takes truma from sheaves of wheat that have not yet been separated and grounded then the Levi does not have to take truma but only maasar. In that the Rambam is going like the Babylonian Talmud [Abyee], not like the Jerusalem Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud holds that the Levi gives truma only if the tithe was taken after the crops became obligated. The thing that I find confusing is that in the first case the crops are tevel [obligated after the grinding] and the maasar is not even maasar. So why would the maasar be anything but a present/gift? The tithe was given before the crops even became obligated, so the maasar is not even maasar. In the case of the Jerusalem Talmud, the crops are actual tevel and still there is no obligation to give truma.

These are not really hard questions once you have verses which state that that is just the way it is. But what is odd is the Rambam says the reason in the first case is that the crops have not yet been obligated in truma. How is that a reason? In both cases you have real tevel that is not going to have truma taken from it. So on either Gemara I really have no question. It is rather the reason the Rambam gives that I find hard to understand.

The new idolatry is worship of religious leaders. Israel is so full of this that it is almost impossible to go anywhere without encountering it. This was one of the major reasons I did not want to return to Israel. As you can see in tractate Avoda Zara to go anywhere where there is avoda zara [idolatry] is a problem.
I knew there might be  probvlem but I was not aware of how extensive it is. If only Rav Shach and the Gra had been listened to, this would nopt be an issue. But for some reason even in the Litvak wolrd they are ignored for the most part.

The lowest I.Q. among all university majors

The lowest I.Q. among all university majors is the people that go into social work. And they are the people that decide whether you can keep your children? And interview children to see if they have been hurt by an adult? As in "did so and so hurt you".[That is they ask leading questions to get the children to say what they want to hear.] You must be kidding. social workers ought to be put away in some insane asylum so they can stop hurting people themselves. Asking a social worker to interview kids is like asking a monkey to do the same.
Psychologists are almost as stupid as social workers--but not quite. But they certainly think they are superior beings.

The Hegelian State is not so absurd in my eyes. I think Communism is in its very core based on serious mistake like the Labor Theory of Value--even thought that was accepted as fact in the time of Marx--still it is not true that they value of any thing depends on how much labor went into making it. Rather it depends on how much people want to buy it.

And Hegel's model was in any case meant to help avoid the insane chaos that was the French Revolution.
And what then is up with China?
Dr Michael Huemer and Kelley Ross are against Communism in any and all forms for very good reasons and yet how else can one take control of chaos before it gets out of hand? Anyone who has been to Ukraine knows there is some kind of elements in the population that are simply crimnal and there is  alarge percent. They are not WASPS [White Anglo Saxon Protestants]. And then good elemenst are either in fact Russian DNA or Russia leaning.