The most serious sin in regard to Torah is to attempt to redefine Torah according to one's preference.
It matters if one keeps Torah also. But even if one does not keep all or any of the commandments, the worst sin to to try to change Torah according to ones tastes. This was the reason that Gra signed the excommunication.
This also makes clear what is so wrong with the the insane religious world today which consists of many groups that have subverted the Torah to their own whims and have now tried to represent themselves as traditional.
Since it is hard to get a good idea of what Torah is about nowadays I recommend going into what is called "Rishonim." Rishonim are people that lived in a period before all the falsification of Torah began and spent their time and efforts in trying to verify and clarify what the actual approach of Torah is.
You could start also with the Geonim.
But in any case what I suggest to begin is what is called Musar. That is a generic term for medieval books of classical Jewish ethics. What makes them interesting is not the time period they were written in but the fact that their efforts were to understand what the ethics of the Written and Oral Law is without trying to falsify the subject to make it conform to their own tastes.
It matters if one keeps Torah also. But even if one does not keep all or any of the commandments, the worst sin to to try to change Torah according to ones tastes. This was the reason that Gra signed the excommunication.
This also makes clear what is so wrong with the the insane religious world today which consists of many groups that have subverted the Torah to their own whims and have now tried to represent themselves as traditional.
Since it is hard to get a good idea of what Torah is about nowadays I recommend going into what is called "Rishonim." Rishonim are people that lived in a period before all the falsification of Torah began and spent their time and efforts in trying to verify and clarify what the actual approach of Torah is.
You could start also with the Geonim.
But in any case what I suggest to begin is what is called Musar. That is a generic term for medieval books of classical Jewish ethics. What makes them interesting is not the time period they were written in but the fact that their efforts were to understand what the ethics of the Written and Oral Law is without trying to falsify the subject to make it conform to their own tastes.
