Hello Rabbi, I read your article about Rabbi Messas on the issue of head covering.
A. It seems to me that Terumat HaDeshen also says that by Torah law it depends on custom, and not only under Dat Yehudit.
B. Why are unmarried girls not obligated by Torah law to cover their heads? Isn’t that degrading for them? (Unless you’ll say that the derivation from the verse applies specifically to a married woman.)
C. In the introduction you wrote that you are not advancing any particular agenda. The question is: would you write about the Hazon Ish that he doesn’t know how to learn and that his level is that of a child in kindergarten? (Not quoting exactly.) Or is it only with Sephardic rabbis that there’s no problem saying such things, as some rabbis have expressed themselves against him? And this feeling that saying bold things will change something seems to me to be a mistake. You wrote a focused and correct article; if there is truth in it, then it will be accepted even בלי saying things like that, which are not intrinsically related to the article.
D. I read the book “The Physician and the Philosopher,” where he brings that Kant’s doctrine in his book “Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason” shows his hatred toward the Jewish people and his ignorance regarding Israel, and even in a kind of missionary way that the Jewish people should accept Christianity. Are these things accurate?

Hello.
A. In the article I was not dealing with the law of women’s head covering. I was critiquing Rabbi Messas’s arguments.
B. Indeed.
C. Yes. The question is whether you are the one advancing a particular agenda, when without the slightest basis you assume that the determining parameter is Sephardic identity. By the same token, you could have assumed that the parameter is a name beginning with the letter mem, year of birth, chief rabbis, Haredim, people from Bnei Brak, and so on. I won’t respond to that silly accusation.
D. I don’t know. There are such claims about him. But the desire that Jews should accept Christianity is completely legitimate, just as Jews want all gentiles to keep their commandments and all Jews to repent. What is anti-Semitic about such a desire? It is a natural and necessary consequence of Christian belief. By the way, in some cases it turns out that Kant understood Judaism better than his Jewish accusers did (for example regarding the centrality of Jewish law).

Hello Rabbi,
A. Right, but I’m saying that Terumat HaDeshen also understood the Talmudic passage such that the Torah law is due to custom.
B. I accept what you said. But the main point is: why do you have to express yourself emotionally, like “the learning of a child in kindergarten” and the like? It adds nothing to the halakhic issue or to the essential point, because if what you say is true and upright, then it will be heard even without such remarks.
C. 1. Please explain what you mean by the centrality of Jewish law.
2. Anti-Semitic in Kant’s words: “It is not Nietzsche whom Eichmann cites as his source of moral inspiration… but rather Kant and the categorical imperative” (Israel Eldad, Hegyonei Yisrael, p. 120).

I mean that Kant saw Judaism as a social-political code and not as a religion. And his critics remarked that he didn’t understand Judaism, since it contains an ideological and moral foundation underlying Jewish law. In my opinion, he got it more right than they did.
And if Eichmann had mentioned Moses our Teacher, then would Moses our Teacher also be anti-Semitic? What kind of argument is that?! Is Eichmann the authorized interpreter of Kant?

A. I’d ask if you could address the rest of the questions I asked, if possible (your opinion is very important to me).
B. In your opinion, is there no moral world embedded within Jewish law?
C. My argument isn’t about Eichmann; that was just an example. Rather, about Kant himself: the book I read says that Kant’s very writing was motivated by hatred of the Jewish people. (I’m asking you because I don’t know.)

A. I didn’t see any question there.
B. See column 15 on my site.
C. I already answered.

Hello Rabbi,
A. How can I study philosophy in a proper order? I mean, which books for a beginning, which philosophers?
B. Do you have an article on the method of studying the Talmud?

I don’t have an article on the order of study, and I also don’t think there’s much point in such an article. Each person has his own path. The same applies to philosophy. I started with logic, because that is the principal foundation. But there’s no necessity to start there. Each person has his own path.

What are examples of logic books? Aristotle?

What? Of course not. Leave the Greeks alone. There are modern books. For example, Copi’s Introduction to Logic. In philosophical logic there is Bergmann’s Introduction to the Theory of Logic (not an easy book).

A good and blessed week, Rabbi!
A. In the Talmudic passage in Bava Batra 88b about borrowing without permission, Rabbi Yehuda and the Sages disagree: one says he is a thief and one says he is a borrower. Rashbam explained that the Sages say he is a thief and Rabbi Yehuda says he is a borrower, while Rabbenu Gershom (s.v. “and Rabbi Yehuda holds”) explained the opposite, that Rabbi Yehuda says he is a thief and the Sages say he is a borrower. The question is: how does Rabbenu Gershom fit with the Talmud in Bava Metzia 43b, where the view of the Sages is clearly that one who borrows without permission is a thief?
B. The Nimukei Yosef on this page, 88b, brings the Jewish law that one who takes his fellow’s tefillin without permission, and according to the passage here the ruling follows the Sages that he is a thief, and therefore it is forbidden to put on another person’s tefillin. But his teacher says that a person is pleased when a commandment is performed with his property (Pesachim 4b), and it seems that he does not accept his teacher’s words, and he brings proof for his own position from the Talmud in Bava Metzia that a person who found tefillin is forbidden to put them on unless he appraises and pays their value, even though it is a commandment, and that seems to imply that it is forbidden to use them.
The Rema in Orach Chayim, siman 14, brought this Nimukei Yosef and ruled the opposite, that it is permitted to use them.
C. In the previous email you wrote to me that there is a book Introduction to Logic by Copi. I simply can’t find this book. What is the author’s full name?

A good week.

A. First, there are sometimes parallel passages that differ and reverse the positions of the disputing sages. For example, the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud regarding the dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish about whether coercion is not considered as though he acted. Second, it is possible that Rabbenu Gershom also had a different text in Bava Metzia, and he does not want to make anything depend on a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, and that is why Rava’s explanation is rejected there.
B. What’s the question here? If you mean to object that the conclusion of the Nimukei Yosef is that it is forbidden to put on the tefillin, the Rema’s intent is to refer to the words of the Ritva’s teacher that are cited there. And reason indeed suggests that it is permitted to put them on so long as they are not damaged. And in fact, the Nimukei Yosef there also implies that he forbids it only because of the laws of returning a lost object, since the finder is obligated to return it and may not use it. But with ordinary tefillin belonging to one’s fellow, it is permitted to use them because a person is pleased that a commandment be done with his property (where it does not cause damage).
C. Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic.