I had a lot of trouble convincing my wife that it is a mitzvah to learn Torah not for money.

And when things got tough for me, I had trouble convincing myself of the same.

I mean we all know that when people that seem to be following a certain path act badly this reflects on the path itself. If you hear about Buddhist monks complaining about a certain alternative group of Buddhists you think automatically that maybe the whole path itself is wrong.

So it is a challenge to defend the idea that learning Torah is a big deal.

So it is a matter of faith. Fine but what I want to bring here is the story. The story started early for me. I think from a very age Torah held a kind of fascination for me. And when I first arrived at yeshiva I felt like a fish that had been out of the water for so long that I could hardly breath and then someone had the kindness to throw me back into the water. There was nothing rational about it at all. It was a deep gut reaction I had to Torah.
When I told my future wife about yeshiva she also got the "bug" and jumped into the beautiful amazing world of Torah. But it was not easy to explain to her the idea that learning Torah is the purpose of life kind of idea of the usual Lithuanian yeshiva. Lots of people had the idea that learning Torah was to become a rabbi [God forbid] and to make money [may Heaven save us].
In fact outside of Brooklyn and Bnei Brak the idea of Torah for its own sake was unknown.

And nowadays the idea may have faded out completely. Even people in kollel tell the general public that learning Torah is a legitimate profession. The idea of Torah for its own sake seems so foreign to people that they think it is absurd.

The main obstacle to  Torah is  people that do not know Torah, nor learn Torah, nor keep Torah, but put on an act that they do.  They give the holy Torah a bad name. If not for them it might be easier to define the idea of learning Torah as the goal of life.

 There are times when prayer does not work because it is after the Divine decree. At that time when prayer does not help one needs to dress the request in statements, not prayers. In this way we see that learning Torah is not just a kind of prayer but in fact is even more effective than prayer.

But in the ultimate analysis the value of doing Torah and learning Torah is that it connects a person to God through the moral realm. Its value is only in so far as it connects you to objective morality.
That is insofar as the laws in fact correspond to objective morality and learning them causes one to keep them.

Since people are primates there seems to be an obstacle in becoming moral. For we have reason which perceives moral values but we also have our primate nature which goes in the opposite direction. So it does seem clear there is a need for work to get ourselves in alignment with objective morality.

In any case to be able to defend this any further I would have to go the the Guide and the commentary on the Guide by Joseph Albo. And there are limitations on my being able to do that.

When things were falling apart in my life, I knew I had to find one simple basic principle that I could hold onto to help me keep afloat. I decided that that principle had to be truth--to speak the truth always at all cost. I felt there was a kind of power in speaking the truth. That one who speaks the truth without any deviation gets a  protective shield of light.
And this worked in amazing ways. I can't count the times after I made that decision when I was literally rescued from the claws of death. And sometimes there were things less dramatic.

Also it seemed to me that to have a world view that corresponded with reality was important. And since there were lots of world views out there and my own world view at the time had serious questions on it I realized that it would be a help that if I myself spoke only the absolute truth and avoided any lie o white lie even by accident that that would help to come to the truth of reality.

The major problem today in the Jewish world is that of cults. And it is inevitable that the minute you walk in the door you will be confronted by someone who wants to traps you into one of their scams. This is completely pervasive in the insane religious world , and impossible to avoid.

Why do you have problems is a good question. This does not apply to you alone. I have thought long and hard about peoples problems, and mine in particular, and I have not come to any conclusion  And also during the years to learn Torah in a Lithuanian kind of yeshiva. Both these things seem to have a good effect on people that do them.



If there is no straight Litvak yeshiva around (straight means with no insane, charismatic leader), then learn at home. That is to have a of the Oral Law, the Two Talmuds, Mechilta, Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta. Also the basic Rishonim: Ramban, Ritva, Rosh, Rashba.
And the basic Poskim: Rambam, Tur, the big Shulchan Aruch with all the commentaries Taz, Shach, etc. The old editions. not the new ones which mess everything up.
You can get very cheap editions of all the above. When I first got to NY yeshivas I was shocked at how inexpensive  these books were. Even though the yeshiva itself had all these books I wanted my own copies for quick reference. In fact in almost any Mizrachi kind of yeshiva every student has his own cardboard or wooden box where he keeps these books near to where he sits and learns .

Yeshiva is incidentally a place for learning Torah for its own sake. This is an important issue because  nowadays there are so called yeshivas which learn Torah for money. And they encourage Baali Teshuva to drop out of collage and to become depend on charity and welfare like they are and these kind of places out to be shut down because they are damaging and cultic.

But to be frank I never saw such  thing in any NY yeshiva. Even my own Rosh Yeshiva ordered me to go to collage. NY yeshivas are definitely aware that Torah is not to be used for making money.

If people need an introduction to Torah before getting into the details, I can't give an exact idea.
But I think the Sefer Hachinuch was very good for me. It follows the order of the Mitzvot of the Rambam but gives a more thorough explanation of each mitzvah. Shimshon Refael Hirsh's books the Horev and The 19 Letters also seem to be very good. The major rule for getting an introduction to Torah is to avoid cults that divert and change to meaning of Torah to fit their hidden agenda.


The major problem today in the Jewish world is that of cults. And it is inevitable that the minute you walk in the door you will be confronted by someone who wants to traps you into one of their scams. This is completely pervasive in the insane religious world , and impossible to avoid. Thus in general I say to stay home to learn Torah until  people throw out the cults. And you know exactly what I mean.
{Lithuanian yeshivas are not cults but can be sometimes problematic. And judging by the current state of affairs it is a good idea to join one or to make one. But only on condition that it is elitist and lets in not noxious breezes from the insane religious world  cults.} The normal litvak yeshiva used to be very careful what kinds of books they would let in

Musar refers to books of ethics written during the Middle Ages.
The idea was to learn these books for character improvement. And some people took this to an extreme. Simcha Zissel had a school that learned Musar most of the day.
But I claim the main advantage of Musar is world view issues.
Without Musar the Torah can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean; especially if they learn Kabalah.



With Musar one gets a coherent idea of the world view of the Torah.


One way of learning Musar is when you are learning Musar you find sometimes some statement that relates to an area of character improvement that you know you need to work on.
It resonates with you. Then memorize it and say it every day right when you wake up in the morning and before you fall asleep.

Another advantage of Musar is it creates a meme that a community can organize itself around.
This is in fact what Musar yeshivas are and it accounts for the success of places like Brisk, Mir and Ponovitch. These are not just schools of learning Talmud. They are communities. And their central meme is Torah and Musar, not any fanatic insane central leader. This makes them what you could call "Torah communities." They are not perfect but from what I can tell they are the best thing out there.

When it comes to marrying and children I think the first thing is to ask yourself does the person you are thinking of marrying come from a good family. I mean genes. But more than genes. (That is: genes and character and fear of God.)

I saw the kind of people my parents were and I think that seeing the amazing kind of relationship they had gave me an idealistic picture of marriage. So I was pretty set of getting a girl with the best genes around.  And that happened. (In a very ironic way.) And I recommend this approach to anyone who will listen.

I can't say my wife's family was  exactly a good family. But I think much of their problems came from environment and the Holocaust and not from genes. The Holocaust did leave rather large scars on people that went through it. (People that go through traumatic events tend to be emotionally scarred.) [Her father  was a Jew running from the Nazis in occupied Europe. It was not fun, and he was kind of a difficult person. Not aggressive in deed, but somewhat  aggressive in word. And his wife had also some pretty bad experience and that left her also messed up--but in a way not apparent. I mean they had a happy marriage and good children but there was this under-layer of experiences that darkened everything. ]


At any rate, I also think the basic Torah approach to having children is important. That is not just going to  a natural body of water before sex. But also that the actual sex which could result in children must be Friday night after midnight. And it should be with every drop of holiness and concentration on God that you can manage.
{This mainly comes from the prayer-book of Jacob Emden that Rav Freifeld gave to me when I first arrived at his yeshiva, Shaar Yashuv.}(This is interesting because Rav Emden thought a good amount if the Zohar is from Moshe DeLeon and yet he uses the Zohar as source material. ) I myself have never had much interest in learning the Zohar but I have found the Ari Isaac Luria, absolutely compelling. and Reb Moshe Cordovaro also (the Remak). And I highly recommend their books.


Having children is the most important thing you can ever do. It is worth the effort to do it right.

Appendix:
1) Also don't expect the children are going to be different from the genes they come from. You might have a nice person but you know the gene pool they come from is stupid, dull or otherwise compromised. Then take my advice and run like the wind.

2) I heard from a friend recently how his an acquaintance had married a woman he thought was pure blood. She was white. But he did not know that she was actually a gypsy. Apparently there are white gypsies. And the children he had with her came out with the exact same character traits as gypsies --mainly a lust to steal.

3) This fact that one must find a good family is the reason the Lithuanian yeshiva world invites in Baali Teshuva but is non so quick to let them marry into their circles. This is perfectly justified.

The Villna Geon who considered learning Torah to be higher than all other mitzvot.
The Gra held that learning Torah is the highest service towards God.



But I think I should make it clear here my own opinion. I think that the Torah itself is clear that Devekut (attachment) with God is the ultimate goal. And I made a mistake once a long time ago pushing off Devekut in order to learn, and I think that was a serious mistake.
What the Gra issaying here then  is that learning Torah is the most effective means of coming to Devekut. But learning is not some kind of separate goal apart from Devekut.

Appendix
We know that the Gra was simply basing himself on the Jerusalem Talmud in Peah.

I tend to judge yeshivot  [yeshivas] based on the level of the classes that they give in the Talmud.
(But that standard does not apply to Kabalah yeshivas in Jerusalem. There my test would be how well they know the Ari and the Reshash [Shalom Sharabi]. ) [But I admit there are more criteria than just the level of the classes.]

But for classes in which the teacher is something along the lines of the teachers of the  classes at the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn -e.g. the Sukat David- I give the highest rating.

But remedial schools are not yeshivas.
Simple translation of the Gemara is clearly on the  kindergarten level. Simple translation and explanation of of Tosphot is slightly higher. But still on the level of a remedial courses.

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But the normal level of what a yeshiva should be is to have a teacher that has his own original ideas every day on the page in question like the Sukat David at the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. And that is the Gold Standard. The Ivy League.


After that there are many levels. But that is the minimum level for a place to have the real name of a "yeshiva." If they don't have that they are just a place of remedial work like a collage that teaches reading and  writing for students that never learned that in high school.

But if this is the case then there is no such thing as a yeshiva except in Israel and  Brooklyn. E.g. in Ponovitch and the great  Lithuanian Yeshivot in Jerusalem, Maalot HaTorah, Mir, Yeshivat HaGra.

Lakewood would not qualify  except as  a shiduch yeshiva, not as a place of real learning.


But if you take in other aspects of a yeshiva besides the level of the classes then things get more complicated. For example Brisk which has maybe the highest reputation because it takes in only the best students from the whole world. Yet I have not heard that the classes given are all that original.



 In Israel, Ponovitch is still the top.


In short then the Ivy league based on best teachers and students and real learning would still have to mean the great Lithuanian yeshivas--Ponovitch, Brisk, Mir, Maalot HaTorah, and in Brooklyn Chaim Berlin, the Mirrer Yeshiva, Torah VeDaat. [This is because I admit that there are more criteria than just the level of the teachers.]