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12.5.16

Oral Law in capsule form

Fast food is an idea I like. Even in home cooking I do not like to wait.  And in learning also from a very young age I loved the idea of condensed learning. You know what I mean. This is the difference between reading and outline series or reading text.At about 7 I remember getting an outline of college chemistry. That is I do not have the ability to concentrate for a long time so I like things that get to the point immediately.
So it occurred to me how to get the Oral Law in capsule form. I think the best condensation is "Musar and Gemara." And in Musar itself the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות and or the Or Israel by Isaac Blazer and in Gemara I think the most powerful pill form is any essay from Rav Shach in the Avi Ezri. That is to learn it with the Gemara and the Rambam it is going on. That would contain the basic essence of the Oral Law in fast food form. In that way you do not have to wait for twenty years until you have gone through the actual entire oral law and even then to probably have not gotten the idea. [If you like you could take an essay from Reb Chaim Solovieitchik also. It is just that I personally often end up more confused than I started out when I read Reb Chaim. Rav Shach makes the most complex and difficult subjects as simple as apple pie.]

You could apply the same idea to Isaac Luria. The fact is the Eitz Chaim
really is the whole thing in capsule form.

{Just for clarity. I am not saying this makes one an expert-or can take the place of the normal four year program in  an Authentic Lithuanian Yeshiva or studying STEM in  college. Rather I am talking to people like me to whom options like these are not available.}