Too much of religious identity depends on thinking that Jesus was not good.

Too much of religious identity depends on thinking that Jesus was not good. However there are issues which are legitimate. Already pointed out by Saadia Gaon. The most obvious issue is that Jesus does not equal God. And that should be obvious just by reading the NT itself.

But forgotten in this discussion is always the approach of  "Emanation" [Atzilut] -Emanation of the Divine light to create lower worlds is very well accepted in all medieval mystics. So souls that come from Emanation are thought to be "divine" in that they contain the Divine light --with no division between them and God.

[And that is the major character of Atzilut/Emanation].

So being in particular always against Jesus as a general rule has just become too much embedded in one's very identity. 

 

So what I suggest is that religious identity ought to be based on belief in God and the law of Moses, not being against Jesus. I mean to say that religious identity is important, but it ought to be based on true facts

I had a great desire to get into physics when I was young.

I had a great desire to get into physics when I was young. But I had a few obstacles. One was you might say really ridiculous. It was my first year in high school in Algebra. I can not say if I found it hard or not. I really do not recall. But I can recall the a(b+c)= ab+ac which maybe I understood or not. But it did not "click" with me. I decided then and there that I am no genius in math. And if I was no genius then why do it at all? So instead I thought to try to go into doing the violin. There I did better, but I can honesty say that if I had known about the idea of  "girsa" --just saying the words and going on, I think I would have been able to get over the obstacles.

But that was not all. When in elementary school, I walked home from school, and that took 40 minutes. But walking home from high school was an hour plus some, or I could wait for my dad to pick me up at the library. In any case, by the time I got home, I was TIRED. [School from 8:15 to 3:15; then the wait or walk home.

So you can wonder  why I bring this up. The reason is the same obstacles still are before me. Even knowing about "girsa"helps to some degree, but I still find it hard. And the tired aspect is still there. I find it best to do the studying the first thing in the morning, --but when trying to study later after have been running around on different errands, I find I just can not concentrate. 

 

So what I think, (if I can be allowed to extrapolate from myself to others);--I would like to suggest that many people --maybe even most people have an inherent desire to understand the world they live in. They would like to know about atoms and quarks, and strings and galaxies, and all that interesting stuff. But probably find these exact two obstacles. (1) Hard to understand; and (2) hard to sit down and do the learning.

For the first problem, I do want to suggest this idea of "Girsa"--saying the words and going on;-- and believing that even if you do not understand at first, the knowledge still gets absorbed and processed under the surface. The tired aspect, however I do not have any answer for --except that same thing that I said about doing the work right when you get up in the morning. After a strong tea or coffee.

Reason recognizes universals.

I see Kant, Leonard Nelson of the Kant Fries School and Hegel as very important. But I feel that in philosophy the message of the forest gets lost because of the trees. You get get so involved in the small details that the big message is lost.

So I want to explain something that was well known in the Middle Ages but since then forgotten:that Reason recognizes universals. What is a universals? Lets say I have two blank white pieces of paper in front on me. Do they have something in common? Yes. Whiteness. So Whiteness is  a universal. Something that particulars have in common. Do universals exist? If you think so, then you are a realist. There are two kinds of realists. One that holds universals do not depend on particulars, and the other that hold they do. Plato was the first kind. Aristotle, the second.

What are some examples of universals? Numbers, colors, laws of physics. Moral principles are also examples of universals. They are rules that apply to particular situations. Not rules of "must" but rules of "ought". Never the less they are still rules.

Reason can recognize these rules. For that is the function of reason--to see things in common among particulars.

So we get what was fairly well known in the Middle Ages: that reason recognizes moral principles and that Torah is meant to make us aware of moral principles that are objective.

[You can see this more in detail in Professor Michael Huemer's writings.]

[One important point here is that there is no reason to exclude reason from the "synthetic a priori".This original idea came from Hume who held reason can do nothing but locate about contradictions in definitions. He was a teacher of Euclidean Geometry so he got this idea from there. But it is not the case that he showed this to be true. he just asserts it

Gra was right in signing the herem [letter of excommunication]

You can see that the Gra was right in signing the herem [letter of excommunication] in that you see nowadays there is a lot of emphasis on worship of dead people. And also graves of dead people.

That may not be the major reason for the herem, but it certainly is proof that it is correct.

I mean once you see this, there ought to be no question that you are dealing with a cult of idolatry , not Torah.

If you consider that herem to be valid, the result would be vast. For the law of herem is not to have thing to do with the person or people. They can not learn or teach Torah. [Though I consider Rav Nahmna is be OK as he was outside of the strict category that the herem was on.

Furthermore, it is a positive commandment to destroy idolatry and everything that was made for it. So teh fact that the signature of the Gra concerning this issue, means that people are not destroying idolatry when they are able to do so.

[In Israel, it is a positive command to search and destroy. Outside of Israel, only if one encounters it.]

benefits in following the path of the Gra

One of the major benefits in following the path of the Gra is  what you accomplish is "birur" [separation of good from evil]. 

For every area of value there is a equal and opposite area of negative value that mimics true authentic value. And this birur [separation of good from evil]] is hard to accomplish. It is hard to tell the difference between true holiness and what mimics it. So by following the path of the Gra this "birur" is accomplished by simple faith in the wise with needing to go through the difficult process of figuring it out on ones own efforts.

 I am referring to the signature of the Gra on the letter of "Herem". But the issue is not just that the herem has legal validity. It is that it represents an objective reality.

For no one claims the Gra had everything. Rather every person is usually connected to some area of value.  No one thinks the Gra could have written Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, or write the Constitution of the USA. Rather there are people that have a connection with a certain area of value, and a lot of the effort that they need to expend and others is to determine what is the real thing and what is fake. Or sometimes there is a penumbra of positive value area around the center of value that is not evil, but just not as close to the real truth as the center of value.

It is easy to see how it fit into Kelley Ross's theory of value --see "Kant Fries School", but also this can be understood along teh lines of Hegel. [Though to see this in Hegel takes a lot more work. See Cunningham of Hegel who sees the importance of McTaggart,  but also sees how McTaggart missed this part of Hegel.

[Hegel believed in the One true God of Israel and also recognized this process of birur.]

So what ought to be done is to make batei midrash on the name of the Gra. The benefit would be great for those that earn Torah and those that don't. For those that don't the benefit is to know what authentic Torah is even if they find it hard to keep it For those that learn the benefit is all the greater in that just by invoking the name of the Gra, the temptation to look at torah of the dark side is diminished

issue of Jesus

The issue of Jesus is difficult because I think no one gets it right. Or perhaps the Muslims are the closest. But they also I think get it slightly off.

The issue really fits well with the way most sages were thinking in Neo-Platonic terms until the Aristotelian revolution occurred in the 1200's. 

So with all the mystics of the Middle Ages you have this distinction between higher world of Emanation and lower worlds. [Though they will not call it by that name.] 

The problem is loaded vocabulary. Christians say either you believe Jesus equals God; or if not, then you believe he is a "mere man". 

They discount the possibility of someone being not God;-- but also not "mere man".

This comes up in the mystics of the Middle Ages. There are souls of Emanation like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph.

[In short the idea is that of there being higher spiritual worlds. (That would be עולם המלבוש. אדם קדמון, עקודים ,ברודים, נקודים, אצילות, בריאה, יצירה, עשיה.) So souls that have their root in Emanation or above would be thought to be "divine" in that their souls receive from the infinite divine light with no screen. 

And sometimes these souls merit to bring some sort of blessing into the world for the benefit of others as we see with Moses. This kind of approach would apply to Jesus also  being from Foundation [that is the light of Kindness in the vessel of Foundation]

The difference between Emanation [Azilut] is as the name implies the world of Emanation receives the light of God without a screen  ("מסך"). 

And the idea that the sepherot of Azilut (Emanation) are divine is straight from all the mystics of the Middle Ages. And that means that any soul of Azilut (Emanation) would be divine. Not God, but rather an overflow of the light of God.

Learning Torah, not speaking lashon hara, honor of parents

It is good to keep track of what you have done right and wrong. Especially the wrongs. The reason is that help to repent. Personally I have noticed a few areas where I need repentance. But before I mention them I what to say that at first before you have done anything it is hard to know the right path. But after a few years you might noticed that some course of action or path they you choose based on insufficient information is in fact wrong.

So some of the things that I can see I was not sufficiently careful about: (1) learning Torah. [However the meaning of learning Torah is more limited than what most people are aware of.. They think anything written in Hebrew about issues of Torah is Torah. That is not how I define it. To me Torah is limited to the Oral and Written Law. I.e, the two Talmuds and midrashim. [2] Lashon Hara [slander] . [3] Honor of my parents.

Some commentary on this can be considered a part of learning Torah. But nowadays things have gotten way out of hand. [In fact the very definition of Sefarim Hizonim [outside books] is books that explain Torah in ways not directly from the two Talmuds of midrash. That is openly how the Rif and Tosh define it. So math books are not "sefarim hizonim"[outside books] . 

Also it occurs to me that the herem that was signed by the Gra ought to have been heeded just because of "faith in the wise" אמונת חכמים [emunat hachamim]. But also the more so since time has shown him to be 100% correct.