• Rambam's 13 principles of faith are arbitrary & too limited

    From Jos Boersema@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jul 18 06:50:25 2024
    title: Beit Din Tzedek MANIFESTO Psak Din Against Heretic Manis Friedman source: BeEzrat HaShem Learn with Lerner
    link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miQfcdnYDc0

    Comment.

    Hello. I seem to have the fearfull job of making the first comment,
    sorry. You did the right thing. It is incomprehensible how M.Friedman can
    go on, absolutely astonishing. Chabad ?! How ?! I have also seen many a rambling by the person in question. It makes no sense, it is not logical
    what he says, it is the opposite of the Torah ! A random gentile may have
    more Torah than he ! To hell to see your friends ?!?! Heaven is boring
    ?! Israel creates God ? It sounds like the rantings of a criminal. He says
    "we all sin" and he laughs, as if it is fun, with small children there,
    who have no defense because of their young age.

    For the sake of courage and the Torah, I would like to offer you also
    some thoughts however, of where it seems to me that you could be closer
    to the Torah. Who am I to say ? Nobody, but it is always good to talk
    about the Torah, is it not. You wrote that the 13 principles of faith
    (well known Rambam) are the _foundation_ of the entire Torah. Why did you
    write this. The Torah was there a long time ago, the 5 books of Moshe
    Rabbeinu, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Tehilin). The greatest age of
    the Torah, first with Moshe Rabbeinu, then Jehoshua, then others and the
    1st Temple, it was all without Rambam and his so-called principles of
    faith. Are we able to reduce the Torah, the 5 books of Moshe Rabbeinu,
    to 13 principles ? Are we able to take these 13 principles, and compute
    from them the entire Torah ? I just read the 13 principles again. What
    if I said: the Shabbos is among the foundation of the entire Torah ? If
    I said: to respect your mother and father, is among the foundation of
    the entire Torah ? All the "10 words" are the foundation of the Torah
    ? If I said "Do not steal" is the foundation of the entire Torah ? Why
    not ? Why that, why not this, why not something else ? Why the reduction
    ? HKB'H said: If you keep _all_ my commandments (Deut. 28:1). The Torah
    is the Torah, it is quite long, but not too long. Why the need to reduce
    it, if we are not wise enough to compute from a small amount of Torah,
    the rest of the Torah, as indeed Hillel the Elder was also unable to do.

    This then is what worries me, that you also are doing an amount of
    'philosophy' with an amount of randomness to it. The Torah - which
    is quite the work ! impressive and very good ! - can now be condensed
    into 13 principles, and we then turn it around and say: it all came from
    these principles ? Yet we cannot compute that in fact, I think nobody can compute the Torah from the 13 principles of faith. How do you compute the Shabbos, from the 13 principles of faith, or the laws of family purity,
    or the laws of land ownership ?

    Rambam himself also issues an amount of philosophy which seems to break
    the Torah, with his _heter iska._ Rent seeking is forbidden. Hillel
    the Elder argued the prozbul, but this cannot be, and he is the one (or
    his house) who is famous for saying: the entire Torah is to treat your
    neighbor as yourself, or to be exact: _What is hateful to you, do not do
    to your neighbor. The rest is commentary._ Commentary ?! Who can compute
    the sacrifices for the Temple from this one statement ? He has reduced the entire Torah, to one principle, and then says that it all flows from this principle. Isn't that an attempt at philosophy, perhaps not dissimilar (although not even close to as bizarre) as that of M.Friedman ? I could
    already see a hole in this principle, this attempt at philosophical
    reduction: what if I wouldn't mind it because I was so proud and rough,
    that my neighbor came to me to fight me over a piece of land ? Can I
    then do the same to another ? Isn't such the reverse morality of Amalek,
    the morality of criminals (I mean the example I gave), and then this
    principle already falls apart. Also, how about the positive rules, like
    I should give a charitable loan without interest and to be nullified in
    the 7th year to the poor.

    So what I see is this: persons who have also undermined the Torah, include
    (and I guess you won't like this): Hillel the Elder (but remember that
    after the Redemption, the rulings where supposed to go over to the house
    of Shammai, right?), because he argued pseudo logical philosophy (bad
    quality philosophy that is), to argue his prozbul, and he _also_ did
    this Torah reductionism even to just one statement. The very statement
    he chose, is not even in the Torah at all ! It may be of foreign origin
    ? I suspect it is. Then Rambam, he made the _heter iska_ and this device
    allows rent seeking on loans from another Jew, and this is just not
    allowed. The money is meant for another purpose. No amount of strange
    rituals make this right, and this Rambam also, he may have done strange philosophy of reducing the Torah to just 13 principles. It's random,
    it isn't true, it isn't covering the goodness and the vastness of the
    Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu, may his memory be blessed forever, and the
    Redemption come speedily, in your days.

    I hope that you have just kicked off the Redemption, with your strong
    stance for the Torah and rejecting one who seemed to be part of your own (Rabbis, and this of Chabad even). I wish you would dig even deeper:
    beyond Rambam and to return to interest free loans completely, and then
    even deeper: beyond Hillel the Elder and hit prozbul, and then hopefully
    even deeper, to restore the jubilee on land, and restore other Torah laws
    such as a complete Shabbos - rest until the night sleep, a true day of
    rest for your people. I'm sorry I wanted to write this, I hope it does not offend you. I merely suggest it as an argument, a talk on the Torah. If
    you do not agree, then so be it. If you realize you should or could
    undo problems which may have prevented the Redemption all this time, or
    helped cause it, then it would be wrong for me to not post this message,
    and become guilty that way. I hope you are not angry, have a good day. Be strong, you are absolutely right of course, and you know it (on the case
    of M.F.). Wow, what a case ! "To hell to be with your friends !" Lol,
    so absurd. Good days to all of you, I am sorry I took your time away.

    --
    Economic & political ideology, worked out into Constitutional models,
    with a multi-facetted implementation plan. http://market.socialism.nl

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