The signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication

The signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication can be defended on a few accounts. One is purely legal. A חרם excommunication has legal authority. That is it has no legal authority from the state. But from conscience. It is like many other moral principles that can not be enforced by the state, and yet are still obligations.
[Still I feel it is clear that Reb Nahman was not included and furthermore I also feel that he was a true tzadik with important insights and advice. You have to see the actual language of the excommunication to see why.]

Another way it can be defended is understanding that the Sitra Akra [Dark Side] ought to be isolated and separated and expelled. The Torah excludes idolatry rigorously. Monotheism is the basic belief system of the the Old Testament.
But a third way is this: Any system that contradicts itself, makes people insane. attempts to bring others into it web of lies, ought to be sent back to the underworld from which it emerged.

[However in this world, opposite are tied together. Pleasure and pain are opposites but they are tied in such a way that when you reach for one, they other comes along in inextricably. So are wisdom and foolishness. Genius and lunacy. Holiness and the Sitra Akra the Dark Side.
To separate one from the other is one's major task in this world.


[The major ideas of Reb Nahman that I think are important to mention are the Tikun Klali--ten psalms to say on the day one had accidentally spilled his seed in vain. They are 16, 32, 41,42, 59,77, 90, 105 137 150 . Also speaking with God in one's own language as one talks with his or her best friend.]

So a commitment to walk in the way of the Gra does not imply excluding Reb Nahman's good ideas.
And Reb Nahman's idea about the Tikun Klali makes sense in terms of the Ari, Isaac Luria. Though  have not said it for a long time, it still seems to be correct. Spilling seed in vain certainly needs a correction and the actual unifications that the Ari gives for this seem to require a certain flow of the Divine light in order to be effective. But when one has sinned, that seems in itself to cut off the flow of the "Infinite Light." So Reb Nahman's idea is based on solid reasoning

Music for the glory of God

U-84 D Minor

Tur- in order to learn the laws of the Torah

[Second day of the Omer ]
To learn the laws of the Torah I think the best idea is the Tur  [son of the Rosh,i.e.Rav Yehiel ben Asher] with the two commentaries on it by Rav Joseph Karo and the Bach. After that to look at the Taz and Shach.
Now you might notice problems in the Bach. But there is something about the Bach that I find is amazing. And when you read the Bach and after that the Taz, you see that the Taz was mainly written as a commentary on the Bach. If you just look at the Taz and Shach themselves you miss the whole issues that they were coming to solve.

My own experience with the Bach was when I was doing Ketuboth. It was then that I noticed this amazing dimension of the Tur. If you do the Gemara and then the Tur with the Bach and Taz you see they were written essentially as commentaries on the Gemara. Or perhaps better said they bring out aspects of the Gemara that you normally would not see.
And even though I have heard of people that skip the Bach and just do the Tur with Rav Joseph Karo, it still seems to me that by skipping the Bach they are losing a whole new dimension of the learning.


[I had a learning partner in Shabat, and we skipped the Bach. We did the Rosh, Rif, the commentaries on the Rif, and the Tur with Rav Joseph Karo. But I felt even then that skipping the Bach left me feeling empty.]

mystic writings from the Middle Ages

Most mystic writings from the Middle Ages [and Musar also] depend a lot on Aristotle's four elements, his division between substance and form, and the 10 spheres of Ptolemy.  The unstated problem with this is that a great deal of Aristotle' Physics and Ptolemy's spheres do not seem accurate.

So what people do is try to preserve the insights while ignoring the basic world view upon which they depend. In any case,  this makes writings from the Middle Ages problematic in that one is trying to gain the accurate insights, while at the same time ignoring the world view.

Sometimes from the idea that these medieval writers could not have been wrong, one tries to find hints of modern physics in them.

What adds to the difficulty in all this is no one knows the actual Aristotelian system upon which all medieval writings are based. Or even acknowledges the fact. And thus the terms are constantly used in inaccurate ways.

For what happened in history is Descartes came along and the force of his clarity was so great, confidence in Aristotle sank. So we do not think in terms of שכל בכוח  potential intellect as being imprinted by active צורות forms. After Descartes we do not think everything has to have substance and form. For example -the mind.
The problem is all the greater because Post-Descartes thought has not led to anything that could conceivably replace Aristotle in terms of  most of the issues that are raised in these medieval books.

[Litvak Yeshivas as a rule do not think about theology at all. The only time the problem comes up is in Musar seder. Some books of Musar depend  a lot on the mystic writings of the Middle Ages and that seems to invalidate them.]

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What was done during the Middle Ages was to create a synthesis of Aristotle with Torah. Maimonides was leaning in the direction of Aristotle. Others like Rav Saadia Gaon were leaning towards Plotinus. Today after Descartes, Kant and Leonard Nelson a similar kind of effort is needed.

It is not that the efforts of the Rambam were wasted. Even the Kant-Friesian School is very close to the Neo-Platonic approach of the Rambam. But still the Rambam tends to be kind of mediaeval. Some new effort is needed.

U-82 C Major  u-82 midi U-82 nwc

Towards the end you see see that I borrowed an idea of Mozart which is this: When you have a song in 6/8 time in triplets [3 eights one after the other] sometimes it makes sense to delete the first note. This you can see in Mozart's piano violin sonatas. [Or at least that is where I noticed this idea, though I am pretty sure that Mozart used this idea in many other pieces.]

honor one's parents

To honor one's parents I think involves two things obeying and walking in their ways.
To obey nowadays does not sound so good but it is in accord with nature. When we are born we understand soon to obey our parents and their sense of reason because we understand that they know better than us before our own sense of reason is full.
But to walk in the ways of one's parents is  made hard by the fact that many parents are jerks.

How would I even begin to imagine how to walk in my parent's ways? Volunteer for the U.S. Air Force? Go to the California Institute of Technology {Cal Tech}?  Hard to conceive of that now. It is more so complicated by the need to learn Gemara which I could only have done in N.Y. Litvak Yeshivas like the Mir or Shar Yashuv.
[Not to mention that to marry a nice Jewish girl was among their priorities, and it is hard to figure out how that might have happened in any kind of context outside of the Mir. I mean, I knew Paula [Hebrew name Lea] in California in high school, but for her to make up her mind to come after me was obviously dependent on the fact that I was in an authentic Litvak yeshiva. That is clearly what sparked her interest in me in the first place.


I assume these and similar kinds of questions attend on anyone who seriously contemplates the question how to go about כיבוד אב ואם honor of one's father and mother?

The simplest thing is when what one's parents say corresponds to objective morality and objective truth which certainly was the case for me.

One of the really surprising things I noticed in the former USSR is that people were no where near as happy to see it gone that I had thought they would be. Almost anyone I ask says "Things were better then." I think a lot has to do with DNA and also with faith.
The USA system is based very much on England; and the Constitution works well with a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) population. WASP means both faith and DNA. But areas were the USSR was in control are not WASP.  Nowadays, for anyone to guard their property in former republics of the USSR, they need to have 24 hour-a-day guards. [And every home must have a guard dog] There is simply a large percent of criminal DNA.
So as a practical measure, every business, every place where there is anything of value, people need to hire 24 hour a day guards. I never saw anything like it in the USA or Israel.

In a deeper sense, the Ari [Isaac Luria] does mention that some people are simply evil. That is,-- they may have in the outer portions of their soul external good, but deep in their core is non- eradicable evil. That is 99% of them is good, but the inner core of evil is not visible and is in actual control.
During the USSR people were afraid of the State. Now they are afraid of everyone.


Another point about Anglo Saxon areas. People write about natural traits in a totally different way than in other countries. Thomas Reid writes to the effect that even children have a natural tendency to speak the truth. He obviously never spent any time in a  Muslim country.