Gemara in Bava Batra page 134b and seeing the question of Rav Akiva Eiger בבא בתרא דף קלד ע''א ע''ב

But on last Friday after looking at the Gemara in Bava Batra page 134b and seeing the question of Rav Akiva Eiger there, I had an idea of how to answer his question.

גמרא בבא בתרא דף קלד ע''א ע''ב. המשנה האומר יש לי בן נאמן. יש לי אח אינו נאמן. זה אומר יש לו בן ולכן אשתו אינה חייבת ביבום. יש לי אח ולכן אשתו חייבת ביבום. הגמרא שואלת שיש לנו כבר משנה בזה בקידושין  דף ס''ד ע''א. הגמרא .עונה פה יש חזקה על שיש אח. רע''א שואל אפילו אם יש עדים שיש לו אחים הוא צריך להיות נאמן כשהוא אומר שאין לו
בגלל הדין המובא להלן כשהוא אומר גירשתי את אשתי נאמן וזה אפילו כנגד עדים. התירוץ נראה בא מן הגמרא בקידושין סד ע''ב. שם מובא את הדין שיש לי בן נאמן יש לי אח אינו נאמן. הגמרא שאול שכנראה שזה אינו כר' נתן. שכך מובא  האומר בשעת קידושין יש לי בן ובשעת מיתה אין לי בן או האומר בשעת קידושין אין לי אח ובשעת מיתה יש לי אח. ר' יהודה הנשיא אומר נאמן להתיר ואינו נאמן לאסור. ר' נתו אומר גם נאמן לאסור. אביי אומר לא קושיא. המשנה היא כשאין חזקה והברייתא היא כשיש חשזה שיש אח ואין חזקה על בן. ולכן שם ר' נתן אומר שהיא אסורה וחייבת ביבום בגלל החזקה.
לי נראה שהגמרא בבבא בתרא גם מחזיקה בשיטת הגמרא בקידושין שהמשנה שם גם כמו ר' נתן. ור'נתן מאמין בו בגלל החזקה אבל לא היה מאמין לו אם הייתה עדות בגלל שהנאמנות של הבעל בשעת מיתה הוא רק בגלל שהוא מפספס ומשנה את הטיעון שלו אבל עדות ר' נתן היה מאמין


From what I recall the Gemara there goes like this. The Mishna says one who says he has a son is believed but one who says he has a brother is not. The Gemara asks that this seems to be extra since we already learn this same rule in Kidushin 64 side A. It answers, here in Bava Batra there is a prior status that he has a brother [Hazaka.]  Rav Akiva Eiger asks that even more that a Hazaka but even with witnesses that he has a brother and he says he does not he should be believed like the case when he is married and he says he gave a get [divorce ] to his wife.
The answer I think is this. The Gemara in Kidushin brings the same rule [He says he has a son he is believed. he says he has brother he is not believed.] and asks that it seems to not be like R. Nathan.]
For we have a teaching: He says at the time of marriage I have a son and later before he dies he says I do not have a son. Or at the time of marriage he says I have no brother and later before he dies he says I have brother. R Yehuda the Prince says he is believed to permit not to forbid. R Nathan says also he is believed to forbid. [That is R Natan is going by what he says at the end. R Yehuda goes by what he says at the beginning.]






Abyee answers the mishna [is where] there is no hazaka (prior status). The teaching is where there is a hazaka that he has a brother but no hazaka (prior status) about a son.

The answer to the question of R.A. Eiger is that the Gemara in Bava Batra is also thinking like the Gemara in Kidushin that wants the Mishna to be like R Nathan, not just like R Yehuda. And R Nathan in the teaching is going with Hazaka.  But that is because the husband himself flip flops.But in a case where there would be witnesses R Nathan would disagree with the Mishna.

The problem I see in the religious world is that of con. Getting people to believe that what is not authentic Torah really is. This I see is the ultimate reason for the fact that the Gra signed on the letter o excommunication. But it also explains why so many people ignore it. Because we are all more liable to being fooled that we believe. For this reason it is a good idea to have an idea of what authentic Torah is. And also to read a few books about the widespread practice of con and scam--to show how easy it is to be fooled.

The great thing about Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY [two very great Litvak yeshivas] is authenticity.

This is very much different from the majority of what goes on in the religious world where deception and scamming secular Jews is the rule--not the exception.

And this I think one of the major reasons for the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication.

The problem he saw was not just falsifying what the Torah says but scamming and conning people about it.

"Authentic" means that certain places are into learning Torah--nothing more or less. They are not claiming anything else. This is the major characteristic of Litvak yeshivas in Israel also. There is no aspect of scam that is so common place in the rest of the religious world. 

R Yohanan had a disciple R. Zeiri. R Yohanan wanted R Zeiri to marry his daughter. [The daughter of R Yohanan.] R Zeiri did not want her. One day they were crossing a river. R Zeiri carried R Yohanan over teh river on his shoulders. [All this is in the last chapter of Kidushin.] R Yohana asked him, "My Torah is good enough for you but my daughter is not?" [R yohanan was born in Israel. R. Zeiri came to Israel from Babylon]

[The point was that the people in Babylon were considered to be more myuhas [pure lineage] than people born in Israel.

I have trouble understanding this story because if I would have had a chance to marry the daughter of a true Torah scholar [not the modern phonies] I would have jumped at the opportunity.[If I would have I probably would still be learning Torah until this very day]

In Shar Yashuv and the Mir there was a clear distinction between learning "bekiut" and learning "beiyun" (in depth)

While in high school --I was there during a vacation time. The assistant of the physics teacher told me an interesting idea about learning Physics [that is any Physics text]. He said you need to start at the beginning and go to the end. And go from the end to the beginning and to go from the middle outwards.

This I think is helpful when it comes to review. For example  lets say you learn in the way of Girsa גירסא [just saying the words and going on.] And lets say you have done that a few times with the same text book. But at some point you feel you need more review directly after learning some part of it. You do not want to wait until the second time around --by which time you have probably forgotten what you learnt. So you do review from the place you leave off and start towards the beginning.

[After all the sages did emphasize review  also besides the way of "Girsa"]


[In Shar Yashuv and the Mir there was a clear distinction between learning "bekiut" and learning "beiyun"  (in depth). The morning was for "beiyun" (in depth) and the afternoon for bekiut (fast).
In the Mir itself [in NY] the meaning of this was clear. The morning was to prepare for the class of the teachers. And the classes themselves were basically along the lines of Rav Haim of Brisk.

Bekiut just meant what it sounds like. Going through as much Gemara and Tosphot in order as possible. [So it was not exactly "Girsa"].

But for me I found myself somewhat lost in terms of the classes. So my morning hours were spent instead of preparing for the classes I learnt the Maharasha, Maharam and Pnei Yehoshua. [And what other commentaries I could find]]

But when I came to Physics I found the straight way of Girsa to be more effective. So what I think for people like me, it is best to do straight Girsa for a long time until you basically absorb the concepts by osmosis. And then to straight to concentrate on review.

Communism

You can see in Michael Huemer [Intuition-ists] and Dr Kelley Ross [the Kant-Fries School] that  they are not at all thrilled with Communism. Huemer even has a link to a whole web site of Communist crimes. Kelley Ross has a good intellectual defence of capitalism based on Kant's idea of individual autonomy. [That is a good defence and tightly woven into the structure of Kant's philosophy.]

Michael Humer has a particularly devastating critique on Communism.

[One of several essays of his that are masterpieces.]

On a separate note you can see the efforts of the USSR to change America into a communist socialist system in books that were based on the opened archives of the KGB and the GRU in the USSR. [See also the video of Bezmenov.]

And even though the communists made use of Hegel, they turned him upside down in order to do so. Hegel was the exact opposite of a Marxist.

To get a bigger picture of the penetration of communism into Western Civilization see Fire in the Minds of Men by Billington.

To see however the reasons for the rise of Lenin and Stalin it is useful to get a picture of Europe from 1876 until 1905. And then WWI.  They were confronting situations like the massacre of the goldmine workers in Russia. And also plenty of stuff that would not have been easy to answer with simple capitalism.
See Hobhouse who in spite of his critique of Socialism and in particular the Metaphysical State--agreed that straight laissez-faire capitalism had been tried in England and did not work.
Simply put if you look at the French Revolution and the history of Europe up until 1876 all you see is a big mess --all which started from the ideas of socialism of the French Revolution. But look after 1876 until 1918 you get an opposite picture.

Also Howard Bloom's the Lucifer Principle which is more or less a simple form of Hegel's super organism. Or as Blanshard puts it: No human good is possible without the state.

The religious world thinks of secular Jews as a problem

The religious world thinks of secular Jews as a problem.  A problem that needs to be solved delicately. [The religious need the money of secular Jews so they have to pretend to be "we are all one group". Along with the love bombing.]
The religious need that secular Jews  accept the leadership of the religious lunatics. But not to be equal to the frum [religious] but rather subservient.

To me it seems this is an unjustified attitude. I do not see the religious as being the super geniuses or moral giants they think they are.


The religious world seems to be sunk in a world of delusion of superiority. And that they attribute to the fact that they keep a few made up rituals that are not from the Torah at all.

[This is not meant as a critique on the authentic Litvak yeshivas [Brisk, Mir, Ponovitch, Shar Yashuv] where Torah is learned for its own sake.]