Learning in depth

Learning in depth I think is an aspect of the path of the Gra. The most important of the books on learning in depth are all from the path of the Gra. Not just after Rav Haim from Brisk but even before him. Might as well make a list. The Hidushei HaRambam of Rav Haim of Brisk. Shimon Shkopf the Shaari Yosher. R Akiva Eigger. Netivot HaMishpat. Baruch Ber of the Birkat Shmuel. Ketzot HaChoshen. The Musar movement. Naftali Troup. Aruch Hashulchan. The two commentaries on the Yerushalmi, Pnei Moshe and Karban Eda both direct disciples of the Gra  The peak is of course the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. But besides that there are countless of deep and great books by the great people of the Lithuanian Yeshivas which are all of amazing depth.
But I have to add that the path of the Gra to a large degree meant trust in God. People were not worried about making a living. Trust and learning Torah in depth are the two pillars of the path of the Gra.

[My thought is to at minimum get the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach and do each section many times until it becomes clear.] 

Saadia Gaon in raised the two most famous objections on Jesus: (1) nullification of the commandments; (2) Divinity.
To answer the first objection it is possible to point out bahnsen The Theonomic Position

I have known about this essay for about two or three years but never thought to mention it. It seems important but I guess my blog was about other issues. So it simply never occurred to me to bring it up.
The other objection I have mentioned that "I am" (When Jesus stood before the Roman judge he was asked, "Who are you?" He said, "I am".)  is not the same thing as "אהיה אשר אהיה" "I will be that which I will be" [Which is the name of God at the Burning Bush].[That is the usual source for the claim. That is that "I am" refers to the name of God.] [The idea that Jesus is always refers to "the son of man", does not in itself seem to have any implication along these lines. So the critique of Saadia Gaon is a critique on the church rather than on Jesus. [And Avraham Abulafia also was critical of the Church, but about Jesus himself he said very positive things.]

So to me pursuing truth is more important that being "politically correct." PC means any mention of Jesus has to be with some insult. You might get away with saying something nice as long as you insult him afterwards.. But that has nothing to do with pursuing truth.



Here is a middle part of that paper of Bahnsen:

it would be senseless to think that Christ came in order to cancel mankind’s responsibility to keep them. It is theologically incredible that the mission of Christ was to make it morally acceptable now for men to blaspheme, murder, rape, steal, gossip, or envy! Christ did not come to change our evaluation of God’s laws from that of holy to unholy, obligatory to optional, or perfect to flawed. Listen to His own testimony:

Do not begin to think that I came to abrogate the Law or the Prophets; I came not to abrogate but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, until all things have happened, not one jot or tittle shall by any means pass away from the law. Therefore, whoever shall break one of these least commandments and teach men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:17-19).

Several points about the interpretation of this passage should be rather clear. (1) Christ twice denied that His advent had the purpose of abrogating the Old Testament commandments. (2) Until the expiration of the physical universe, not even a letter or stroke of the law will pass away. And (3) therefore God’s disapprobation rests upon anyone who teaches that even the least of the Old Testament laws may be broken.¹⁶

¹⁶ Attempts are sometimes made to evade the thrust of this text by editing out its reference to the moral demands of the Old Testament—contrary to what is obvious from its context (5:16, 20, 21-48; 6:1, 10, 33; 7:12, 20-21, 26) and semantics (“the law” in v. 18, “commandment” in v. 19). Other attempts are made to extract an abrogating of the law’s moral demands from the word “fulfill” (v. 17) or the phrase “until all things have happened” (v. 18). This, however, renders the verses self-contradictory in what they assert.

In all of its minute detail (every jot and tittle) the law of God, down to its least significant provision, should be reckoned to have an abiding validity—until and unless the Lawgiver reveals otherwise.

Rav Nahman deals with the issue that sometimes עת לעשות להשם הפרו תורתיך ואמרו חז''ל פעמים ביטולה של תורה זה הוא קיומה The verse in Psalms says It is time to do for God because they have nullified your commandments. And the Sages said sometimes the nullification of Torah is the fulfillment.

Rav Nahman brings this in that same Torah lesson I mentioned before LeM vol I:76.
This is how some rishonim understand Eliyahu on Mount Carmel. Not as "by prophecy" but rather because sometimes the nullification is the cause of the fulfillment.

Since the very same people that claim to represent Torah are in the category of "Torah scholars that are demons" that Rav Nahman brings in LeM I:12 the very need to keep Torah requires one to make this statement of Rav Nahman into a guiding principle. 

[In Exodus Moshe told Pharaoh the reason they had to leave Egypt to bring sacrifice- after all why could he not have found a park or some private home? Because there was idolatry there. Thus there was no possibility to bring a sacrifice to God anywhere that would be acceptable to God.  

There is a future looking point of view in which one learns from past great people but does not assume that they got everything right. You need some way of combining the good that you learn from past great people and also gain some kind of sense of "birur" to take the wheat from the chaff. Or even to tell who really is a good person worthy to learn from.

But even if you find great people in the past and you can combine all their good ideas that still does not take care of the job of the present of looking into the future. Being future oriented.

I have so many thoughts in this direction it is hard to be able to put it all down-.

One side issue is this very process of "Birur"(choosing). This whole idea here is certainly related to Hegel except in a slightly different way. With Hegel you have thesis anti thesis and then synthesis. But Birur is not the same since choosing is simply deciding what is good and valid in the first place and rejecting the rest.

The idea of trust in God I would like to extend to learning. At least that is how I understood the concept for myself during a period of years when I was adhering to the way of learning of "Girsa" [saying the words and going on].
I had noted before that that the idea of  "Bitachon" [trust in God] extends to even the next world. That is openly mentioned in the most famous of all Musar books, The Obligations of the Heart חובות הלבבות.

So I would think to apply this to learning Physics also.

But I can imagine this is  a a bit of a stretch. First to accept the idea that learning Physics and Math is in the category of learning Torah. [I have mentioned this before.] [And to accept that learning Torah itself is a commandment]. Then to say that learning even without understanding is also in that category. And then also apply learning something that at first seems hard to understand.

Even so, this is what I would like to suggest.


[Later the next day I noted in the writings of Rav Nahman this very idea [in LeM vol I chapter 76]. There is such a thing as trust in God in such a way that one merits to understand his learning even without "iyun" deep study. But the actual idea of just saying the words and going on is also mentioned in the begining of the LeM על ידי עמצאות הדיבור זוכים להבנת התורה לעומקה 

g major w36mp3 w36 midi   w36 nwc [the score you can see in midi or nwc.]
w37  [w37 midi file]  w37 nwc

The importance of the Gra

The importance of the Gra is hard to overestimate since he seems to have had an amazing intuition about what is straight Torah. So the Litvak yeshiva movement founded on his principles in fact represents authentic Torah to a high degree. It seems to me that after the Gra has come into the world then in order to get to authentic Torah in any sense at all, one needs to go through the path of the Gra.
Mainly the path of the Gra in a practical sense means trust in God, and an emphasis on the idea of "bitul Torah". "Bitul Torah" means wasting time from learning Torah. The idea is that there are things that one ought to do besides learning Torah. However the thing to do when one is not obligated in those things is to learn Torah. [The actual path of the Gra got combined with Musar of Rav Israel Salanter and Rav Shach.]

The only thing that I have to add to this idea is that I believe along the lines of the rishonim [medieval authorities] that held Physics and Math to be in the category of Torah. [Even  though this is an argument among the rishonim]. [These same "Rishonim" Ibn Pakuda, Binyamin the Doctor, etc all held also metaphysics is in that same command of learning Torah. But I have a hard time identifying what exactly does that include. Clearly Aristotle. But what else?

[I would venture to say that the fact that most rishonim do not mention Aristotle in terms of Metaphysics that they must have been referring to the whole disciple as it existed then. That would mean the actual book of Aristotle The Metaphysics along with the commentaries of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Clearly also Plato and Plotinus. What I would add today would be the three Critiques of Kant and Hegel. Anything after that I am not sure of nor of the people leading up to Kant. That is to say a lot of people were leading up to Kant and all have value. But after Kant their value seems diminished to me. Also Kant and Hegel were the giants so after them I am not really sure of who would be thought to be progress after them? I would guess Leonard Nelson and Prichard. [Prichard was part of the school of  Intuitionists that Dr Huemer is based on.] (There is a great deal of tension between the Hegel approach and Leonard Nelson. I wish I had some kind of resolution for this matter and it seems of great importance to me and in fact to the whole world. But I have no resolution.Both Hegel and Nelson have significantly important points.]

At least Physics is well defined. We know where it is at today and therefore we know what to learn. String Theory.