Even though I feel the Litvak world is right about the primary importance of learning Torah, תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם that is not to say that I had the greatest time in the Litvak world. The best idea is not to put anyone on a pedestal. The admirable thong about the Litvak world the refusal to admit all of the false doctrines that people claim for Torah are true. Thankfully, they are insistent about straight Torah. But being human means that they do not always [or even very often] measure up to the standards of Torah. Even the roshei yeshivot are flawed human beings -as are the rest of us. But still they refuse to let in all the many insanities of the religious world.
In every discipline there is the authentic true way, and the host of armies of falsehood that surround it that pretend to authenticity even though they are phonies- pseudo Torah.
This problem could have been avoided if people had been aware of the signature of the Gra on the famous letter of excommunication. But due to lack of faith in the wise, that is ignored
There is a series of positive values, and in every area of value there is a Sitra Achra-a Dark Side which imitates that value, but in fact just to to use the real to justify the phony however I admit that I think of Rav Nahman as a great tzadik and this approach of the Gra should not be taken as a criticism of him.
[Even though learning Torah is an obligation on everyone, this is often misunderstood. The Rambam wrote "Just as one is not allowed to add or subtract from the Written Law, So one is not allowed to add or subtract from the Oral Law." So only the books of the sages of the Mishna and Gemara count as "Torah". But I should also mention that learning these books counts as learning Torah, so when one learns Tosphot he is "learning Torah"
I might mention here that i just noticed today a few books that have come out in the litvak world that are pretty good. I only asked my son Izhak at the end of his life to send to me the Avi Ezri, but now I see there are some other really great books out there-- the Birchat Shmuel, the Kehilat Yaakov by the Stipler, Even Haazel, and even nowadays there seem to be some pretty decent roshei yeshiva. Of course these are all along the lines of Reb Chaim of Brisk. But I do miss my great learning partner David Bronson whose path in learning is more along the lines of an electron microscope, but I have not been able to get to that kind of depth myself, nor have I seen any book that approaches that kind of depth. Still these other books in the Litvak world are very impressive. [i tried to capture some of the depththat i saw in david bronson in my little book on bava metzia and also my other book on shas, but nothing can compare to hearing it from the first source]
