tov ve yafe

You Can't Have it All -Part 1

2012-02-09T15:57:00.000-08:00

תּוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה, עִקְּשֵׁי-לֵב; וּרְצוֹנוֹ, תְּמִימֵי דָרֶךְ.

20. Those who are perverse in heart are an abomination of the Lord, but He desires those who are persistent in their way.

When a chacham commits his energies to some goal or ideal he should understand that choosing this path will exclude him from being able to pursue a different one. For example, someone who is committing himself to a life of learning cannot simultaneously live a life in pursuit of physical pleasure where he is constantly out partying. He must understand that in order to achieve anything he must be willing to abandon certain lifestyles.
However, there exists a fantasy in most of us that we can have it all; we can have the chachma, the party lifestyle, the athlete lifestyle etc… Thus, even when we commit our energies to specific goals, our hearts cause us to stray from them because of this fantasy.

I have learned, that one way of breaking down fantasies is to delve into the fantasy to show why the fantasy is impossible and will only bring unhappiness. The more I review these ideas the weaker the fantasy becomes:

Breaking Down the Fantasy

There are two reasons for why the fantasy can never be realized. The first reason is that some of the paths themselves are mutually exclusive. A person cannot pursue a life of chachma and a life of instant gratification because any intellectual endeavor requires patience and hard work which are incompatible with a life centered on finding immediate pleasure. Achieving the status as the best athlete requires a preoccupation with the body that cannot concurrently exist with a preoccupation with understanding the mind.

The second reason why a person must abandon some lifestyles is that practically a person has limited energy and simply can't do it all. A person needs to decide where to invest his energies and where to withdraw. Otherwise, he will spread himself too thin, never achieving the results that he desires in any area.

Abandoning this Fantasy
One of the the things that makes it difficult to abandon the fantasy that "I can have it all", is the pain a person will experience when he imagines the lifestyle that he must give up. This pain will be magnified because instead of having a realistic perspective on the abandoned lifestyle, a person will only imagine the positive things associated with the lifestyle.
For example, if someone has to decide whether he should give up his pursuit of the "basketball player" lifestyle, he will immediately feel pain because his mind will naturally be drawn to consider the exciting games, the fans cheering, the proud parents that he won't be experiencing. In his mind he will ask himself "how can I bear to give these things up?". At this moment the full days of practices, the hard work, the pain of losing etc. won't come into his mind. Every lifestyle has drawbacks, but a person's imagination completely ignores that.
In other words, the person always has a very distorted imagination of what a lifestyle will be like. But once this person dedicates his life to basketball, he will inevitably experience the pains first hand and will discover that the lifestyle that he has dedicated his life to is not all that what he imagined it to be.
The key is to recognize the negative aspects of lifestyles before experiencing them i.e. when you are thinking about whether to pursue the lifestyle or when you are feeling the pain of letting the lifestyle go. Hopefully, this will let you make a more intelligent decision about where to invest your energies and not to let the conflict that you're fantasies create, cause you to make a wrong decision.

Making Decisions

2012-01-25T12:36:00.000-08:00

One area that I struggle with, is being secure in a decision that I have made. Before making a decision I am indecisive, but the act of deciding will do no good to quell my doubts. I immediately begin feeling that had I made the alternative decision I would have been better off. I change my mind only to discover myself in the same state of doubt.

Jonny Schneeweiss and I came up with 4 strategies for avoiding conflict after a decision has been made:

Strategy 1: Our experiences are shaped by the way we psychologically relate to our decisions. We can either relate to a decision as permanent, one that will be carried through till the end, or as a decision that can be reevaluated and changed at any point. These perspectives applies to all sorts of decisions including schools, careers, spouses etc…
A person who has the perspective that the decision is permanent will approach conflicts or unhappiness with the intention of figuring out how to adapt and thrive given the current circumstances. He will place all his energies on figuring out ways to be happy in the environment that he is in.
A person with the alternative perspective, who relates to the decision as one that can be changed at any time, will not be thinking about adaptation, but rather about the alternatives. His energies will be diverted away from figuring out ways to be happy in his current situation, which will in turn cause him more unhappiness. Not only will he not be adapting to his situation but he will also be placing himself in more conflict because he will begin to foster fantasies associated with the alternative choices.
If I decide that I want to go on the trip I immediately begin fantasizing about sitting in front of a warm fire with my family, cozy, reading my favorite novel. If I decide not to go I immediately imagine all of the exciting adventures that I am missing out on.
If I get married and psychologically relate to it as something that is permanent, then in cases of conflict I will spend my energies on adapting to the situation. However, if I view it as something that I can back out of at any moment my energies will be spent on thinking, “do I really want to be in this kind of marriage? Maybe I could be out single traveling year round!” My energies are not being spent on making myself happier in the situation that I already am in.

The underlying assumption of this strategy is that we can control our attitudes. We can make the conscious decision to approach an experience in a specific way. This is not completely true but we should work on our attitudes to the extent that we can.
In summary: the grass is always greener on the other side. So stop looking at it and focus on dealing with your own grass.

The next three strategies are more relevant for smaller life decisions:

Strategy 2: A person should realize that re evaluating a decision is a painful state in itself. When re-thinking a decision a person should first think; “do I really want to be in this painful state of indecisiveness? Or, can I adapt to the circumstances that I am already in? Most people are only aware of the states that they are deciding about, but are not aware of all the pain they cause themselves through the decision to place themselves in a state of limbo. Really being aware of that painful experience in its own right can help a person change his mind less often after having made a decision. This sounds like it could lead to an infinite regress but in practice a person will find that this can be an effective strategy particularly for minor decisions.

Strategy 3: Oftentimes the consequences of the decision are not that significant. One thing that helps settle the mind is mentally focusing on what things will be like after the consequences of the decision have worn off. A person will sometimes find that its not even worth worrying about the decision since the indecisiveness brings more conflict than anything else.
When I am torn about what food I should have for dinner, stuck with many desirable choices in front of me, I can remember that in thirty minutes I will be full and my decision won’t have mattered any more. When I am torn about whether I should go on a trip or not I remind myself that it won’t really matter as soon as the trip is over. Yes I will have different experiences depending on my choices, but how significant will these experiences be? Will it really matter?
This does not mean that one shouldn’t think about the consequences of minor decisions. But keep them in perspective.

Strategy 4: Practice with smaller decisions. In situations where the consequences are not so great, it sometimes pays just to force oneself to stick to the decision that one has already made. Make it a habit to stick through a decision and this will help you acquire a peace of mind after you’ve made a decision.

Tricks of the Yetzer Hara

2012-01-20T03:11:00.000-08:00

these ideas are based on a shiur given by Rabbi Markowitz

Mishlei Chapter 7 Verses 6-18
6. For from the window of my house, through my lattice I gazed,
7. and I saw among the simple-I discerned among the youths-a lad devoid of
sense,
8. crossing the street next to her corner, and he walks on the way to her house.
9. In the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the pitch darkness of the night.
10. And behold a woman [was coming] toward him, the nakedness of a harlot
with her heart besieged.
11. She is bustling and rebellious; her feet do not dwell in her house.
12. Sometimes [she is] in the street, sometimes in the squares, and she lurks at
every corner.
13. She takes hold of him and kisses him; brazenly she says to him,
14. "I had to bring peace-offerings; today I paid my vows.
15. Therefore, I have come out toward you to look for you, and I have found you.
16. I have bedecked my couch with covers, with superior braided work of Egypt.
17. I fanned my couch with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
18. Come, let us take our fill of lovemaking until morning; let us enjoy ourselves
with amorous embraces.

These Pesukim outline three ways in which we get seduced by our yetzer hara:
1) Linking a good action to the bad action that the emotions desire to do. The woman seducing the simpleton tells him: “I had to bring peace offerings; today I paid my vows”. By tying an evil action to a mitzvah he is able to rationalize away any guilt that he may feel. He acquires a feeling of righteousness which causes his conscience to give him more leeway to do what he desires.
For example, in college settings people often say to themselves: “I worked hard today and did a lot of good. I’ll just give myself this one small reward”. They will then go and completely give in to their temptations.
2) Making an action more sophisticated can tie it to a more elaborate fantasy and it brings a person away from what the action really is. The woman in the pesukim tells him: “I have bedecked my couch with covers, with superior braided work of Egypt. I fanned my couch with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon”. We often masquerade base pleasures to convince ourselves that we are really involved in something that is not as bad.
Here’s an example. Most people would feel guilty about mugging someone on the street. Yet, when salespeople deceive their customers about their products they are also stealing from them. But since the action can be masqueraded as “I’m just doing my job of being a good salesman” they do not feel the guilt associated with stealing.
3) Falling into a desire by giving in to it in a small way. The woman in the pasuk begins by kissing him, a seemingly minor and unimportant show of intimacy. But the “unimportant experience” diminishes the severity of the action in one’s mind. He begins viewing it as the norm. Slowly, this norm will shift as he begins to give in more to the emotion.
For example, taking a paper clip seems harmless. So the emotions will build on that. Once the person is able to excuse the minor infraction its just a matter of degree.

If your not constantly involved in chachma then the yetzer hara will just appear and pull you without you even realizing it. A person really feels like he is in control of his behavior but often the desires take hold, and are really the ones in control.

The only thing you can do is be involved in chochma and that will provide you more control over your psyche. It will train you to detect when your yetzer hara is influencing you and will let you develop strategies to avoid its pitfalls.

Money

2011-12-28T22:41:00.000-08:00

Mishlei Chapter 11 Verse 18:
רָשָׁע--עֹשֶׂה פְעֻלַּת-שָׁקֶר; וְזֹרֵעַ צְדָקָה, שֶׂכֶר אֱמֶת
A wicked man earns false wages, but he who plants charity [receives] a true reward.

There are two types of fantasies regarding money.
1) The fantasy of the ego; an attachment to the power and greatness that can be achieved through a person's wealth.
2) The fantasy of pleasure; the belief that the money will afford the person unlimited pleasure.
A person steeped in either fantasy will never be satisfied by his money because he will never be able to achieve either fantasy. The irony is that the wicked person places so much importance to money and its power that in the end the money will be worthless to him.

The person who gives charity, and is able to part with his money, distances himself from either fantasy and instead relates to it in a practical way. He is able to view the money not just as a an object for obtaining his next yacht but also as an object for obtaining necessities in life (as the person taking the charity relates to it). By downplaying its importance (in the fantasy framework) he is able to appreciate it for what its true worth is.

Making Mistakes

2011-12-28T00:52:00.001-08:00

יג בְּפֶשַׁע שְׂפָתַיִם, מוֹקֵשׁ רָע; וַיֵּצֵא מִצָּרָה צַדִּיק.
13. Because of the transgression of the lips there is an evil snare, but the righteous comes out of trouble.

Everyone occasionally is negligent in their speech, and speaks in ways that could cause conflict; however the tzadik and the ish rah will respond differently to their mistakes. The ish rah does not want to admit his mistake so he stands by what he said, ignoring the possible conflicts that it may cause in his relationship with others as long as his ego remains intact. He views social interactions as a competition, where making and admitting a mistake is equivalent to losing. The tzadik does not view social interactions as competitions or ego battles, and will be able to admit and address (apologize for) his mistake, successfully avoiding possible conflicts

It's All About How You Chase

2011-11-18T10:41:00.000-08:00

Mishlei Chapter 12 Verse 11
יא עֹבֵד אַדְמָתוֹ, יִשְׂבַּע-לָחֶם; וּמְרַדֵּף רֵיקִים חֲסַר-לֵב.
11. He who tills his soil will be sated with bread, but he who pursues empty things is devoid of sense.

A person who has an understanding of systems and knows how to apply principles to the particulars of his life situation, will be able to discern which pursuits are worth his diligence and hard work and which ones are fantasies that will not bring him satisfaction. Thus, he will till the soil for bread because 1) he realized that tilling the soil is the only way to get bread 2) he understands that bread will give him satisfaction. However, a person who does not have understanding of underlying principle will not be able to distinguish between pursuits that can be fulfilling and those that cannot(fantasies). He will be a rodef, always chasing some new fantasy(possibly with equal diligence as the man of understanding), but always either coming up feeling empty and unsatisfied (if its a fantasy) or being unable to come up with a rational plan to achieve his goal(if it happens to be a worthwhile pursuit).

Deceit, Justice, and Self Worth

2011-09-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Chapter 12-5
מַחְשְׁבוֹת צַדִּיקִים מִשְׁפָּט תַּחְבֻּלוֹת רְשָׁעִים מִרְמָה:

The thoughts of the righteous are justice; the devices of the wicked are deceit.

When the wicked person performs actions of deceit in order to circumvent a system; whether it is cheating on an exam or lying to his peer, he is setting himself in a default perspective where his mind is naturally drawn to deception against the system as opposed to succeeding within a system. Underlying this perspective is the principle that “I cannot succeed if I follow the operating principles of the world; I need to sneak my way to success”. Not only will he get the consequences associated with cheating, but he will also become blind to simple opportunities available to him that require acting in line with some system. The person who performs acts of justice however, learns to live and succeed within a system and develops a perspective governed by the thought, “I can succeed if I follow the principles of the system in which I am in”.

Mishlei and Talmud Torah

2011-06-28T18:57:00.000-07:00

Introduction

For the past few years I have been involved in studying the book of Mishlei, written by Shlomo HaMelech. The approach that I have undertaken (influenced by Rabbi Moskowitz), and that is shared by at least some of the mepharshim (ex Rabbeinu Yona, Saadya Gaon), is one that seems “non religious” in many ways. When I am learning a pasuk with my chavruta, we do not refer to God, Malchus Shamayim, or hashgacha pratit in any of our explanations. We study mishlei in a way that could be completely consistent with denying every single one of the Rambam’s thirteen principles of faith. And yet, when I sit down to learn Mishlei I am involving myself in Talmud Torah. I am taking part of the system of Torah which is bringing me closer to perfection.

The aim of this post is to answer two questions:
Q1) What is the study of Mishlei (as I have been taught to study it)?
Q2) What exactly is the study of mishlei meant to accomplish? In what way is it Talmud Torah if it does not incorporate any of the ikkarim?

What is the Book of Mishlei?
Mishlei is a book for beginners. It addresses itself to the non-religious man who is preoccupied with his own self-centered existence. His whole reality is his daled amot and his value system is defined by his personal feelings. The good is that which brings him pleasure and the evil is that which causes him pain. Thus, every decision he makes is centered on this endeavor: to maximize his own pleasure while minimizing his own pain. The book of mishlei addresses such a person and does so in the person’s own framework.

As an example, consider pesukim 21-22 in Chapter 25; “if your enemy is hungry, feed him bread, and if he is thirsty, give him water, for you will be scooping coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”

These pesukim are giving advice on how to take revenge! They address the self centered, egotistical, and envious man who desires to cause another person harm. It gives the person a strategy for fulfilling a very animalistic desire.
Many pesukim do a similar thing. They give strategies for achieving honor, power, and wealth, things that would not strike us as “noble pursuits”. In other words, Mishlei addresses itself to the “lowly” and egotistical part of man and giving it strategy on how to get what it wants.

However, in addressing this part of man Mishlei always gives a strategy. It points out specific painful consequences to following one’s immediate urges. It points out benefits and future pleasures of actions that the emotions are resistant to.
It does so with allegories and metaphors which serve the imagination. These metaphors cater towards the animalistic part of man that may not necessarily be affected by an abstract idea of causation but is affected by vivid imagery. Christianity has shown that people are not affected by the abstract principle of a “virtuous life”. But an imagery of a fiery hell of eternal burning for not living one will affect how they make their decisions.

As a person begins to experience the benefits of thinking about consequences he will become more attached to the thinking lifestyle. He will see that when he followed the strategy of mishlei he was able to take revenge in a way that did not come back to harm him. He saved his friendships by recognizing the needs of the other person. Although the ends that he is pursuing are the same ends he has always pursued, he will begin to learn to step outside of his default perspective. He begins to recognize that his desire for immediate gratification and avoidance of immediate pain can come to hurt him in the long run. Most importantly, he learns to make decisions not based on how he wants the world to work, but rather on how it actually works. The act of emotionally realizing the distinction between the two is a big step forward in a person’s development. He begins to zoom out and to see himself in the context of a system of laws from which he is not exempt. He begins to see that his desires do not dictate reality. Rather, he must take reality into account and evaluate the consequences of his decisions.
All these ideas are not conceptually difficult and perfectly clear in the abstract to every person. But the key is to internalize them, to make them part of who you are. Mishlei does not address itself to the mind but rather to the animalistic part of man that only knows that which brings it pleasure.

The benefits of Mishlei can also be characterized as providing behavioral training, positively reinforcing a type of behavior:
The behavior: thinking of future consequences and planning accordingly
The reinforcement: either 1) the actual consequences which mishlei warns about 2) the imagery conjured in the imagination through the mashalim.
For example the image of scooping coals on an enemy’s back is one that will surely delight the psyche. This image will also reinforce the behavior of taking into account future consequences. Like an animal that changes its behavior given sufficient reinforcement, the animalistic part in us changes the way it makes us make decisions.

Mishlei as Part of the System of Torah
Consider how Shlomo Hamelech introduces his book:

"The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know wisdom and discipline, to comprehend words of understanding; To receive the discipline of wisdom, righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise man hear and increase learning. The understanding man shall acquire wise counsels to understand an allegory and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddle. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline. Hearken, my son, to the discipline of your father, and do not forsake the instruction of your mother"
-Mishlei Chapter 1 Verses 1-8

The person of Mishlei acquires a discipline of behavior that is specifically guided by wisdom. Although he began his journey through mishlei with a completely self centered perspective, he will begin to feel himself as part of a universal order. He will not be like the fool who despises wisdom and discipline, who refuses to shift away from a self centered perspective. Instead, his perspective will shift and he will begin to feel himself as not the center of a world that revolves around his wishes. He will see himself as part of a greater reality.

Consider the Rambam’s discussion of Yirat Hashem:

א האל הנכבד והנורא הזה--מצוה לאוהבו וליראה ממנו, שנאמר "ואהבת, את ה' אלוהיך" (דברים ו,ה; דברים יא,א) תירא" (דברים ו,יג; דברים י,כ). [ב] והיאך היא הדרך לאהבתו, ויראתו: בשעה שיתבונן האדם במעשיו וברואיו הנפלאים הגדולים, ויראה מהם חכמתו שאין לה ערך ולא קץ--מיד הוא אוהב ומשבח ומפאר ומתאווה תאווה גדולה לידע השם הגדול, כמו שאמר דויד "צמאה נפשי, לאלוהים--לאל חי" (תהילים מב,ג).
ב וכשמחשב בדברים האלו עצמן, מיד הוא נרתע לאחוריו, ויירא ויפחד ויידע שהוא בריה קטנה שפלה אפלה, עומד בדעת ונאמר "את ה' אלוהיךקלה מעוטה לפני תמים דעות, כמו שאמר דויד "כי אראה שמיך . . . מה אנוש, כי תזכרנו" (תהילים ח,ד-ה).

Halacha 1
"It is a mitzvah to love and fear this glorious and awesome God, as [Deuteronomy 6:5] states: "And you shall love God, your Lord" and, as [Deuteronomy 6:13] states: "Fear God, your Lord." What is the path [to attain] love and fear of Him? When a person contemplates His wondrous and great deeds and creations and appreciates His infinite wisdom that surpasses all comparison, he will immediately love, praise, and glorify [Him], yearning with tremendous desire to know [God's] great name, as David stated: "My soul thirsts for the Lord, for the living God" [Psalms 42:3].
When he [continues] to reflect on these same matters, he will immediately recoil in awe and fear, appreciating how he is a tiny, lowly, and dark creature, standing with his flimsy, limited, wisdom before He who is of perfect knowledge, as David stated: "When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers... [I wonder] what is man that You should recall Him" [Psalms 8:4-5]."

Someone who reads the first pesukim of Mishlei- The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and the Rambam’s writings will be bothered by a question. In Mishlei it states that the fear of god is the first step towards knowledge and understanding. Yet, from the description of the Rambam, fear of God seems to be the cultivation of a long process of contemplation and development! So is fear of God the beginning or end of a process?

I would suggest that Yirat Hashem is both a prerequisite and a cultivation of the process of knowledge of God. Before a person is ready to relate to God, malchus shamayim or God’s hashgacha he must make room; he must first feel as part of a universal order before engaging in the study of what that order is. He needs to get out of a self centered framework which is the framework we all have by default. If he doesn’t, he will inevitably fall towards avoda zara, adopting beliefs and making decisions that reflect his animalistic nature rather then the reality of the universe. The study of Mishlei will bring a person to the proper state of mind where he is ready to engage in more advanced talmud torah i.e. the study of the nature of God’s universal order. Mishlei cannot bring a person to the state that the Rambam describes. However it does prepare a person for it. It is the book for beginners like me.

Chachma and the Life of Pleasure

2011-06-24T14:37:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Chapter 17 Verse 16
טז לָמָּה-זֶּה מְחִיר בְּיַד-כְּסִיל-- לִקְנוֹת חָכְמָה וְלֶב-אָיִן
16. Why is there a price in the fool's hand to buy wisdom, when the heart is not here (when he will surely fail)?

A ksil is someone who is attached to the world of the immediate physical pleasure. He is so attached to the physical that even if he sees some value in chachma and has a desire to aquire it, he will be unable to because to do so he must give up on (and mechir) a life of immediate gratification. Although the life of chachma does provide a more pleasurable life, the ksil will not have the strength of will to give up the immediate pleasure. Only when he stops viewing the acquisition of chachma as a trade (a mechir) in which he is making a sacrifice, will he be in a position to aquire chachma.

Last Lecture

2011-06-01T19:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Be selfish- Repay Others with Good

2011-05-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Chapter 17 Verse 13

יג מֵשִׁיב רָעָה, תַּחַת טוֹבָה-- לֹא-תמיש (תָמוּשׁ) רָעָה, מִבֵּיתוֹ
13. He who repays evil for good-evil will not depart from his house.

here is my summary for this pasuk:
When one person does good to another, an implicit obligation is formed for the second person to aknowledge the good that was done to him by doing good back. Most of the time people do not do good lishmah, deriving complete enjoyment from the act itself, but rather they rely on this implicit principle and expect some form of aknowledgement or repayment for the good that they have done. This is true of all kinds of relationships even ones that occur within a household (between husband and wife etc…). Someone who ignores this implicit obligation is living by the principle that good is owed to him and that he owes nothing in return. This behavior will have four distinct consequences:
1) People will have a natural resentment for the person because they did not receive the aknowledgement they felt that they deserved. This will put a strain on the relationship
2) People will not do good for him because they will lack the motivation to do so
3) Because of the principle (that everything is owed to him and that he owes people nothing) that the person operates on, he will be frustrated when he has to do things for others. In a system (such as a family) that relies on people doing things for eachother all the time, the person will constantly be in conflict because he feels that everything should be done for him.
4) because he is not in a habit of doing things for others, his family life will fall apart.

here is an alternative summary written by my chavruta
For whatever reason, people expect recompense for the good they do for others; for this reason, one who repays good with evil is abhorred by all. The person who routinely repays good with evil is exceedingly egotistical; he believes that he is entitled to be the recipient of good from others, but he doesn’t owe them anything, and may treat them however he pleases – as though they are nothing but objects in his possession. As a direct consequence of this severe character flaw, such an individual will be continually plagued by evil in four ways:
(1) people will hate him and resent him;
(2) people will not want to do good for him, since they know they’ll only get evil in return;
(3) his egotistical feeling of entitlement will cause him to be remiss in his duties towards the members of his household, and as a consequence, the household as a whole will deteriorate and suffer – with him included;
(4) his egotism will generate excessive and unrealistic expectations of how others should relate to him, and these unfulfilled expectations will breed perpetual dissatisfaction and conflict.

A bear and a fool are sitting at a bar....

2011-05-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

Mishlei- Chapter 17 Verse 12
פָּגוֹשׁ דֹּב שַׁכּוּל בְּאִישׁ; וְאַל-כְּסִיל, בְּאִוַּלְתּוֹ
12. May a bereaving bear encounter a person rather than a fool with his folly

here is my summary for this pasuk

A lowlife fool, like a bereaving bear, can get easily enraged and get in an aggressive state of mind and can do so from a wide variety of factors (ex: road rage, bar fights, insults at the presidential dinners). The difference however, which can make a fool more dangerous than a bear, is that while the threat that the bear poses you is transparent (the size of him, his claws) it is easy to underestimate the harm that a fool can cause you because it is never directly apparent. A fool can hurt you in many more ways than a bear can, and in ways which it will be much harder to predict (ex: talk behind your back, take revenge, take you to court etc...) Thus, one must be careful when dealing with people because 1) he is in danger of underestimating the threat that angry fools can pose 2) there are a wide variety of factors that can upset a fool 3) there are a wide variety of ways in which a fool can hurt you.

here is an alternative (more elaborate)summary written by my chavruta:

The bear bereft of its cubs is in a state of instinctual, thinking, animalistic rage; the same is true of the fool who feels threatened or provoked. The difference is the bear has a very narrow range of activity; therefore, it is relatively easy to anticipate what he might do, and to take the necessary precautions. A fool, on the other hand, has a wide variety of retaliatory actions at his disposal, and will do just about anything to get his revenge; thus, it is very difficult to take precautions against this. For this reason, a person should avoid provoking fools, and steer clear of fools who have already been provoked.

A bear bereft of its cubs is very dangerous, but the danger level is clear to any observer. A fool who has been provoked or threatened is even more dangerous than the bear, since he can bring about harm in a wide variety of ways. However, it is easy to underestimate the danger level of a fool, and it is also easy to feel that you have more control over the fool than you actually do. For these reasons in particular, a person should be very wary when dealing with an angry fool and strive to avoid him at all costs.

A Harsh Reality of Friendships

2011-05-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Summary Chapter 19 Verse 6-7

ו רַבִּים, יְחַלּוּ פְנֵי-נָדִיב; וְכָל-הָרֵעַ, לְאִישׁ מַתָּן. 
ז כָּל אֲחֵי-רָשׁ, שְׂנֵאֻהוּ-- אַף כִּי מְרֵעֵהוּ, רָחֲקוּ מִמֶּנּוּ;

6. The great will beg the favor of a generous man, and everyone is a friend to a
man who gives gifts.
7. All the kinsmen of a poor man hate him; surely his friends distance themselves
from him; he pursues statements that are fit for him.

Here are two summaries describing the ideas of these pesukim. The first is my own, while the second was written by my chavruta.

a) The relationships and friendships that we have with people is very (more so than we realize) dependant on our circumstances. The man who is rich, or in a fortunate situation, will have many people turning to him, who will try to get favors from him (utilize him) and will identify with him based on his circumstances. On the other hand a person who becomes poor will even lose his brothers who will hate him in an effort to break the identification. Even if he tries to appeal to their friendship and tries to keep the friendship based on their identification of personalities, it will not be enough to keep his friends from distancing themselves, partially for the reason that the friends will begin to fear that the friendship will be based on the poor person utilizing the friendship for financial help.
However, the fact that our friendships is very dependant on circumstances, does not mean that the friendship is not real.

b) The vast majority of friendships are based on identification and utility. When a man becomes rich, people will seek to establish relationships with him – either because they want to use him, or because they identify with the fantasy he represents and are attracted to him on that basis. Likewise, when a man becomes poor or suffers from some other debilitating condition, even his brothers and friends will seek to break their relationship with him – either because their identification causes them to suffer when they see him in this condition, or because it brings to mind the fact that the same suffering might befall them, or because of the possibility that the relationship will now come with a cost that they are not willing to pay. Ultimately, such relationships have little or nothing to do with the person’s intrinsic qualities, but are entirely dependent on these extrinsic conditions, and will be made or broken on these factors alone.

Wasting Time

2011-04-24T15:41:00.000-07:00

"No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigalAnd so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: "I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count. Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!"

-Seneca-

Don’t Involve Other People’s Ego’s

2010-12-19T20:33:00.000-08:00

Mishlei Chapter 11 Verse 12
יב בָּז-לְרֵעֵהוּ חֲסַר-לֵב; וְאִישׁ תְּבוּנוֹת יַחֲרִישׁ.

Someone who scorns others lacks understanding of the fact that when you scorn someone (expressing contempt to the person), you are attacking his ego. From then on, your relationship with the person will be defined by your “battle of egos” even in matters which should be treated objectively. The person of understanding, will be silent in order to avoid “activating” the other person’s ego and will thus be able to interact with the person in a way that is focused on the objective goal of the interaction, instead of both people trying to assert their own ego’s.

here is an alternate summary
The “man of understanding” is someone who apprehends the underlying principles of causality in a given situation. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, the man of understanding will refrain from expressing scorn. He understands the capacity for scorn to transform an otherwise neutral matter into a battlefield for a power struggle between egos. This shift from practicality to competition will open the gates to a number of unwanted consequences – all of which could have been prevented by merely keeping silent.

You Don't Matter

2010-12-10T10:39:00.000-08:00

Kohelet Chapter 7, Verse 10
י אַל-תֹּאמַר, מֶה הָיָה--שֶׁהַיָּמִים הָרִאשֹׁנִים, הָיוּ טוֹבִים מֵאֵלֶּה: כִּי לֹא מֵחָכְמָה, שָׁאַלְתָּ עַל-זֶה.

10. Do not say, "How was it that the former days were better than these?" For not out of wisdom have you asked concerning this.

• People, with their self centered perspective, do not want to recognize themselves as subject to chance or circumstances. If they have different circumstances from previous generations they attribute it to some intrinsic difference between times, believing that the former days were intrinsically better than the days today. However, they do not realize that the world operates lawfully with patterns and cycles which include better periods of time and worse periods of time and that do not change their cycles because of the individual’s feeling of absolute self importance.

The Speaker Not the Speech

2010-10-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Chapter 17 Verse 7
ז לֹא-נָאוָה לְנָבָל שְׂפַת-יֶתֶר; אַף, כִּי-לְנָדִיב שְׂפַת-שָׁקֶר
Lofty speech is unbecoming (unbefitting) for a scoundrel (low life), and surely lips of lies in a noble

When hearing speech and evaluating it, we are much more influenced by who the speaker is than by the content of the speech. No one expects a low life to produce lofty speech, and therefore no one will listen for it. Even more so, no one expects a leader to speak lies and no one will question the leaders words. Because of this, it will be easy for people to get hurt by blindly believing the words of the people they look up to, and to blindly ignore words of wisdom or benefit from the people that they look down upon.

here is an alternate summary for this pasuk:

Listen to Words, Not to People
People evaluate speech based on the persona of the speaker, rather than the content of the speech. Consequently, they will miss out on valuable insight uttered by a lowlife, and they will be oblivious to the lies of a noble. The wise man will guard against this natural tendency. He will not be influenced by the authority of the speaker, but instead, will “accept the truth from whoever says it.”

The Danger of Bribing

2010-10-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Chapter 17 Verse 8:
ח אֶבֶן-חֵן הַשֹּׁחַד, בְּעֵינֵי בְעָלָיו; אֶל-כָּל-אֲשֶׁר יִפְנֶה יַשְׂכִּיל.
bribe is a charming gem in the eyes of its owner; wherever he turns he will succeed.

When a person makes a bribe he not only becomes attached to the utility that he gains from the bribe, but also to the bribe itself as an object of power. He begins to view the bribe as a source of power, a gem in its own right, that can solve any of his problems. He will lose his perception of the workings of the system to which he is subject to, and instead will believe that he can manipulate the system according to his will. In his overestimation of his powers he will make decisions that will overall bring him more pain and suffering than the pain he would have experienced if he had not made the bribe.

here is an alternative summary written by my chavruta:

When a bribe is effective, it allows a person to circumvent the system by which he is bound and avoid undesirable consequences. It does this by blinding the recipient to the binding nature of the system. Ironically, the bribe-giver can easily become charmed and blinded by his own bribe – charmed into thinking he can succeed wherever he turns, and blinded by his true chances of success. Ultimately, a bribe-giver will fall prey to the same types of consequences he seeks to avoid.

Actions lead to Fantasies

2010-09-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Chapter17 Verse 4

מֵרַע, מַקְשִׁיב עַל-שְׂפַת-אָוֶן; שֶׁקֶר מֵזִין, עַל-לְשׁוֹן הַוֹּת.

Here are two summaries for this pasuk. The second one was written by my chavruta.

Summary 1) It is impossible to do an action of evil or an action of falsehood without getting caught up in the respective fantasies. The fantasy of the doer of evil is to break down the order of society/reality. That fantasy will also manifest itself in the desire to hear actions of injustice. The fantasy of the person who has committed an action of falsehood is the fantasy of destroying or usurping reality. It will manifest in his desire to hear stories of destruction. Even if someone does an action of evil or action of falsehood for some other reason, he will get himself caught up in one of these two fantasies.

Summary 2) When a person does evil or lies, not only is he giving into the particular emotion which causes him to act, but he is also giving into a greater underlying fantasy. The guy who does evil is giving into a fantasy of being the lawless individual - someone who is not bound by any system or order. The guy who lies is giving into the fantasy of the destroyer - the person who can annihilate reality at will. The fact that each individual listens attentively to speech which is in line with those fantasies Tis proof that he is attracted to that fantasy.

Breaking False identities

2010-09-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

עֶבֶד-מַשְׂכִּיל--יִמְשֹׁל, בְּבֵן מֵבִישׁ; וּבְתוֹךְ אַחִים, יַחֲלֹק נַחֲלָה.

The pasuk tells you that you should evaluate any identity imposed on you to see whether it is real and whether you can overcome it. In this pasuk, the slave does not let his societal status and identity as a slave hold him back, and uses his mind to gain a part in the inheritance. On the other hand, the embarrassing son is caught up in his identity as a son who is the rightful heir, and ends up losing the inheritance due to the “embarrassing” nature of his action. This can be partially attributed to his foolish security in that imposed identity.

here is an alternate summary written by my chavruta

The Confines of Identity

Never allow your identity to dictate your destiny. Strive to see past the labels you impose upon yourself, or which are imposed upon you by society. Consult your mind to determine your true strengths and weaknesses, and your potential for both success and failure. Even a lowly but intelligent slave can earn his stake in the family estate, whereas the title of "son" will provide no guarantee for the lazy bum.

Security- the chacham and the fool

2010-09-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

From now on I will post a lot of my mishlei posts as 1 to 3 sentence summaries of the main idea. The sentence limit really forces me to be concise and to get down to the essential ideas of the pasuk. This pasuk is my first attempt. Thank you Matt Schneeweiss for showing me this exercise!

טז חָכָם יָרֵא, וְסָר מֵרָע; וּכְסִיל, מִתְעַבֵּר וּבוֹטֵחַ
"the chacham is fearful and turns away from evil, while the fool causes himself to get angry, and is overconfident"

Main Idea
This pasuk identifies how both the chacham and the fool search for security. The fool, searching for the feeling of security, retreats into his fantasies of controlling reality and becomes overconfident when things are in line with these fantasies but ultimately suffers consequences and anger when reality does not go according to his wishes. The chacham's source of security is from the knowledge that he is not in control of reality and from the appropriate measures that he takes to protect himself from harm.

This summary is still a work in progress so it is likely that I might go back and revise it.

Balance

2010-06-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

Summer Plans
dealing with; facades, proper breathing, fantasies, flow of chi, guilt complexes, shoulder recovery, conflicting influences, being outdoors,thinking, decision making, being physically active without injuring myself,figuring out long term plans,setting more ambitious goals for myself.

Baishan Lo Lomed

2010-06-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

This post is based on a shiur given by Rabbi Markowitz. It will be concise and more in note form than as a written out essay.

Rambam Talmud Torah Chapter 4
Halacha 2
How is [Torah] taught? The teacher sits at the head and the students sit around him, so that all can see the teacher and hear his words.
The teacher should not sit on a chair, [while] his students [sit] on the ground. Rather, either everyone should sit on the ground or everyone should sit on chairs.
Originally, the teacher would sit and the students would stand. [However,] before the destruction of the Second Temple, everyone followed the practice of teaching while both they and the students were seated.
Halacha 4
If the teacher taught [a concept] and it was not grasped by the students, he should not become upset with them and display anger. Rather, he should repeat and review the matter, even if he must do so many times, until they appreciate the depth of the halachah.
Similarly, the student should not say "I understood" when he did not understand. Rather, he should ask again and again, even if he requires several repetitions. If his teacher becomes upset with him and displays anger, he should tell him: "My teacher, this is Torah. It is necessary that I study, and my powers of comprehension are weak."
Halacha 5
A student should not be embarrassed because his colleagues grasped the subject matter the first or second time, while he did not understand it until it was repeated a number of times. If he becomes embarrassed because of such matters, he will find himself going in and out of the house of study without learning anything.
Accordingly, the Sages of the previous generations stated: "A bashful person will not learn, nor should the short-tempered teach.

Question:It sounds like a bashful student will not learn only if he is slow to understand. What if he is not slow to understand? In other words is the consequence automatic or only when it is combined with being slower than others?

Approach: Any sort of pressure that is placed on a person prevents that person from acquiring true education. Education under pressure is not education. These pressures can be unconscious making it very difficult for the student to accurately assess whether he truly grasped the ideas or not. Like in any other area, the mind sees most clearly when there are no conflicting interests (pressures, insecurities, desires) in this area.

Here we can outline two pressures that prevent a person from learning.
Pressure 1 Authority: Someone who has a powerful air to him has an affect on people, where they shut off their minds and listen to the message not because of the message but because of who the person is. The presence of the authority itself places a pressure on the student.
Halacha 2 is meant to combat this pressure. The rav is not allowed to tower over the students and the students are even allowed to stand over the rav! Limiting the feeling of the rav's authority in the students can be very helpful in making the student comfortable enough to be able to ask questions.

Pressure 2 Bashfulness: If a person is bashful, worried about an image or a facade of being intelligent (in math for example) then he will not even be able to accurately examine whether he understands an idea or not. Rather, because he has such a strong desire to understand the idea (because understanding it implies something about how smart he is) he will fool himself to believe that he actually understands it.
Other times this bashfulness can express itself in particular situations.
For example, many students (me) learn better in a small classroom environment then in a large auditorium. That is because there is an additional fear in the student that he will embarrass himself in front of two hundred people. The student becomes self conscious which itself is a pressure and prevents learning. However, in a small classroom the student can feel like he is speaking one on one with the teacher. Unless the student is worried about his image in front of the teacher he will not have pressures preventing him from learning. Sometimes a person is afraid to ask a question because he projects onto the Rav deciding that the Rav will think that he is an idiot. But he should realize that the Rav is more learned than he is and is aware of this idea that a bashful person cannot learn.

Halachot 4 and 5 address this area. It demands from the teacher that he create as pressure free of an environment as he can. It demands from the student that regardless of how stupid the question, the student ask until the materiel is perfectly clear to him. Curiously, if the teacher gets angry the student must respond: "My teacher, this is Torah. It is necessary that I study, and my powers of comprehension are weak."
This seems like a difficult response for someone who is grappling with a facade of looking intelligent. But that is precisely what the halacha demands. It demands that the student confront the very fear that is preventing him from learning. The student must evaluate and decide what the goal of his learning is. Is it to seem smart or is it to learn? While a student should force himself to ask any question he should also evaluate what makes him hesitant to ask the question. Once he establishes the reasons for his reluctance the causes of the reluctance will become much weaker. The person will see that he is holding himself back from a lot of learning simply because he is chasing some fantasy or facade.

Who You Are (still might need editing)

2010-05-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Chapter 16 Verse 25
יֵשׁ דֶּרֶךְ יָשָׁר, לִפְנֵי-אִישׁ; וְאַחֲרִיתָהּ, דַּרְכֵי-מָוֶת

Questions:
1)What does it mean that man has a straight path? What kind of path is this?
2)Why does the pasuk say multiple paths of death? Does it mean death in a literal sense or in some other way?
3)Is this straight path, the only path available to man? Meaning, is the consequence inevitable or is man making a mistake choosing the straight path? (hint: Mishlei never talks about inevitabilities only about what is in the power of man to change)

First Associations
The first association that comes to mind when reading this pasuk is of a man actually walking down a path! Maybe he is walking through the dark forest and he sees a path that seems to take him straight to where he wants to go. But this straight path is deceptive and hungry wild animals are waiting by the various path which this straight road directly lead to.

First Observation
It seems that once man makes the decision to take this straight (direct) path he will be much less in a position to turn around later. Once he takes this path chances are that he will continue to going on it and he will not turn around.

First Move
What makes a path direct? Well, that depends on where a person is trying to go. Just like there are different direct paths to the grocery store or to school, there are different paths to becoming a lawyer or a doctor. Therefore, a path is direct if there is a destination that it is direct to. The path that this pasuk is talking about is not a physical path but a path in life. It is some goal that a person decides that he wants to pursue. In other words man
a) has some goal he is pursuing
b) he wants to take the most direct path
c) but Mishlei tells us that for some reason this direct path is not the best path because it will lead to paths of death.

Why? There seem to be two possibilities:
1)The destination is not a good one. Meaning that the goal that the person is aiming for is not good.
2)The path itself is not good. Had he chosen some other path, man would reach his destination unscathed.

Because this pasuk seems to focus on the choice of path (the direct one) the second possibility seems more likely.

Paths of death
Why does the pasuk not simply say path of death? Because the pasuk is not talking about a particular consequence. Rather, the pasuk is outlining a lifestyle which your initial choice will lead you to.

By way of example...
What is the lifestyle of the best actor? An actor is not just wealthy and gets to act in the best movies. He is also extremely famous and is adored by millions of people. He is also stalked by millions of people. He also never has a moment of privacy in his life. He also has millions of woman throwing themselves at him, eventually making him give in to one of them(reference:Tiger Woods) and thus destroying his family. He also get to go to the fanciest nightclubs where all his peers are snorting coke. He needs to escape so he decides to join etc...

Darchei Mavet
In other words when people evaluate decisions they only evaluate the direct consequence of their actions. In the example above, somebody can just really have the desire to make a good living. Being part of Hollywood can naturally and directly (if you're a good actor) bring about that result. However, he must evaluate the lifestyle consequences that his decisions will bring about. Someone who is thinking about becoming an actor must decide whether he wants to get himself involved in all those aspects of the Hollywood life as well as the direct results of his actions. The Hollywood case is a great example of making the mistake that pasuk warns against (taking the direct path without evaluating lifestyle consequences), and the awful consequences of making this mistake (Tiger Woods?).

But...
Is it inevitable that an actor will be snorting coke? Okay bad example, is it inevitable that actors will end up like Paris Hilton? No. After all, those actors have made a choice to do coke or cheat on their wives. Those actors have no moral values or decency. Most aspiring actors read the papers and are aware of all the facets of real actor's lifestyles. Take for example Billy. Billy comes from a good home and has strong values. He knows full well all the things that Hollywood actors do and decides now that he will forever avoid those things. Is Billy making a mistake?

Rambam Mishneh Torah – Hilchot Teshuva (Chapter 4) The Rambam lists all the people who will never be able to do Teshuva for their actions. Among them includes:
ד) וְהָאוֹמֵר אֶחֱטָא וְאָשׁוּב; וּבִכְלַל זֶה הָאוֹמֵר אֶחֱטָא, וְיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים מְכַפֵּר.

There is a common mistake that people make which is to believe that they will be who they are, regardless of the decisions that they make. At times a person will have a strong desire to sin. He decides that it is okay for him to commit the sin because he knows that he is sinning so afterwards he will be able to do teshuva. That is a big mistake. Experiences shape who a person is. Once a person involves himself in a life of sinning he will have changed his perspective on life. He will not be able to do teshuva because the person who was planning on doing teshuva is no longer him.
This idea is similar to one described in pirkei avot which states:

Chapter 4 Verse 2:
בן עזאי אומר:
הוי רץ למצווה קלה כחמורה, ובורח מן העבירה. שמצווה גוררת מצווה, ועבירה גוררת עבירה. ששכר מצווה - מצווה. ושכר עבירה – עבירה
“Ben Azzai would say: Run to pursue a minor mitzvah, and flee from a transgression. For a mitzvah brings another mitzvah, and a transgression brings another transgression. For the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and the reward of transgression is transgression.”

Living the lifestyle of mitzvot brings about a change in the personality, one that is more attached to continuing doing mitzvot. That is what is meant by "mitzvah brings another mitzvah". However, the opposite is also true. Experiences of sinning contribute to shaping who the person is. His perspective will be distorted (from transgressing) so he will continue transgressing.

Back to our Pasuk
Therefore it is so important to take into account the lifestyle consequences of one's decisions even when one is confronted with a "straight path". Granted, that the extent to which one experience affects a personality is unknown, a lifestyle clearly alters and defines a person. Once Billy enters the world of Hollywood his experiences in Hollywood will help shape who he is. At that point, the Billy facing the decision of whether to do coke is not the Billy who is thinking about becoming an actor.

Intelligence

2009-11-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

For the past few months I have been part of a very strong academic institution where kids are driven and excel in their studies. These kids have excelled in getting good grades in high school and getting high SAT scores. They are very capable of solving certain types of problems which society has defined as problems that test for intelligence.
Many of my peers however, are not interested in a different type of intelligence, namely the intelligence of how to live their life in the best possible way. They love considering abstract puzzles and question but have never been brought up to consider the questions relevant to what the proper way of living is.

Richard Mitchell writes about this in his Gift of Fire (Chapter 5). It is long (I posted the whole chapter) but a very worthwhile read;

I WENT TO TALK TO THE MENSANS. The members of Mensa are the smartest people in America, and I was intimidated. I was afraid that they might catch me in a circular argument or a lexigraphical fallacy. I was afraid that they would rise up, right in the middle of the pathetic little lecture I had thought up for them, and demolish my silly little premises, and then go, not storming, but laughing, from the room, to hold high converse among themselves, not even offering me any coffee and doughnuts.

The speech was meant to be the opener of a small convention, and scheduled to take place right after breakfast. I got there early, and was sent to join the Mensans in a room on the fourth floor, in an upper room, where they were standing around having coffee and doughnuts. I was relieved of at least one of my fears. But they were all watching television, and no one said anything to me. I stood around for a while and went back downstairs, where the brisk young woman who had sent me upstairs told me that I would have to understand that Mensans never did anything on schedule, and that I would have to wait till they came down, Soon, maybe.

I sat in the lobby and read some of the Mensan handouts that I found on the floor near the sofa. One of them was a sample test. To become a Mensan, you have to get high grades on some tests, and what I was reading was a kind of prep for those tests. It had some very interesting questions. One of them asked which diagram of a group of six would be generated by taking diagram C and subjecting it to whatever operations had transformed diagram A into diagram B. Or maybe it was the other way around. There was a very good train question, whose details I can't recall, but it had all the classical attributes of train questions--train A and train B leaving at different times from points C and D, moving at rates E and F, and meeting, at last, at the mysterious point X where ships also, I suppose, pass in the night. It really took me back. But the question I liked best of all went something like this:

Bob and Carol and Alice and Ted all took the Mensa test. Bob scored higher than Alice, who scored ten points lower than Ted. Ted's score added to Carol's score and then divided by the difference between Bob's score and Alice's score was either twenty points more or twelve points less than the average of all four scores. Which of the four made it into Mensa?

Well, I may have forgotten some of the less important details. But it was a great question.

I had planned to start my talk to the Mensans with some mention of Prometheus, and to quote a little from Aeschylus. It was the passage in which Prometheus, about to be chained down for quite a long time, makes a little recitation of the things he has done for humanity, and in which he does not mention at all what we usually think of--the gift of fire. He speaks instead of such powers as those of language and number, and, most important of all, the mind's grasp of itself, in Locke's words. It is the ability not only to think, but to think about thinking. Before humanity had that, Prometheus says, humans lived a random and aimless life, "all blindly floundering on from day to day." I knew that the Mensans were people interested in their minds, as people should be, and I thought that I might encourage them in that interest, and, at the same time, give due praise to the great minds of the past who understood long ago that the mind's grasp of itself is what alone makes possible the examined life, and thus the good life.

So I imagined myself in conversation with Prometheus, who had come back to find out what we mortals had managed to do with the astounding powers that he had given to us alone of all creatures.

How fortunate I am to run into you, he began, for I see by your rumpled clothing and your knitted brow that you must be in the mind business.

I'm honored to meet you, Sir, I replied, and I will confess that I am in the mind business, for I do no heavy lifting. Would you care to have some coffee and doughnuts with the Mensans?

Not just now, thank you. I have come, I must admit, not for social reasons, but on business. Long, long ago I gave you all the power of the mind's grasp of itself, the fire by which you may burn and glow like no other mortal creature. That got me into a lot of trouble at first, of course, but since my release I've had long, long ages of time in which to wonder whether or not I had done the right thing. I have grown so curious, in fact, that I have now undertaken, as you see, a journey whose enormousness you can not imagine, and only for the purpose of finding out to what good uses you have put my gift.

Aha, I said, you have come not only to the right man, but to the right place, and also at the right time. There must be something to that Divine Guidance business. As it happens, I hold here in my hand the answer that you seek.

What have we done, you ask. Just listen to this. Imagine a train leaving point A and moving toward point B at the rate of C. Imagine now another train moving from B to A at rate D, having set forth on its journey E minutes after the departure of the first train. Would you believe it if I told you that we--well, some of us--are able to figure out where and when those trains will meet? So how's that for mind business?

He looks at me steadily for a moment. He clears his throat. I begin to feel that I have not yet fully stated our case. I rush into the silence with six diagrams.

And look at this, just look at this. You see these diagrams? Now this little one over here was made by doing something or other, maybe a little twisting or turning this way or that, to this other little diagram. Now, and this is the beauty part, one of these six diagrams down here got to be the way it is because the very same things, the twisting and turning stuff, you know, were done to this little diagram. Pretty neat, eh? Now suppose I were to tell you that we--well, some of us--by the power of the mind alone, can say exactly which of these little...

At this point, Prometheus silently rises and begins to walk off. I get the impression, probably through Divine Guidance, that he is going to go back and chain himself to the rock for another long sentence.

Wait, wait, I call after him, now heading through the door and out into the street. Let me tell you about Bob and Carol and Alice and Ted! They all took this test, you see, and... and...

But Prometheus is gone. I begin to wonder whether the nature of his gift is such that he can take it back. I begin to suspect that he has taken it back. My mind is losing the grasp of itself. All I can think of is Bob and Alice and Carol and Ted drawing little diagrams while traveling on a train from point A to point B at the rate of C.

What should we mean by "intelligence"? I think it is important to ask the question in just that way--What should we mean? This seems to me an essential rule of thought, that when we talk about things that do not simply appear to us as a part of the world, we take on a grave responsibility to each other and to ourselves. Such things as intelligence and love and patience are possible only where there is a person. We do not find them lying around so that we can weigh and measure them, so there truly is no such thing as deciding whether love is the "true" kind or some other. We can, of course, mean anything we please by such terms, and just as easily mean one thing today and another tomorrow. In the best possible world, we probably would know better than to talk about such things at all, and we probably wouldn't have to. However, if the mind is to take the grasp of itself, and if we are to instruct ourselves in the art of taking that grasp, we must end up talking about things like intelligence. And love. And patience. And whatever else "exists," in some strange way, because persons exist.

Is it by the very same power that we can, in one case, conclude that it is better to suffer an injustice than to do one, and, on the other, discover which of six diagrams was generated by what process? Do we use the same faculty to consider whether patience can and should be cultivated and to tell where the trains will meet?

My questions, I know, seem to imply that we don't use the same power or faculty in all of those cases, but I truly don't know that. Whatever it is by which we do such things, it is not a fish that I can show you so that you might check what I have said about it, and I do not want to pretend that it is a fish, and speak of it as something that we all can see and measure. For when people do pretend that it is a fish, some strange things happen.

Let me rephrase a question just a little bit. Which will be detected by an intelligence test: the ability to make some rationally demonstrable conclusion as to whether suffering injustice is better than inflicting it, or the ability to tell where the trains will meet? Is it possible that we might meet some person who does indeed give himself to consider whether patience is a fixed or a changeable attribute, but can not for the life of him tell you which diagram was made from which? And one more question: How did the makers of the intelligence test come to "know" what intelligence is, that they can devise ways to measure it, and then pronounce its worth in numbers?

In detail, I can not answer. In principle, I can. They made certain choices. They made them, probably, for what they deemed very practical reasons, but with consequences that are not best described as merely practical. They have given the rest of us ideas, of which we may not even be thoughtfully aware, and by which we may, and often do, make choices of our own. We choose, for instance, every bit as much in families as in schools, how to train the minds of children, and which children to subject to which form of training, in accordance with some packaged and delivered ideas about intelligence. On the basis of those decisions, we commit acts, acts that have consequences in the very deepest centers of persons. That is a perilous business.

And that is why I ask: What should we mean by intelligence? It is not a question of fact, for there is no fact; it is a moral question. There is "shouldness" in it.

The word "intelligence" comes from two Latin words, inter and legere, which, put together, suggest the act of one who looks around among different things and makes choices, gathering some and leaving others. That is a portrayal of a mental activity very different from figuring out where the trains meet, but also an act that is a little bit like discovering the right diagram. But only a little bit. The idea of intelligence includes not only the choosing, but the chooser, an agent who chooses to choose. But when you choose the right diagram, you are not truly doing your own choosing. You are walking in someone else's footprints, and the "rightness" of your choice is in having done what someone else has already done.

There is a special case of thinking that is called problem-solving. Solving a problem is not the same thing as understanding a principle. It is, however, the sort of thinking that we have come to accept as the mark of intelligence, and the thinking that some people seem to like a lot. Somebody chose that understanding. Not one somebody, of course, but many somebodies, and I deceive myself and you if I say that "we" have either chosen it or that we have come to adopt it. Certain people did all that. Haphazardly. And now we live by it. We fashion our schools to match it, and measure their "products" by its yardstick. And thus we will win the disapproval of Prometheus and then perhaps even the loss of his gift.

I think I may lead myself into confusion if I accept without thinking Locke's name for the gift of Prometheus--"the mind's grasp of itself." There is no such thing as the mind; where there is mind there is a mind. It is not the mind that my mind might be able to grasp, but only my mind. I will not be able to take the grasp of your mind, nor you of mine, and for that we are both properly grateful. Some things are better kept private. When I do set out to take the grasp of my mind, I must find myself walking into unknown, and perhaps very dangerous, territory, where no one has ever gone before. I can find models of that journey, and accounts of other such journeys in other minds, but I can not find that journey. I end up doing, therefore, what is absolutely unique to me, and what, should I not do it, can not be done.

But when I solve Mensan problems, that is not the case. There, I will be doing what others have done. But those are, of course, problems that seem fake, somehow. Somebody cooked them up to be problems. They are a kind of game, a trivial pursuit. There is something to be learned in such a practice, of course, some habits of consistency and attentiveness, but in those who have learned those habits from earlier problems, the industrious solution of later problems, more of the same, seems a bit childish. The great charm of problem-solving lies in tackling the problems that have not been solved, which is to say, the problems that have never before arisen.

Such problems are almost always related to technology, and their solutions seem wondrous to us not because they come from newly devised powers of the mind, but always because they provide some new thing in the world. In that respect, microwave relay stations and eggbeaters are similar, both wonders. The most important difference between them is that Attila the Hun would have given you Asia Minor for the latter, but nothing at all for the former.

There is a sense in which the unsolved problem, even the problem that has yet to appear to us, is already "solved." You can provide your own easy example of the fact by making up your own train problem, using whatever numbers please you. You don't have to stick to trains. Airplanes or ox carts will do as well. What you now have is a "new" problem, a never-before solved problem. But, of course, its solution does exist. Although you can not make it just now, there is a statement that you will be able to make once you have made the statements that lead to it. That's how any problem is solved, however complicated, and however long.

Problem-solving is a wonderful device, and fun, but it ought to be kept in its place. The best way to do that is through a careful use of language. When I say that I have a problem, my first thought should be to consider as well as I can whether it truly is a problem. As to the meeting of the trains, I have little doubt. When I consider the problem of rearing children sanely and decently, or the problem of making ends meet, I become uneasy. And when it comes to World Peace and the Brotherhood of All Mankind, I am frightened, frightened of what will happen to us if we imagine that such grand hopes are to be realized by the process of problem-solving. In such matters, can the pertinent facts be known? Can anyone know when he has them all? Can they be tested and found as "true" as those given in train problems, or even in the most elaborate and complicated possible versions of train problems?

Where human beings are concerned, can we ever have all the facts? Can we ever know that we do, or that we don't? If we imagine that human dilemmas can be unraveled by that sort of thinking that problem-solving represents, are we not likely to run into something more vexing than problems?

That social and moral human "problems" have proved insoluble for the whole history of our species up to now, is not the least bit surprising, and it is exactly by the gift of Prometheus that we can know that. When we consider and question, and come to have some understanding of the process of problem-solving and its necessary attributes, we are not solving a problem. We are understanding. A mind is taking some grasp of itself. Because it is a mind, its understanding will be its understanding, not the understanding, and what it understands, however more or less, will be itself and its work, not the mind and its work. Not even another mind and its work. As to your mind, I do suspect that mine can make some pretty good guesses, even theories, but they are guesses and theories.

Problem-solving is something that we can also do by the gift of Prometheus. Understanding is the thing that we can do by that gift. The light of problem-solving is like the light of the moon, a reflection of some greater light. And when we single out the skills of problem-solving and give them the name of intelligence, we make a choice between the moon and the sun, and run the danger of putting out our own fires.

There is, in all of those dilemmas and mysteries that arise from the unfathomables of our humanity, a hauntingly familiar quality, as though we were all doing everything again and again. Thus it was, for instance, that Freud could conclude that Sophocles was not just right, but still right, perhaps always right. And it is to help us understand not the quaint beliefs of primitive and unscientific people, but, quite simply, ourselves--at any time, and in any place.

As fire is given in the myth, fire is given again and again in each of us, as it must once have been given to creatures who by its power became human. Like the species, we have all lived out of an impenetrable antiquity into the now. Every one of us must awaken out of sleep and come into the light of self-mindedness. And when self-mindedness arises, when the mind first comes to consider itself and knows that it considers itself, it is in language. It seems that the propensity for language and the propensity for self-mindedness are the same thing, which is, really, not sufficiently distinguished by the word "propensity." "Destiny" seems better. We are the creatures who are destined to think and to know themselves, and that is the gift of Prometheus.

Nobody knows when all that happened, but everybody who knows anything can see that it must have happened. Every single one of us lives again the astonishing and utterly unaccountable history of the coming into this world of the truly human. And we do it, for there is no other way, one by one. It is not humanity that comes into the grasp of the mind. It is a person that comes into the grasp of that person's mind. Information and examples I can take, in that degree to which I am literate, curious, and attentive, from countless other persons, most of them long dead but still speaking to me, but I must discover thoughtfulness for and in myself and come to understand for the first time what I have never understood before and what no one else can understand for me, any more than he might nourish me by his eating or refresh me by his sleep.

Nevertheless, while no one else can nourish me, I will never be nourished by those who are not themselves nourished, never brought into thoughtfulness unless others have gone there before me. This is, I think, a great mystery, and the most powerful suggestion I know that two seemingly contradictory possibilities are both true: that the individual person is the root and dwelling place of all that is truly human, and that society is the root and dwelling place of all that is truly human. Unless, of course, there really was a Prometheus, who started the whole business, out of nothing.

But if there was, he has obviously gone away and left us to what we must call, lacking better knowledge, our own devices. And our own devices are pretty good. As persons, we do make society, and as society, we do make persons. The enterprise of education is entangled in that paradox, and it is the proper business of everybody both to nourish and to be nourished, both to take the grasp of his own mind and to provide for others the power to do the same. It is for that reason that we properly connect the idea of education with the rearing of children. As to which of us are truly the children, we really have no clear idea, but we do know that there are children among us, and that something should be done about them. If we knew exactly what that was, and who the children were, there could be education.

Never Isolate Part 2

2009-10-05T17:59:00.000-07:00

When I walk into a restaurant buffet, I always get really excited. There are so many choices from which to choose from and I wont even have to limit myself to one selection. Not only that, but there is no limit on how much I can take. I will be able to eat as much as I want, whatever I want...

I quickly fill my plate up with all kinds of different foods. I sit down and begin to eat. But there is so much I would like to try that I simply don't know what to try next. I shove the food in my mouth because I know that as soon as I finish chewing this bite, the next one will be the most spectacular tasting bite...

After twenty minutes I get full. I stare at my fourth helping with wariness. I start to wonder whether I enjoyed the meal as much as I thought I would. If I were to try and locate which bites were the enjoyable ones, I'm not so sure I would be able to answer. Any bite I took was only a precursor, a preview for the next bite or the next piece which was the one that really mattered. If I were to draw it out in a diagram it would look like this;

Beginning Super excited

Sit Down Eat frantically to get to the next bite

5 minutes Eat frantically to get to the next bite

10 Minutes Eat quickly so these that I really liked.

Twenty Minutes Later Stomach ache

Is food just not something enjoyable, or did I just relate to it improperly? If so, then what is the proper way of viewing food. What in me is causing my mistaken view?

I will share another example, but this one based on second hand knowledge on how someone who enjoys clothes feels like when they walk into a shopping mall.

The Shopping Mall
When you want into a clothing store you get particularly excited. The selection is huge and there is so many great “outfits” to find. Like in the example of the buffet, you go around trying everything on. When you walk out of the store with your one purchase you are pretty content. However, in no way would you say that your experience measured up to the excitement with which you entered the store.

Why was that original excitement never fully satisfied by the experience? Is your view of the experience of shopping incorrect?

Fantasy
On a simple level the disappointment in both experiences can be attributed to our faculty of imagination and fantasy. We have a certain fantasy of how great the food will taste like, and how beautiful the clothes will look. Reality never lives up to our imagination so it is not a surprise that we will always be disappointed. But how do these fantasies work?

It is Mine for Keeps- the isolationist point of view

The incorrect perception of either experience stems from a similar problem that our pasuk in Mishlei addressed, the mistake of isolating experiences. The “isolated”perception, is viewing a pleasure as something that can be grabbed onto, and kept. It is the feeling that this pleasure will be a thing to have, and that it is not just a passing feeling.

To further understand this fantasy it is useful to consider a third type of isolationism, the isolation of experiences. I will then tie in and connect the two types of fantasies.

Isolation of Experiences
All school kids eagerly await the day that they will finish school. They will graduate and be free from the authority figures that force them to wake up early in the morning and sit all day in a claustrophobic room. Graduation night is the pinnacle, of this achievement of freedom. It is a defining moment that causes this change in me from being “a kid who goes to school” to FREE!!!!...or at least that is the fantasy kids have.

I remember my own graduation. It was extremely boring and I kept waiting for it to end. After a few hours it was over, but I felt no internal change. Not only did I not feel like someone different, but I wasn't even as excited to have graduated as I had always imagined myself to be. I was expecting a grand spectacle but it had just passed, with me feeling like an observer.

My mistake in this case was viewing this experience as an isolated incident. Graduation was a destination point in my life, so I expected it to feel like a destination point. But that simply was not true. It was just another experience that passed after a few hours without any drastic changes in who I really was.

This fantasy of isolating experiences can be very dangerous. People comfort themselves from their unhappiness in the present by focusing on a future event that will make them happy. How many times have you heard someone say, “just wait till ____ happens, then everything will be great”. They get what they have been waiting for but they immediately start looking forward to the next thing. In other words, humans always live with a fantasy about the future. But what that fantasy really is, is an isolationist view of experiences. It is a belief that once this "destination" is reached the person will always be content.

The very same thing happens in how we view pleasures. We view them as destinations and therefore we expect them to feel like destinations. When we walk into the buffet we expect the ultimate pleasure of food to be reached and kept forever. This is a false view. Nothing is isolated and everything is bound to the changes of time. We will always be disappointed because our fantasy of reaching an "acquisition of pleasure for keeping" is simply not true.

in the next post I will address how I think a person can overcome this fantasy in specific areas of his life. I will give more examples to show how far this isolationist perspective really pervades our view of reality. I will also try to tackle the question of what is the proper view of pleasures, experiences, and consequences? Stay tuned! .

Public School Education

2009-09-15T09:20:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a fascinating piece on modern day schooling. I will not write my thoughts on it yet but simply post an excerpts from the essay. The whole piece http://johntaylorgatto.com/hp/frames.htm is quite long and gives a history of modern day schooling. Here, I will simply cut straight to John Gatto's criticism of modern day schooling.

It was from James Bryant Conant-president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison-gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic-bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century-that I first got wind of the real purposes of American schooling. Without Conant, we would probably not have the same style and degree of standardized testing that we enjoy today, nor would we be blessed with gargantuan high schools that warehouse 2,000 to 4,000 students at a time, like the famous Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Shortly after I retired from teaching I picked up Conant's 1959 book-length essay, The Child the Parent and the State, and was more than a little intrigued to see him mention in passing that the modem schools we attend were the result of a "revolution" engineered between 1905 and 1930. A revolution? He declines to elaborate, but he does direct the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, in which "one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary."

Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.

Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, surely understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Tre you have it. Now you know. We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love, liberty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed.

There were vast fortunes to be made, after all, in an economy based on mass production and organized to favor the large corporation rather than the small business or the family farm. But mass production required mass consumption, and at the turn of the twentieth century most Americans considered it both unnatural and unwise to buy things they didn't actually need. Mandatory schooling was a godsend on that count. School didn't have to train kids in any direct sense to think they should consume nonstop, because it did something even better: it encouraged them not to think at all. And that left them sitting ducks for another great invention of the modem era - marketing.

Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident. Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to our own Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be cloistered with other children, stripped of responsibility and independence, encouraged to develop only the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up. In the 1934 edition of his once well-known book Public Education in the United States, Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and praised the way the strategy of successive school enlargements had extended childhood by two to six years, and forced schooling was at that point still quite new. This same Cubberley - who was dean of Stanford's School of Education, a textbook editor at Houghton Mifflin, and Conant's friend and correspondent at Harvard - had written the following in the 1922 edition of his book Public School Administration: "Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down."

It's perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.

Now for the good news. Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired and quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more meaningful life, and they can.

First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

Never Isolate Part 1

2009-09-10T20:59:00.000-07:00

Mishlei Chapter 16 Verse 4
“The Lord made everything for His praise-even the wicked man on the day of retribution.”

Questions
1)What does it mean that something is for God's praise?
2)Is the praise that the pasuk is referring to when a wicked man does evil or when he suffers retribution?
3)How is either one of the possibilities listed above, a praise to God?

Praise for Hashem
One of the foundations of Judaism is the appreciation and awe of God through the appreciation of the complex world that he created.
More specifically, this appreciation premises a view of the world as one complex and interconnected system that operates by certain laws. When we study a specific area, it is with a basic assumption that it will fit in with our understanding of the world as a whole. If it doesn't, then our understanding is lacking. An example might help clarify.
It would be ridiculous for a physicist to say that when we see a ball falling from a roof, we are seeing an isolated incident that shouldn't be fit in with physics or the laws of nature. Instead, the physicist will see how this incident is part of a particular pattern of events in physics, otherwise known as gravity. Recognizing the law of gravity is a praise to Hashem, because it is an acknowledgment of the system (the world) that God created.

Therefore, when it says that everything Hashem made is for His praise, it means that everything operates by certain laws, in respect to the system that it is contained in. To recognize this, is to see how a falling ball is a praise to Hashem.

Human Interaction
It is easy to sustain this view of the world when it comes to physics, but it can become very difficult in the area of human lives. When events happen, we view them as isolated incidents (for simplicity, I will call this view isolationism). If we get pulled over for speeding we immediately think of how unlucky we are, or how mean this cop is. However, if we were to look at this ticket as part of a pattern that started with years of speeding on this road, we will not feel so wronged. Instead, we will view it as an opportunity for teshuva, realigning our philosophy of life in line with reality.

When the Rasha experiences retribution
When we see evil people fail, we feel a sense of satisfaction. It is a happiness fueled by to the desire for revenge. This man wronged the world, now he gets payback. This is a natural response that is difficult to overcome. When we saw Saddam Hussein get captured we were all happy because we remembered all the terrible things that he had done. We viewed this as a victory where the good guys finally beat the bad guys.

Mishlei rejects this view. Viewing the evil person fail in this way, is the same as if the physicist viewed a falling ball as an isolated principle. “Finally, this ball gets what it deserved!” he would say.
Mishlei tells us that when we see a rasha experience retribution, we must view it within its proper context. We can spur teshuva through this event by analyzing what in the rasha caused his demise. We must investigate to see whether we ourselves possess those very same qualities. Then we must work on making decisions that are not affected by these “destructive character traits”. However, we cannot do this unless we get out of our predisposition to view things out of context. We must recognize the fact the praise of Hashem extends to the way we live our lives as well. Oftentimes you see the physicist ridicule the idea if isolationism in his area of study. But when he comes home after work, he makes decisions in his life letting that operate by the very same isolationist principles. He refuses to extend the praise of Hashem outside of his laboratory.

If we view everything as a praise to Hashem, then everything becomes an opportunity for Teshuva. We will learn to see the context of any event, to learn how to make decisions in order to live a happier life.

Post Addendum: This idea does not only apply to events and situations. It even applies to our understanding of pleasure and pain. In fact, in the next post, I will show how the very fantasy of any pleasure is rooted in the view that the isolationist espouses.

The Awkward post on the nature of Awkwardness

2009-09-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite shows on TV is Curb Your Enthusiasm. The show is about Larry David, the creator of Seinfeld, who retires and lives life as a famous producer. The lines are improvised on the spot, but Larry always manages to get himself in the most awkward and hilarious situations possible. Oftentimes, the scenes become so awkward that I am simply forced to turn away from the screen.
This puzzled me because the situation wasn't happening to me, yet I had that same distinct feeling that occurs when I am personally in an awkward situation.

Curious about the phenomenon of awkward, I decided to ask Rabbi Moskowitz;

Awkward
Rabbi Moskowitz responded that awkward is when that which you hide, gets revealed. It could be an unconscious or suppressed desire or fear that we do not want people knowing. There are a varieties of reasons for why we suppress these feelings. Oftentimes it is a desire that we have but we cannot reveal because it is made taboo by society. In general, we conform, and suppress these desire. But if a situation arises that exposes it, then immediately we feel very awkward.
It can also be the case that someone else's actions make us feel awkward. That is because their actions are triggering that same desire. We are associating a situation that someone else is in, as if we were in it ourselves. When we see others encounter a situation, and we feel terribly awkward, it is because they are exposing our own desires and fears .
The clearest way to explain this is through giving one or two examples.

Example 1- When I was at Yeshiva High School I was in minyan with people coming from very different backgrounds. There were kids who literally didn't know how to do anything. When they were called up to the Torah they would put on the talit completely wrong and would make numerous “obvious” mistakes in their performance. During these moments, I simply had to look away because the situation was so awkward for me.

As Rabbi Moskowitz would explain, these kid's mistakes exposed my own fears of being embarrassed on stage. It is almost certain that they themselves did not feel awkward at all. Situations are not themselves objectively awkward and it is not necessarily the case that everybody feels awkward about the same situations that I would feel awkward. It is only in so far as it exposes something about a specific person that the person feels awkward. In that case, it was only me who felt awkward, since only I had that fear of being embarrassed.

Example 2- Person a talks about person B behind B's back. When B finds out, and A knows that, a will feel very awkward in his encounter with B. That is because A's true feeling's about B have been exposed.

In this case, the feelings a has are not even subconscious. A in some way knows that he hates B but there is no way he will tell b that straight to his face because he is scared of him. Again, it is not necessarily the case that B will also feel awkward. It is possible that B doesn't care and will feel completely comfortable in his encounter with A.

How to Avoid Feeling Awkward
In general, once a person gains understanding of the desire or fear that he has, he will feel less awkward when it gets exposed. Awkward is the conflict between our attempt to keep a feeling hidden from ourselves and from the world, versus the reality which exposes it. Once we recognize and understand the reason for a desire or fear, we will not feel as awkward if a situation exposing it arises since we will not “push back against reality” as strongly.
Once I understood that my discomfort was a result of my own fears of being embarrassed “on stage”, my awkward feeling subsided. I had already exposed it to myself and therefore did not feel as bad if somebody else triggered it in me as well.

Back to Curb
In short, my enjoyment of Curb Your Enthusiasm is a result of my own shortcomings. Although I feel awkward while watching the show, I enjoy the fact that someone else is in the awkward situation and not me. I immediately assume that they feel the same conflict that I do, and I gain an enjoyment from watching other people suffer.

The Jew in The Modern World

2009-08-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

In a few days I will be going of to a secular college. Given this drastic change in my life I felt it was worthwhile to re look at an excerpt from Rav Hirsch's "The Jew in the Modern World". The excerpt is a response to the liberal and reform movements whithin Judaism. Although it was written in the 18th century, the ideas are as true today as they were back then. The bold is my own doing, for the purpose of highlighting a few important ideas.

Rav Hirsch- The Jew in the Modern world- Emerging Patterns of Religion Adjustment

First a point of fact, it was not "Orthodox" Jews who introduced the world "orthodoxy" into Jewish discussion. It was the modern "progressives" Jews who first applied this name to "old, "backward" Jews as a derogatory term. This name was at first resented by "old" Jews. And rightly so. "Orthodox" Judaism does not know any varieties of Judaism. It conceives Judaism as one and indivisible. It does not know a Mosaic, prophetic, and rabbinic Judaism, nor Orthodox and Liberal Judaism. It only knows Judaism and non-Judaism...It does indeed know conscientious Jews and indifferent jews, good Jews, bad Jews or baptized Jews; all nevertheless, Jews with a mission which they cannot cast off. They are only distinguished accordingly as they fulfill or reject their mission.
Now what about the principle, the world redeeming principle of religion allied to progress? If it is meant to be a principles, something more than an empty phrase meant for show - it must have a definable content and we must be permitted to clarify it. In the expression "religion allied to progress," progress is evidently intended to qualify religion. Indeed, this is the very essence of the "idea," not religion by itself but religion only to the extent in so far as it can co-exist with progress, in so far as one does not have to sacrifice progress to religion. The claim of religion then is not absolute but is valid only by permission of "progress"? What, then, is this higher authority to which religion has to appeal in order to gain admission? What is this "progress" evidently not progress in the sphere of religion, for the the expression would amount to "religion allied to itself" which is nonsense. It means then, progress in every sphere other than religion. Speaking frankly, therefore it means: religion as long as it does not hinder progress, religion as ling as it is not onerous or inconvenient.
The subordination of religion to any other factor means the denial of religion; for if the Torah is the law of God how dare you place another law above it and go along with God and His law only as long as you thereby "progress" in other respects at the same time? You must admit it: it is only because religion does not mean to you the word of God, because in your heart you deny divine revelation, because you believe not in Revelation given to man but Revelation from man, that you can give man the right to lay down conditions to religion
"Religion allied to progress"- do you know, dear reader, what that means? Virtue allied to sensual enjoyment, rectitude allied to advancement, uprightness allied to success. It means a religion and a morality which can be preached also in the haunts of vice and iniquity. It means sacrificing religion and morality to every man's momentary whim. It allows every man to fix his own goal and progress in any direction he pleases and to accept from religion only that which does not hinder his "progress" or even assist it. It is the cardinal sin which Moses of old described as a "casual walking with God."...
Now what is it that we want? Are the only alternatives either to abandon religion or to renounce all progress with all the glorious and noble gifts which civilization and education offer mankind? Is the Jewish religion really of such a nature that its faithful adherents must be the enemies of civilization and progress?...We declared before heaven and earth that if our religion demanded that we should renounce what is called civilization and progress we would obey unquestioningly, because our religion is for us truly religion, the word of God before which every other consideration has to give way.we declare, equally, that we would prefer to be branded as fools and do without all the honor and glory that civilization and progress might confer on us rather than be guilty of the conceited mock- wisdom which the spokesman of a religion allied to progress here displays.
For behold whither a religion allied to progress leads! Behold how void it is of all piety and humanity and into what blunders the conceited, Torah criticising spirit leads. Here you have a protagonist of this religion of progress. see how he dances on the graves of your forefathers, how he drags out their corpses from their graves, laughs in their faces and exclaims to you: "Your fathers were crude and uncivilized; they deserved the contempt in which they were held Follow me, so that you may become civilized and deserve respect!"
Such is the craziness which grows on the tree of knowledge of this "religion allied to progress"!
If our choice were only between such craziness and simple ignorance, again we say we would remain ignorant all our life-ling rather than be thus godlessly education even for one moment.
There is, however, no such dilemma. Judaism never remained aloof from true civilization and progress; in almost every era its adherents were fully abreast of contemporary learning and very often excelled their contemporaries. If in recent centuries German Jews remained more or less aloof from European civilization the fault lay not in their religion but in the tyranny which confined them by force within the walls of their ghettos and denied them intercourse with the outside world. And, thank goodness, even now our sons and daughters can compare favorably in cultural and moral worth with the children of those families who have forsaken the religion of their forefathers for the sake of imagined progress. They need not shun the light of publicity or the critical eye of their contemporaries. They have lost nothing in culture and refinement even though they do not smoke their cigars on the Sabbath, even though they do not seek the pleasures of the table in foods forbidden by God, even though they do not desecrate the Sabbath for the sake of profit and enjoyment.
Indeed, we are shortsighted enough to believe that the Jew who remains steadfast amidst the scoffing and the enticement of the easy going world around him, who remains strong enough to sacrifice to God's will, profit inclination and the respect and applause of his fellows, displays a far greater moral strength and thus a higher degree of real culture than the frivolous "modern" Jew whose principles melt away before the first contemptuous glance or at the slightest prospect of profit, and who is unfaithful to the word of God and the teachings of his fathers in order to satisfy the whim of the moment.

Eating and Talmud Torah

2009-08-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

this is an idea from a dvar Torah given by Rabbi Kahn the Rosh Yeshiva of Yesodei Hatorah.

"And you shall eat and be satisfied, and you must bless Hashem your G-d for the good land which He gave you." (Devarim 8:10)

Chazal utilize this pasuk to prove that just as one must bless Hashem following a meal, one must also bless Him before eating:

"What is the source for the requirement to make a beracha before eating? It can be derived from a kal vachomer (an a fortiori inference): If he must make a beracha when he is full, how much more so when he is hungry." (Berachot 35a) This statement clearly implies that there is greater reason to bless before eating than after.

Interestingly, the Gemara gives the reverse kal vachomer argument when deriving the need to make a blessing after learning Torah:

"...If Torah requires a beracha before learning [as was previously derived from Devarim 32:3], is it not logical that it requires it after learning?" (Berachot 21a) This argument states that the beracha after learning is the more logically compelling blessing.

How can we understand the difference in the two cases in regards with the more appropriate blessing?
The Vilna Gaon provides a valuable insight. He says that the principle for deciding which beracha "takes precedence" is the same in both cases. According to him, the beracha that accompanies a greater obligation of a beracha is the one that provides the greater enjoyment.
When a person is eating the greatest enjoyment is before he partakes of the pleasure. He is hungry and his mouth is watering. He has a sort of fantasy of what the food will taste like. Once he eats the desire for the pleasure subsides. Eating does not appear as appealing as before.
With Talmud Torah, the opposite is the case. Before we begin learning we do not gain very much satisfaction from the fact that we will learn. We must force ourselves to open up a sefer. But once we begin learning and thinking we gain a tremendous amount of enjoyment. When we are done learning we view the experience of learning with much more enthusiasm than we did before we started. Therefore, the kol ve chomer applies to the beracha that elicits the most amount of pleasure.

What Would Rabbi Moskowitz Say?

2009-08-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

I’ll be honest, I miss Rabbi Moskowitz’s class. During the past week I decided to play a little game called “What would Rabbi Moskowitz say?”. The game is very simple. When I am thinking about a certain personality type or trying to understand a certain emotion I simply imagine asking Rabbi Moskowitz and then imagining that he is the one thinking about it. To my surprise, this method has lead me to an insight numerous times.
Why this method works, I still do not fully understand. I am not operating with any new facts. It is not changing or proposing a new direction on the topic. It is merely imagining Rabbi Moskowitz thinking about the problem.
Maybe next time I’ll play the game to understand why my method works.

Over the past week I went camping with my family. Out in nature, I immediately felt the desire to find the most difficult hikes to be able to see the most beautiful scenery. This made me think of two types of people; the traveler and the adventurer.

The traveler is someone who likes to travel the world. He feels this desire to see everything and to be constantly on the move. The more places he gets to see the better. He will proudly tell you that he has been in this many countries and this many continents.
Then there is the adventurous person. This type of person is more interested in hiking to the top of Mount Everest than sigh seeing. He finds activities that are risky and exhilarating. He completes one difficult task only to find something even more difficult and more risky to do.
I decided to see what Rabbi Moskowitz would say regarding these two personalities. Why do they do what they do? What drives them?
Here is what I imagined Rabbi Moskowitz replying.

The Traveler
This person is unhappy with his situation. He is constantly on the go because he is trying to get away from his conflicts. He knows that there must be something better for him out there, a better way of life or a better culture. Therefore, he lives his whole life in search of that better thing. What he is really looking for is a better situation.
When such a person is traveling he is temporarily deceived. All the things that bothered him back home don’t exist. Because the objects that elicit and make shown the conflicts that he has do not exist, he makes the mistake in believing that the conflicts themselves are gone. But new, similar situations arise that elicit the same conflict and the person grows unhappy and wants to move on again. He in never satisfied and will always be on the go.

The Adventurer
The adventurous person has a completely different thing driving him. The reason why he wants to scale the tallest mountain is because he wants to be stronger than nature. He defeats one mountain now it’s time to fight another. He also likes to take risks. Look at the risks with these horrible consequences and look at me. avoided these consequences. Nothing happened to me. He gets satisfaction from showing himself that he is not influenced by anything and is not subject to the laws of nature. This person is unhappy that during his daily routine he is subject to nature. He is subject to his boss and to daily traffic. He uses adventures and risk taking a sort of outlet for this frustration.

This does not mean that traveling and adventuring are bad themselves. I am merely explaining what the personalities that are addicted to traveling or to adventures are.

Turning Our Faces Away

2009-07-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

This is one idea on tzedakah that I heard from Rabbi Fox. My focus here is not to explain the commandment as a whole but rather to outline a specific psychological phenomenon. The translation of Rambam that you will read is my own and may not be fully accurate. If someone knows of an English translation of Mishnah Torah that can be accessed online, please let me know.

Rambam- Yad Chazaka Hilchot Matanot Le’evyonim

Chapter 7 Verse 2- Any person who sees a poor person ask him charity and he turns his eyes away and did not give him charity violates a negative commandment as it says “you shall not harden your heart and you will not clench your fist from your neighbor”.

Chapter 10 Verse 4- Anyone who gives tzedakah to a poor person with an unhappy face and a heavy unpleasant face even if he gave a thousand zehuvim (a type of currency) does not receive merit and loses. Rather, he must do so with a glowing face and with happiness and etc…

I would like to offer an explanation for the reason why a person loses merit if he does not give tzedakah with a happy face. I would also like to explain why Rambam states that when a person gives charity in this way he “does not receive merit and loses”. Why does the Rambam use both terms when they sound redundant? What is the message of the second term?

Turning Our Eyes Away

When we see a homeless person our first instinct is to turn away. We could never imagine ourselves befriending one. We usually even try and keep away from them and if we see one walking by our house we quickly lock our doors and keep our possessions out of his sight.
Why do we have this instinct? Why do we instinctively look down at the person that asks us for help? Because psychologically we need to assume that a person is poor because of some defect in his own character. He must have made mistakes in his life to cause him to lose all his fortune. He must be poor because he is a horrible person. We cannot consider that perhaps he needs our help due to some horrible circumstance that occurred completely out of his control. Because if we even consider that then we are admitting to ourselves that we could also be standing in their place. That something out of our control can happen to us to make us as dependent on other people as he is on us.
As humans, we are very insecure. We do not want to confront the reality that a lot of things in our lives are simply out of our control. Because of that we are also not very grateful for the things we have. We assume that we are successful because we are great and are able to change reality.

If we give with an unhappy face then we are losing sight of the purpose of tzedakah. When we give charity begrudgingly, looking down at the recipient, we are continuing to live with a false psychological perspective.
That is what Rambam means by the phrase “he does not receive merit and he loses out”. Not only is a person who gives begrudgingly not fulfilling his halachik obligation, but he is also reinforcing a false psychological understanding of reality. When a person in need asks for charity, we must be happy when he asks us and we must try to identify with him. We must realize that we could be in the same position as our friend.
With this perspective we will be much more grateful for the things we have.

Expectations of Development

2009-07-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

From time to time I will post ideas from Mishlei. In general I will post the methodology that shows the steps to discovering the idea but sometimes (like in this post) I will just write the idea by itself.

Mishlei- 16-1 “To man (should) belong the arrangements of his heart, but from Hashem (should) come the tongue’s reply.”
Q: What type of person is the subject of this pasuk?
Q: Why does the verse specifically mention the tongue’s reply and not just speech in general?
Q: What does it mean to come “from hashem”?
Q: What are the arrangements of the heart?

The Type of Person the Pasuk is talking to
The Pasuk is talking about a person who is hoping to develop in his life. He is trying to become a person who naturally makes the correct decisions. He wants to enjoy doing justice and to hate injustice. He realizes that he needs to rid himself of his bad emotions that cause his to err.

Process of Development
The pasuk gives advice on what the expectations of development should be. The type of person who I outlined above will always aim to make rational decisions. The pasuk explains that it should be this way. When a person responds (replies) to any situation whether it is in speech or in action he must always strive to live in line with reality. He must think rationally and make sure that he is making decisions. that accord with Halacha
However, such a person might also wish to completely rid himself of his desire to do wrong. He will analyze his mistakes, try and see his mistake, and expect that emotion to be defeated. He will try to make the “arrangements of his heart in line with reality” by fighting his personality directly. He will suppress his desires and pretend that they don’t exist. In the short run he will be able to make the right decision but eventually the suppressed emotion will resurface in a catastrophic way. Or perhaps, he will respond to them too dramatically, thinking that his flaws are worse than they are, and then acting in an extreme manner in order to rid himself of them.
This is what the Pasuk is advising us when it says that “to man should belong the arrangements of his heart”. A person must not have the expectation of defeating his emotions completely. This is not a realistic expectation and he might quickly get discouraged. He must let his desires and idiotic tendencies be, and not feel inferior for having them.
Instead, he must focus on making the right decisions understanding that it is impossible for true change to come overnight. It is a process of a lifetime where it may take many years for change to happen. Rabbi Moskowitz, when explaining a difficult idea, always tells his class to leave his classroom and continue being the same morons as they came in as. He explained that clearly understanding an idea does change a person. The person may not notice it but if he continues to learn and to see the ideas clearly, then over the years he will become a completely different person.

Conclusion
Some people study because they want it to help them become happy. They want to see some remarkable insight that will drastically change their perspective and cause a sudden transformation in who they are. They want their “arrangements in their hearts” to be totally in line with reality but they want to do it in a way that is not realistic.
The thing that might help implement the advice of the pasuk is to change one’s goal. Instead of hoping to be happy, one should simply strive to live the correct way. Such a person will simply be happier as a byproduct of living correctly.

Rabbi Akiba, illiterate at forty, saw one day a stone's perforation where water fell from a spring, and having heard people say, "Waters wear stones," he thought, "If soft water can bore through a rock,surely
iron-clad Torah should, by sheer persistence, penetrate a tender mind";and he turned to study.

Judaism. Talmud, Abot de Rabbi Nathan 6

Rationality Part 2- A Leap of Faith

2009-07-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

The previous dialogue highlights the limitations of rationality. It focuses on its most basic part- logic. The Tortoise twists a simple logical sequence of a geometric proof into a nightmare that has no end and is composed of an infinite amount of steps. How does he do it? He forces Achilles to use logic to prove and justify the use of it. I would like to explain further what this means.

Systems and Boundaries

When I was a young child I would force my grandmother to make awards for me. Awards saying that I was “the strongest”, “the bravest”, “the smartest" and etc... A few years ago we remembered the awards she used to give me and laughed. My grandmother even joked that now she wants to give me an award saying that the awards I received were the most well deserved awards she had ever given anybody. But wait a second! How do I know that the last award is legitimate? My grandmother better convince me that this last award she is giving me is true. Maybe she should give me another award to reeaally convince me. But even after a million more awards I will still remain unconvinced. That is because every system has a boundary. If the system that we are talking about is awards than the last award that she gives me (which is about the previous award which is about the previous award etc…) is something that I simply must accept with no reason. If she were to give me a reason totally independent of the awards I would still be forced to accept this new reason without a reason. The same is true for rationality. It too, will always have its boundaries and assumptions that are not explained for (rational).
This is exactly what is going on in the dialogue. I got this idea (and the dialogue) from the book Gödel Escher Bach, written by Douglas Hofstadter. He explains:

“The dialogue shows the difficulty of trying to use logic and reasoning to defend themselves. At some point you reach rock and bottom and there is no defense except loudly shouting, “I know I’m right!” You can’t go on defending your patterns of reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over.
A system of reasoning can be compared to an egg. An egg has a shell which protects its insides. If you want to ship an egg somewhere, though, you don’t rely on the shell. You pack the egg in some sort of container, chosen according to how rough you expect the egg’s voyage to be. To be extra careful, you may put the egg inside several nested boxes. However, no matter how many layers of boxes you can pack your egg in, you can imagine some cataclysm which could break the egg. But that doesn’t mean that you’ll never risk transporting your egg. Similarly, one can never give an ultimate, absolute proof that a proof in some system is correct. Of course, one can give a proof of a proof, or a proof of a proof of a proof- but the validity of the outermost system always remains an unproven assumption, accepted on faith” (Hofstadter 193.)

Rationality As A Leap of Faith

I have found that the best way for thinking about this idea is to imagine a two dimensional plane in which the only tool that lets me get from point a to point b is rationality. So I begin thinking and I try to make my first step forward. But just when I start moving forwards I feel that I begin to sink. After all, any possible argument or statement that I could make must be built on an assumption. This level is lower because it is the assumption that structurally supports the step I am trying to make. An idea can be only be true if the ideas that it is premised on are also true. When I continue to try and make another step forward once again I feel myself sinking even deeper. And so I continue to think about point a and whether the ideas that lead from point a to point b make sense. But I never get anywhere and always continue to sink infinitely deeper because there will always remain some assumption or belief that underlies my whole investigation, and that I have yet to consider.

The only way to get anywhere is to jump. Intuitively, we think of rational thinking as a continuous path on our path from point a to point b. Every step makes sense. However this is not the case. The path of rationality is a path of small jumps, or as I like to call it, a path of tiny leaps of faith.
As the idea shows, rationality is not enough. It will not not be sufficient for you to be able to attain the truth. You will also need to make small jumps and accept certain premises based on "what makes sense", a standard that by definition cannot be coded for rationally.

For me, this is a very powerful idea and I have yet to grasp all of its implications. For even if it does not make much of a difference in our daily lives it in poetic terms, does to the world of thinking as quantum mechanics did to the physical. One idea that emerged in quantum mechanics was that time is not a flowing experience but rather is composed of tiny distinct jumps. It turns out that rationality is the same way.

Further Implications
There is one area that I think this idea plays a huge role and that is the proof of Har Sinai. In fact, as far as I can understand, the argument for Har Sinai can only be understood if this concept of rationality is accepted.
Stay Tuned!

Bibliography
Hofstadter, Douglas. Godel Escher Bach. New York: Basic Books Inc, 1979.

Rationality -Part 1

2009-07-05T02:19:00.000-07:00

What The Tortoise Said To Achilles

by Lewis Carroll

Achilles had overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on its back.
"So you've got to the end of our race-course?" said the Tortoise. "Even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances? I thought some wiseacre or other had proved that the thing couldn't be done?"
"It can be done," said Achilles. "It has been done! Solvitur ambulando. You see the distances were constatntly diminishing: and so -"

"But if they had been constantly increasing?" the Tortoise interrupted. "How then?"

"Then I shouldn't be here," Achilles modestly replied; "and you would have got several times round the world, by this time!"

"You flatter me - flatten, I mean," said the Tortoise; "for you are a heavy weight, and no mistake! Well now, would you like to hear of a race-course, that most people fancy they can get to the end of in two or three steps, while it really consists of an infinite number of distances, each one longer than the previous one?"

"Very much indeed!" said the Grecian warrior, as he drew from his helmet (few warriors possessed pockets in those days) an enormous note-book and a pencil. "Proceed! And speak slowly, please! Short-hand isn't invented yet!"

"That beautiful First Proposition of Euclid!" the Tortoise murmured dreamily. "You admire Euclid?"

"Passionately! So far, at least, as one can admire a treatise that won't be published for some centuries to come!"

"Well, now, let's take a little bit of the argument in that First Proposition - just two steps, and the conclusion drawn from them. Kindly enter them in your note-book. And, in order to refer to them conveniently, let's call them A, B, and Z:

(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

(B) The two sides of the Triangle are things that are equal to the same.

(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other.

"Readers of Euclid will grant, I suppose, that Z follows logically from A and B, so that anyone who accepts A and B is true, must accept Z as true?"

"Undoubtedly! The youngest child in a High School - as soon as High Schools are invented, which will not be till some two thousand years later - will grant that."

"And if some reader had not yet accepted A and B as true, he might still accept the Sequence as a valid one, I suppose?"

"No doubt such a reader might exist. He might say 'I accept as true the Hypothetical Proposition that, if A and B be true, Z must be true; but I don't accept A and B as true.' Such a reader would do wisely in abandoning Euclid, and taking to football."

"And might there not also be some reader who would say 'I accept A and B as true, but I don't accept the Hypothetical'?"

"Certainly there might. He, also, had better take to football."

"And neither of these readers," the Tortoise continued, "is as yet under any logical necessity to accept Z as true?"

"Quite so," Achilles assented.

"Well, now, I want you to consider me as a reader of the second kind, and to force me, logically, to accept Z as true."

"A tortoise playing football would be - " Achilles was beginning.

" - an anomaly, of course," the Tortoise hastily interrupted. "Don't wander from the point. Let's have Z first, and football afterwards!"

"I'm to force you to accpt Z, am I?" Achilles said musingly. "And your present position is that you accept A and B, but you don't accept the Hypothetical -"

"Let's call it C," said the Tortoise.

" - but you don't accept:

(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true."

"That is my present position," said the Tortoise.

"Then I must ask you to accept C."

"I'll do so," said the Tortoise, "as soon as you've entered it in that note-book of yours. What else have you got in it?"

"Only a few memoranda," said Achilles, nervoiusly fluttering the leaves: "a few memoranda of - of the battles in which I have distinguished myself!"

"Plenty of blank leaves, I see!" the Tortoise cherily remarked. "We shall need them all!" (Achilles shuddered.) "Now write as I dictate:

(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

(B) The two sides of this triangle are things that are equal to the same.

(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true.

(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other."

"You should call it D, not Z," said Achilles. "It comes next to the other three. If you accept A and B and C, you must accept Z."

"And why must I?"

"Because it follows logically from them. If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. You don't dispute that, I imagine?"

"If A and B and C are true, Z must be true," the Tortoise thoughtfully repeated. "That's another Hypothetical, isn't it? And, if I failed to see its truth, I might accept A and B and C, and still not accept Z, mightn't I?"

"You might," the candid hero admitted; "though such obtuseness would certainly be phenominal. Still, the event is possible. So I must ask you to grant one more Hypothetical."

"Very good. I'm quite willing to grant it, as soon as you've written it down. We will call it

(D) If A and B and C are true, Z must be true.

"Have you entred that in your note-book?"

"I have!" Achilles joyfully exclaimed, as he ran the pencil into its sheath. "And at last we've got to the end of this ideal race-course! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z."

"Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refuse to accept Z?"

"Then Logic would take you by the throat, and force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!" So you've no choice, you see."

"Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your book, please. We will call it

(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true.

"Unitil I've granted that, of course, I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?"

"I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.

Here the narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair, and did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so, Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was writing in his note-book, which appeared to be nearly full. The Tortoise was saying "Have you got that last step written down? Unless I've lost count, that makes a thousand and one. There are several millions more to come. And would you mind - a personal favor - considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century - would you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be re-named Taught-Us?"

"As you please!" replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of dispair, as he buried his face in his hands. "Provided that you, for your part, will adopt a pun the Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A Kill-Ease!"

George Carlin and Technology

2009-06-24T04:48:00.000-07:00

this is a continuation of the previous post and it discusses pesukim that were discussed there.

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller
buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less.
We have bigger houses and smaller families,
more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment,more experts, yet more problems,
more medicine, but less wellness...

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We've added years to life not life to years.
We've been all the way to the moon and back, but
have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space."
George Carlin- The Paradox of Our Time

People often times blame their unhappiness on some external cause. They blame the fact that they don't have enough time to work or that its too hot outside. They say that if those things weren't there then they would be happy. But then computers and air conditioners are invented, and people are still unhappy. Their expectations of what they are supposed to do simply change and they still feel something missing. Noach too, was able to capture outer space through the technology that he created. And yet, the farmer today is still struggling to make a living.

Instead of focusing outward, people should conquer the space within themselves. Introspection and self evaluation is the proper response. Today, there is a psychotic drive to continue developing newer and better technology. Every year, countries spend trillions of dollars on developing new types of computers hoping that it will solve all their problems. I don't think people realize the obsession with technology that is built into American society. The question is always what can we built or what can we invent. In contrast, how many people really think much about teachers and educators? How many people blame their unhappiness on themselves and their incorrect view of reality? At school, there are classes in computers, science (applied), and technology. But, how many high school classes are there in justice, truth or knowledge?

Technology is not bad. But it must stay in its place. That is the lesson that the Torah is trying to teach us here. It is telling us that Noach was not completely righteous because he improperly viewed technology.

Noach and Technology Part 1

2009-06-24T03:34:00.000-07:00

Ideas based on a Shiur given by Rabbi Sacks

Chapter 5 verse

28. And Lamech lived a hundred and eighty two years, and he begot a son.

29. And he named him Noach, saying, "This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands from the ground, which the Lord has cursed."

the curse that Pasuk 29 is referring to can be found in Perek 4 Pasuk 11-12. It is the curse Hashem placed on the earth after Kayin had killed Avel.

Chapter 6

Pasuk 9-11- These are the generations of Noah, Noah was a righteous man of his generation; Noah walked with God. And Noah begot three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth became full of robbery.

Chazal comment that Noach invented the plow which made working the land easier. That is what is referred to in pasuk 29. That is also the reason why Noach was considered to be a righteous person. He fulfilled his father's wish by bringing rest (from labor) to the people by inventing a scientific tool which could help man master the land. The justice of the act was tremendous since it helped make survival much easier.
This act of justice reflected the proper view towards society. Instead of seeking self interest and living in a self centered reality, Noach went out comprehended the nature of creation, and used that knowledge to make the life of a human better.

This is a stark contrast to the rest of the generation at the time. People began to steal from one other and the “earth was corrupt”. Without going into deeper meaning of these pesukim, it is clear that the generation of the flood was one that rejected a system of creation, and instead chose to live a selfish existence where everybody saw everybody else as a means for their own pursuits.

From this it seems quite clear why Noach was saved when the rest of the people were destroyed. While Noach tried to uphold justice, the rest of the world rejected it. They lived destructive and immoral lives.
However, one question remains. Chazal teach us that the pasuk adds the words “of his generation” (chapter 6 verse 9) to teach us that Noach was not a completely righteous person.
In what way was Noach not a completely righteous? His very name and essence was to do justice for the world by letting man rest from toiling in the land that Hashem had cursed.

Noach's Mistake
The reason Hashem placed the curse on the land in the first place was because of what Kayin did to Avel. The generation of the flood was simply an expression of Kayin's actions on a larger scale. Kayin too, viewed himself as the center of existence and everybody else as a tool for him to forward his own interests.
And when Kayin murdered Avel, God cursed the earth because man was living with a distorted view of reality.

Noach's response to the curse of the land was not completely proper. If the reason for the curse was man's distorted view, than man's solution should have been to reevaluate his views. Instead, Noach simply used technology to make working the land easier. Noach was righteous because he would make the lives of people easier. But because he had never addressed the primary problem, the curse would always remain, and there was something lacking in his righteousnesses.

creativity

2009-06-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

an interesting story I heard from Rabbi Sacks
Andrei Gregory the great actor and playwright melted at a certain point in his life. He explained that it all came down to one incident. He was walking down the street and saw a master who was at the peak of his career, crying. Andrei approached the artist and asked him, “Master why are you crying?”
The artist replied to him; “Because I live creatively in my art, but never in my life”.

Shimshon Hagibor

2009-06-17T02:20:00.000-07:00

This is based on a dvar Torah given by Shmuly Moskowitz. I rewrote the idea completely in a way that seemed clearest to me.

In the book of Shoftim, an unusual type of leader emerges for the Jewish people. Shimshon is a man who is over seven feet tall and with extraordinary strength more resembling a Greek warrior than a Jewish leader. Jewish leaders are supposed to be superior in their minds and in their hearts, not in their muscles.

There are other curious facts about Shimshon as well. Before he was born, a messenger from God came to his mother, and proclaimed that Shimshon would be a nazir for his whole life.
Nazirut is a self proclaimed vow for at least thirty days to abstain from
1) coming in touch with a dead body
2) drinking wine or eating any grape product
3) Shaving or getting a haircut.

After the term of the vow is complete the person brings a chataat offering. Becoming a nazir is not obligatory and is simply a self imposed vow that a person can take to help get his life on track. The case of Shimshon is the only case that the vow is not self imposed. This raises two questions:
1)Why was Shimshon made a nazir before he could choose to do so himself?
2)If nazirut is a self imposed strategy, why did God impose this strategy on Shimshon?

To understand the answer to these questions, it is first necessary to understand the nature of a warrior which will give us insight into Shimshon’s character. A soldier must be prepared to kill without mercy when necessary. He cannot hesitate to destroy and to cause suffering to others. It is his job to be an animal and he must use his aggression to fight a war. Strategy can only get somebody so far. A warrior needs to have the killer instinct.

On the other hand, the Torah helps create a person who is guided by his intellect and does not let his animal nature control him. As we progress in knowledge and understanding, we slowly become more drawn to the world of ideas and less drawn to the world of instinctual pleasures.
Shimshon did not have the leisure to develop in this way. It was his mission to be a warrior and to have the animal instinct. He was not allowed to remove it and instead was often forced to express it. While for most people it gets easier and easier to deal with their animal nature, for Shimshon it was a constant battle. How great would Shimshon have been if he did not have this constant impediment?

Now we can try and answer the questions above. Hashem gave Shimshon a certain mission that would limit his ability to develop in righteousness. Since Hashem created a framework that would limit Shimshon, he also had to create another framework that would help his development. Although nazirut is in general a self imposed strategy, in this case God invoked it because it was necessary to counterbalance the warrior mission he had given Shimshon.

Most people have the misconception that we refer to Shimshon as Shimshon Hagibor because of his tremendous physical strength. The truth is that Shimshon was a gibor for constantly fighting this battle within him, and always winning. And yet, he sacrificed his own development for God's mission, by never overcoming the animal within him.

The choice between Ruth and Orpah- Rabbi Fox's closing remarks to the Seniors

2009-06-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

this is a paraphrase of Rabbi Fox's last shiur. I did not write out the actual pesukim that Rabbi Fox quotes

In Megillat Ruth the story is told of two women; Ruth and Orpah. They both marry the sons of Naomi, and both of their husbands die. Without warning, Naomi picks up and leaves Moav, (where they lived) to go down to the land of Israel and Ruth and Orpah decide to follow.
At first they the words in the pasuk seem to suggest that they were not as committed to coming to Israel as Naomi did, but followed Naomi out of loyalty and love. Multiple times Naomi tried to dissuade them from coming with her, telling them that their place is back in Moav. Finally, Orpah decided to listen to Naomi and return to Moav, while Ruth decided to stay with her.

Shmuel (who wrote Megillat Ruth) seems to paint Orpah in a positive light. She is a loving and loyal woman who was committed to coming to Israel, but ultimately followed her mother's advice.

There is also a story about a man named Goliath who was a philistine and came to battle the Jews. He tried to conquer them by goading them into having one soldier fight him, with the winner taking control over the other nation. A midrash tells us that Goliath was the son of Orpah. Immediately, we ask the question; what is the meaning of this midrash and how could such an evil person come from a seemingly decent woman?

Chazal help us by telling us what happened after Orpah came back to Moav. According to Chazal she became a prostitute and Goliath was the result of one of these relationships. So how did such a decent woman who was committed to going to Israel and converting, because so immoral? It is not simply that she came back to her society and was influenced by it. She came back and became worse than the society of Moav. How did that happen?

It seems chazal is giving us an insight on human nature. When Orpah was choosing whether she should stay with Naomi or turn around, she had a tremendous inner conflict. She was deeply committed to Jewish ideals, but she was also committed to her old culture. By choosing to go back to Moav, did not remove the internal conflict. It bothered her, and the way she lived was a reflection of that conflict. She had to live her whole life trying to justify to herself the decision that she had made, and therefore acting in the most anti Torah way possible. In order to remove the internal conflict, her principles and philosophy turned against Judaism.

(To go back to the midrash it is curious to compare the outcomes of Ruth's and Orpah's decisions.
Ruth- David Ha Melech (grandson) defeated Goliath and built the temple.
Orpah- Goliath, defeated by David.)

You are at a turning point of your lives. You need to decide whose path you want to take. Orpah's or Ruth's. I have given you all the tools to prepare for this fight. I have done all that I could for you. Now its in your hands. You must decide.

Introduction- What is Tov Ve Yafe About?

2009-06-12T19:06:00.000-07:00

Welcome Friends!

Over the course of the last few years I have gained a tremendous amount of insights, ideas, and knowledge from being involved in the blog world. The blog is a great tool for expressing ideas and putting them up for discussion. It is a learning experience for both the author and the reader, as the partnership can help create clarity and discussions in ideas.

The purpose of this blog is for me to write ideas on various areas in Judaism. Most of the posts will be discussing shiurim that I have heard from people more learned than I, in a wide range of areas including halacha, hashkafa, and mussar. When writing the post, I will be sure to mention which ideas I learned from others and which ideas are my own.

In addition to writing posts on religion, I will write about ideas in other areas as well, such as philosophy, mathematics, and neuroscience. In short, any interesting idea that I have the patience to write about, will appear on this blog. I decided to call this blog tov ve yafe, because it is the search for truth- the good and the beautiful of the world, that hopefully this blog helps us do.

And now, with no further ado, let the blogging begin.