The problem I think there is with philosophy is that it got involved in trivial questions. It nowadays asks how do we know stuff  epistemology and metaphysics It denies completely.
Originally it was asking what is the meaning of it all?

One thing that always turned me off to philosophy is when they start talking about language. The reason I see this as a waste of time is that there is a serious difference between language and real facts.The difference is this: real facts are objective. They exist even if there were no people around to notice them. Language on the other hand is completely and absolutely subjective. The words one says and that one hears have no meaning at all except for what people attach to them. There is nothing objective about it at all.

Still there are nowadays some real remarkable thinkers in philosophy.  Kelley Ross and Michael Huemer.

Hegel and Heidegger were certainly thinking about the big picture but besides Heidigger, twentieth century philosophy got to be a real wasteland of triviality.

Rav Shmuel Berenbaum once gave a talk in the Mir in NY that when one marries a woman there are two kinds of acquisition that happen. One is marriage and the other is monetary acquisitions.
He used this idea to asnwer some questions that I forgot. However I had a few thoughts about this. One is that this idea actually comes from the Gemara in Ketuboth itself between Abyee and Rava.

The other thought I had is to ask how can this fit with the Rambam who holds that when two people make an agreement to make partnership and have witness and sign an document that nothing happens since there is nothing upon which the acquisition can occur. אין קנין חל על דבר שלא בא לעולםץ So for a while I thought Rav Shmuel was only talking according to the opinion of the Raavad. But then it occurred to me that there are obligations that happen just because of a persons status.

I am rushing to write this so I am being too short I know. Anyway I think that the Rambam was only talking about a partnership in which there is no physical acquisitions. But with marriage there is on someone upon whom the obligations occur. It is a case of קנין דקל לפירותיו

I had a lot of thoughts about this but I have no time to write. But I did want to add just one short thought: that all the things that the husband acquires are all rabbinical laws --see Ketubotthis chapter 4 and 5. Not that this makes any difference but it is a point because perhaps one can say that  kind of acquisition can occur by means of a Torah kind of Acquisition.

Bava Metzia 115. Tosphot first words "widow" on page 115.

I have an idea on a way to answer the question the Maharasha asks on the Maharshal. The main idea is based on the statement of Shmuel on page 113 that a messenger of the court can not go into the house of the borrower to take a pledge when the time to repay the loan has come and the borrower has not yet paid. Rav Joseph asks on Shmuel from two verses about a widow and a mill stone that one can not take either and it uses the word לא תחבול "do not take the pledge of a widow". The word implies going into the house. The Gemara answers for the widow and millstone the messenger of the court transgress two prohibitions while for any other borrower only one prohibition.

The Tosphot asks why does the Gemara not ask from the mishna on pg 115? and they answer that the answer would be the same as it gives for the question of Rav Joseph.
The Maharshal says Rav Joseph is asking from two braitot. The maharsha says the question of Tosphot is not like the Maharshal thought to be on Rav Joseph but on the later Gemara that does ask from two braitot.

As you know I have no computer to be able to spend time writing this so I can only write in short my basic idea. My idea is this. That we can answer for the Maharshal thus: the Gemara would not have wanted to ask from the Mishna after the question of Rav Joseph from two verses because in fact the answer would have been the same as the answer for Rav Joseph while the question that the Gemara in fact asks later from a braita the Gemara makes progress--it discovers that there is an argumentbetween the Tenaim about the opinion of Shmuel. Therefore it makes more sense to say the question obn Tosphot is in fact on Rav josph himself.

Sorry if this is not clear enough but if you look up the Maharsha you will see easily my point here.

book of Esther

In the book of Esther it never says to people that live in walled cities to make Purim on the 15th. All it says is Jews that live in unwalled cities make it on the 14th and then right away goes on to say that Mordecai sent letters throughout Peria to make Purim on the 14 and the 15th. It says nothing about Jews that live in walled cities. This might account for the fact that Rav Nahman of Breslov said that Shushan Purim is also Purim.

[The way I noticed this is because right after the verse saying that Jews in un-walled cities make Purim on 14th you expect it to say something about Jews in walled cities. But instead it simply skips the subject.]

[a wife that refuses her husband] is not well known Mishna Ketuboth פרק אף על פי

The law of a מורדת [a wife that refuses sex to her husband] is not well known so I thought to bring some of the details.[Even though there is a lot of things in this subject that are confusing to me.] In the Mishna itself you only get the bare outlines of the subject. But in the Tur and the Shulhan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo you get a lot more details--surprising details in fact.
The first thing that is a surprise is that this law applies to a woman that wants a divorce.
So since I have little time and no computer [except on borrowed time from a friend] I would like to write the basic ideas.
The first category is a woman that refuses her husband but wants her ketubah. and she says מאיס עלי.[That is she claims she is not able to live with him anymore because he is wasting all his money or that she simply can not have sex with him because of disgust.]
That category gets the regular law of a rebellious wife that loses her ketubah. [There is a announcement in the local synagogue that she is a rebellious wife and she will lose her ketubah for four weeks. then after 4 weeks some say she loses her whole ketubah right away and some say only after 12 months.
The next category is she does not ask for the ketubah. She still get the same law but she does not have to live with him. In the first category she is forced to work for him.

In any case this is certainly one of those areas that are sensitive and sadlly no very well known.


[During those four weeks there seems to be a degree of confusion how much she loses of her ketunah every week. Or at least I can not figure it out. It seems to be 7 dinars [a dinar equals silver of the weight of 12 barley beans. That is a dinar in the time of the Talmud. But a dinar of the Torah is 8 times more. But it seems that everyone agrees it is a dinar of the Talmud period. The problem that I am having here is the next opinion in the mishna that says she loses a "tarpik" and the Rav of Bartenura explains that to be a tarpik of the Torah. So I can not figure of if he is thinking the dinar also is of the Torah of not.]

[I had to go through this kind of thing myself and the sad thing is that my wife was talked into getting rid of me by the religious leaders that present themselves as being pro family values. So I saw first hand what a lot of people say about the Jewish religious world--that it is evil and insane and just the opposite of Torah values. Rav Nahman of Brslov already said as much but I simply did not pay attention to him until the facts presented themselves to me in the most harsh way possible. The religious make a big show of righteousness but the facts are very different.]

When I was growing up you never saw a book by Hegel or any of the German idealists around in libraries of in bookstores. Never. In my high school library I recall there was some side writings by Kant but not any of the three Critiques.

But lots of the post modern garbage was out there. Lots.

Thinking back to it I think people were blaming Kant and Hegel  for WWI and WWII.

Why I mention this is that even though Hegel has problems still I think that McTaggart deals with a lot of them very well. And as for Kant I think that there also are plenty of problems but I think Leonard Nelson and the Friesian School of Kelley Ross deals with them very well.

Possession by the dark side from a biological perspective

The problem of possession by the Dark Side is not something that people think much about nowadays. And even when Rav Nahman from Breslov mentions the problem with religious leaders as being in general possessed by the Dark Side, few people really connect the dots.

I also would not think much about it except I saw recently a book by Daniel Defoe that goes into this problem and as I was thinking about it I was reminded about Howard Bloom's The Lucifer Principle.
And then it occurred to me the whole thing about toxo-Plasmosis.That even in the physical realm there is such a thing.If I would have a computer and be able to blog I might have written about this but now since I can's I simply am recommending that people pay a bit more attention to what Rav Nahman [Breslov and Uman] was saying because it has a strong basis in evidence and also makes sense beyond what it seems like at first.

To see the idea of possession by the dark side from a biological perspective see the lectures of Sapolsky at Stanford.

Howard Bloom approaches the subject from a different angle--that of the super-organism.
In the Middle Ages this was also a large subject. Even in Rouen where the trial of Joan [Jeene] of Arc was there were multiple trials on the issue at the same time. How can you tell if someone's visions are from the realm of hiliness or not?