Reasons for mitzvot is from the Gemara itself. Bava Metzia page 119 and all rishonim like the sefer haChinuch.

And the reasons are not thought to be mysterious. After all that is the whole point of the argument between R. Shimon ben Yochai against and the sages. he says when the reason does not apply the commandment itself does not apply. If the reason for any command was mysterious then there would be n place for the opinion of R Shimon ben Yochai.

[That is the characteristic of  all arguments in the Mishna. They disagree only about the specific point they are talking about. R Shimon holds we go by the reason for the verse. The sages say we go by the literal meaning. But there is no argument if we know the reasons.

So the commandments are to bring to these basic things: good character traits, peace of the country, to minimize the physical desires, to get rid of idolatry.

In short this could be called natural law of what Rav Saadia Gaon calls חוקי השכל. [Laws of Reason]

So no where in the rishonim do we find Divine command theory. [That is the theory that says: the mizvot are good because they are commanded. Rather they are commanded because they bring one to good.]

 In the Ten Commandments is the command "Honor your father and your mother." That on one hand should not apply when the parents are obviously "off".  They can not command one to sin or neglect a positive command. Yet there is a certain degree that this command sinks into irrelevance. People have almost no idea that they ought to listen to their parents unless they receive confirmation from some other source.

To me it seems that the Torah is saying one must listen to his or her parents unless there is some compelling reason otherwise.  

Yu can see this in most of the Rishonim also that deal with this command like the Rav of Bartenura right there is the Mishna in Kidushin which deals with this commandment.

But clearly the Torah does set limits. We see in the end of Deuteronomy that Moses praised the tribe of Levi for the incident of teh Golden Cal where the tribe of Levi actually killed their own parents when they discovered that they were among the idol worshipers.

 Jews in Yemen had to marry early. This situation arose under Islamic rule because an unmarried girl could be taken by the ruling Muslim prince. However it became the custom of all Sefardic Jews to marry young. [I mean ages 12 to 13.] [Not just in Yemen.]

I see this as a very positive thing. To me it seems best for people to marry young and as much as possible this ought to be encouraged.

To me it seems that fighting against nature is  a lost cause. Puberty is when nature says to procreate. To fight that can only lead to disasters and results in the state of marriage nowadays. When do flowers reproduce? Or any species?

A question of R. Akiva Eigger

קינוי וסתירה [Kinuy U'Stira] Warning a wife not to be alone with someone, and then her being alone. If in fact after the warning and she is alone with that person, then she needs to go to the Temple and drink the "bitter waters". That is water that is mixed with the ink on which the paragraph on this subject is written in the book of Numbers, and a bit of the dust on the Temple. That is to prove her innocence. She can refuse to drink. The only reason for this is to give her a chance to show she is innocent and can continue to live with her husband. 

R. Akiva Eigger  asks: קינוי וסתירה (warning a wife not to be alone with someone and then her being alone) is an argument between R. Eliezer and R. Yehoshua. To R Yehoshua to warn is before one witness and to be alone with the one she was warned about is in front of two witnesses. So if the husband sees her being alone with the one she was warned about she ought to be permitted.

Yet the Rambam says that if he sees her then he must divorce her and give her her Ketubah.

 Rav Shach answers this question in this way. He says the Rambam means the husband is forbidden to stay with her because שוויה עליו חתיכה דאיסורא

I am having trouble understanding Rav Shach here because his seeing her being alone is not the same thing as seeing her actually committing the crime. So while קינוי וסתירה would make her forbidden to him until she would drink the "bitter waters" in the Temple,  but here there was never fulfilled the conditions that would forbid keeping her.

 x29 b flat major  x29 in midi   x29 in nwc format

 Excommunication was once used to great effect in one of the most dramatic moments of Western civilization--Henry IV. Henry had polices the pope did not agree with. He was excommunicated, then crossed the Alps into Italy in the middle of the freezing winter. [On foot and by wagons]. The pope ran away from Rome to not have to face him. The king found where he was and stood outside barefoot for three days until the pope gave in and absolved him.

Henry remained king.

Why the Catholic church does not do the same with the so called catholic politicians that have policies that oppose the teachings of the church like abortion? or socialism which is against the Ten Commandments "Thou shalt not steal". [Socialism in its essence means people have no right to their own money or property except what the government allows to them. That is legitimizing theft.]

[If only the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication was adhered to to any degree at all! That would be the first step out of the mud.]

 It was pointed out to me by David Bronson my learning partner, that the censor caused great problems because now we never know when the Gemara refers to "Akum", [עכו''ם ר''ת עובד כוכבים ומזלות] "goy", "Kuti" כותי etc., to whom are they referring to? The censor by changing things around: "goy" to "akum" and visa verse along with many changes, now  we can never know. [Though I have found that it is possible to figure it out from the context.]

There are differences between these categories. For example "goy" refers to a gentile. "Akum" refers to an idolater who can be Jew or gentile. What makes an "Akum" into an akum is the fact of doing idolatry, not if they are Jewish or not. Kuti is a Samarian. So now when the Gemara says one category we never know if perhaps the original Gemara had a different category.

[So "Akum" will not be referring to a Muslim, and neither to a Christian to many Rishonim opinions like the Meiri and Abravanel, and Tosphot in tractate Avoda Zara. [That Tosphot deals with the famous issue of "joining" שיתוף which should be easy to find, but I admit I forgot the page number.]

One result of this ambiguity is that some people think when the gemara refers to idolaters that it means gentiles. That is a commonplace mistake. Idolater means an idolater. --that is one who does idolatry.