In straight Litvak (Lithuanian) yeshivas there is a period devoted to halacha. Jewish law.

And I have an idea of how to go about halacha. I was confused about this issue for some time for the same reasons that most people have problems about halacha.

  But I think I have come to a kind of solution or resolution of the matter that I would like to share.
I suggest starting with the Tur and Beit Joseph. And then the regular Shulchan Aruch written by the Beit Yoseph with the commentaries on the page. Then, if you have time, the Aruch HaShulchan- which I think is very great Halacha book.

  I wanted to mention why my idea is important. The idea here is that the Shulchan Aruch was never written to a represent a decision. It was written as a short reminder of what Joseph Karo wrote in the Tur. And the Beit Joseph on the Tur was also does not represent the actual opinion of the Beit Yoseph. He wrote in his introduction that he would not be writing his actual opinion but instead would say over the ideas of the rishonim and conclude with telling people what the majority opinion between the Rif, Rambam, and Rosh was. This was his idea of a feasible compromise but not his actual opinion of the halacha. The Mishna Torah itself needs the background of Talmud as the Rambam wrote at the beginning of the Mishna Torah that it  is what one should learn after finishing the Old Testament. "One needs no book between reading the Old Testament and this book." But the actual authority resides in the Talmud Bavli and he writes that that is the final court of law--not his book but the actual decisions of the Talmud. When questioned about his decisions by the wise men of Luniel, he never claimed divine spirit but rather showed how his decision flowed naturally from the treatment of the Talmud. And he admitted a mistake when confronted with it as brought in his letters.

I can't see much good in  cults. To me they seem negative. Not just are they enemies of Israel but the worship of human beings instead of the worship of God seems to me to be trickery.

I mean if they want to worship some human beings then fine, let them. But why try to trick people and claim that they are following Torah. To me it seems like fraud.

I hope this does not count as anything negative towards any true tzadik. For true tzaddikim [saints] are important. But in general  tzadikim are not true tzaddikim. It might all have started out well with the Baal Shem Tov but it did not take long to deteriorate.  

The Gra saw it is kelipat Noga the kelipa of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That is in modern terms the intermediate zone. Mainly  tzadikim get caught up in this zone which they interpret as enlightenment. This realm gives them powers and miracles. But it is all seduction to give them power to seduce others and pull them in. 
In fact this all boils down to the argument between the 'Rambam and the Ramban' about idolatry. To the 'Rambam there is nothing there. The Torah forbids it because it is dumb. To the Ramban' there is something there--very powerful forces. But the Torah forbids this because it is wrong. And furthermore the Ramban's approach is not dependent on whether those forces are good or evil. He divides idolatry into different parts. Worship of forces of evil. Worship of angels. Worship of humans. But all still come under the prohibition.  

How to understand the Torah. Most people reading the Torah are not Jewish.
So how does one with limited background understand Torah? Simple. Sefer Hachinuch, and the Horev from Shimshon Refael Hirsch. Also Rav Kook, if you can find his books.
These three people give a good idea of what the Old Testament is about in an accurate way that is not watered down, and yet understandable. And they deal directly with the question of "How to live according to the Torah?" and show this from the Torah itself.
They also are far from cultist doctrines that are so much a part of the world of the insane religious world  today.

The first step towards understanding Torah is to run away from anything that smells like a cult where people are long practiced at falsifying Torah. Things that smell like cults as a rule are cults.[And I am unhappy with cults. Jewish or not. My recommendation is to get rid of them with as much force as necessary. I could make a list but I am sure no one needs one. What is a cult is only too abundantly clear,]

"Scripture alone" and or individual interpretation is not  a principle in understanding Torah.  

In the Christian world this, in fact, was a principle. The only authority for the radical reformers was scripture, sola scriptura, scripture only. Then they start realizing that different people can interpret scripture differently. They were very familiar with medieval Christian ways of interpreting scripture to have several different meanings and layers of meanings. And so they say, well the predominant guide of scripture isn't going to be just scripture; it's going to be one particular meaning of scripture. And that's sensus literalis.

Now it's rather debatable what they meant by "the literal sense" because some of these reformers said that the literal sense of scripture could even be a prophetic sense, so they still said that the literal sense of scripture could be in a Psalm when the Psalm says, "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand.'" Well they knew that the text if you're interested in an ancient text would be referring to the Davidic King, but they also said that Psalm also could refer to Jesus, even in its literal sense. The literal sense that they were talking about in the Reformation was not necessarily what we would call the historical critical sense. It was what they took it to be the most fundamental plain sense meaning of the text. So that was the literal sense. Then again they realized the more they did this that Protestant churches started splitting all over the place. Presbyterians and Calvinists split off from the Lutherans, the Anabaptists split off from the Reformation. And then you have a rise of so many Protestant movements that the idea that scripture alone could settle debates and give you a foundation started becoming questionable.

There is a lot to talk about here but the advantage of Rav Kook and Rav Shimshon Hirsch is there is a basic idea that the laws of the Torah were meant to be obeyed. That is a good step in understanding Torah. And they don't read into it what they want. No eisegesis.

On the other hand there still has not come any book that deals with the problem of cults in a Jewish context. The reason being that the insane religious world  as it exists today is a large cult with lots of sub cults within. Many of these sub cults in the insane religious world  are utterly and clinically insane. even though they have vast sums of money with which to scam people.


  Furthermore most are enemies of Israel.

Appendix:

(1) To understand Torah in a more detailed way if you have finished the books of the Old Testament, Shimshon Refael Hirsch, and Rav Kook. then it is time to do the Oral Law.
That means to do a 1/2 page of Talmud in order every day with Rashi and Tosphot. [This should take no more than ten minutes per day.] You should just say the words and go on. If you don't understand at first, don't worry because eventually you will understand when you review the material again. And if  there remain some things you don't understand, so what? For the greatness of a lot of learning goes above and beyond everything else.
And what you don't understand in this world you will merit to understand in the next world.
Then at that point you should start the Jerusalem Talmud. After that then the Sifra, Sifi, Tosefta and Midrashim. In this way you will have finished the entire Oral Law after a couple of years. All in an easy simple way that leaves you time for your other important activities. [And in fact, if you could expand on your learning Torah time, that might be recommended as Torah is above everything.]
(2) The idea in this essay is how to understand Torah. I am not dealing here with how to answer questions on Torah after you have understood it.  Reason perceives universals. Universals as applied to the human realm are moral values. But desire for social acceptance and other things makes that people ignore reason when it comes to moral values. So we need some kind of non intuitive immediate knowledge in order to maintain any kind of moral standard. That is what Torah is.
But to defend Torah in more detail I think would take a larger process than  a short essay. And to do so I would have to trace my own thought in this matter over  several years.
Mainly I came to Torah by means of two things. One is I was raised Jewish. But of course that is not enough. I was also something I saw in my parent's home that impressed me. Some kind of wholesomeness and love and purity. Something amazing. And then there was a certain amount of philosophical reading outside my regular courses in school. Buddhism, Dante, Spinoza, Plato, Karl Marx, Sartre, Camus, Herman Hesse and the little known 1001 Chinese philosophies.  After all that there was something about Torah.  

White Anglo Saxon Protestants.

If there is  a kind of hatred towards Wasps, is it justified? In any case in America there seems to be a  visceral bias against White Anglo Saxon Protestants.
Is this justified? To me it seems not. While I can hope that everyone would just keep the Written and Oral Law, I don't think harboring  a grudge against people that are at least trying to keep Torah to the  best of their understanding is very good.
I find an attitude towards Wasps that is hostile and toward Muslims as friendly to be strange. The way I see it Muslims are sweet and wonderful until that second that they decide to lock out the captain and crash the airplane, with all passengers on board. Muslims are ticking time bombs.

There is an obligation to finish all the Torah.

There is an obligation to finish all the Torah. This you can see in a few statements from the Talmud and the Gra brings them down. You might have noticed them all brought in books of Musar. The idea is when a person gets to the next world, God asks him, "Did you you learn The Old Testament? Did you learn Mishna?" If he says "Yes" he is then asked, "Did you learn Gemara?" And it gets up to the "Work of the Chariot."
It is not a hard statement of the Talmud to find because it is brought in lots of books of Musar. But the implications are almost universally ignored. It means you really have to have gone through the entire Old Testament, Talmud Yerushalimi,  and the Halachic and Agadic Midrashim. [Sifra, Sifri, Mechilta, Midrash Raba.]
I heard Rav Shick from Yavniel say once that without the path of learning of Sichot Haran 76 it is impossible to do this. [Lithuanians Jews in fact do this. Rav Kinyevski from Ponovitch finishes this material every year.]
He said he has students learning by him that have learned and finished rishonim that most people have never even heard of like Sefer Haegoz. He had one student I remember that used to finish the Talmud every month.
[Lithuanians Jews in fact do this. Rav Kinyevski from Ponovitch finishes this material every year.]

Since according to this statement of the Sages the obligation includes the work of Creation which to the Rambam means Physics  I decided to do the same with Physics. That is to go through the basic material. Even though there are great books out there I took Joos's Theoretical Physics and then Quantum Theory,  Quantum Field Theory, and a couple of  books on String Theory. And I tried the same with Math.That was a little harder. But I tried to at least go through Algebraic Topology by Allen Hatcher.

Trust in God as it was translated at the Mir yeshiva in Brooklyn

Trust in God as it was translated at the Mir yeshiva in Brooklyn meant to learn Torah and not to worry about what will come in the future.
Or to be more explicate it meant as a unmarried student just to learn Torah according to the regular four year program at the yeshiva.

The idea was that after one would be married somehow things would work out if one trusts in God.
[The concept of God here is more than the First Cause. It is the First cause that made Nature, but sometimes interacts with  the world in a way above Nature. Also there are intermediate realms, like a moral plane that interacts with the world.]


Now according to the view of the Torah, we have two kinds of trust: One of the Duties of the Heart חובות לבבות that is trust with effort. That is to do what is necessary but also to trust that God will make things work out in the way that he wants.

The other kind is of the Gra that one needs no effort and in fact it is better not to do any effort to get things, but to put everything into God's hands. [This idea is attributed to the Ramban also by Israel Salanter.]


[When I  saw the Torah being used a   means to make money, I got turned off.
But that is just abuse of a high ideal--and a good ideal. People should learn Torah and trust in God. Abusus non tollit usum. Abuse does not cancel use.

Steven Dutch:
Whether religion or unbelief have been sources of good or evil are absolutely irrelevant to anything. The only issue of any significance is whether a position is true. If it's also good, that's a side benefit. I would like nothing better than to find ways around the speed of light and the laws of thermodynamics, but they are still true even if I don't like how they affect things I'd like to do. If something is true but evil, then that's something we have to deal with. Is it at all possible that the Universe was not designed by Walt Disney? Is it possible that our current prejudices  ... may be more based on sentimentality than reason?

And another idea from Steven Dutch which I think applies to Judaism: A lot of people will misunderstand the religion and stress trivial issues, ignore or downplay significant ones, or garble concepts. In extreme cases people who disagree with the established religion will attempt to redirect it into a form very different from the original, or take it over entirely. The Gnostics of the early Christian era who cast Persian mystery religions in Christian terms are a good example. Many people will use the religion to rationalize other motives; they will use it as a pretext for prejudice, or dominating others, or lashing out at authority.
Some will adhere to the established religion out of inertia. They feel a need for some kind of spiritual activity, and the established religion is the best (or only) game in town. Some will adhere to the established religion out of fear. They may not really believe in the established religion, but are afraid of misfortune or damnation if they abandon it. Some will adhere to the established religion primarily as a means of securing good fortune, as a security blanket, or as a means of easing guilt feelings. Often they will select elements of the religion for emphasis and ignore other elements.
 Many will adhere to the established religion for social acceptance. They may like participating in special occasions, or may value the religion as a symbol of national or group identity. Some will adhere to the established religion for cynical reasons. They may secretly disbelieve everything about the religion but go through the motions for personal advantage, reputation, or social standing or, in really intolerant societies, merely to stay out of trouble.
Once a religion becomes really established, the religion itself can be a route to power, prestige, and privilege. Not only will some people adhere to the religion for cynical reasons, they will become entrenched at its very center.

   All the above Professor Dutch says is dishonest. The only honest approaches are these: Some will sincerely believe in the established religion, will critically evaluate its teachings, and will attempt seriously to model their lives on its tenets. Some will decide they do not believe in the religion at all. If the society is reasonably open, they may either become nonreligious or convert to something else. In intolerant societies, they may go through the motions of belief merely to stay out of trouble. Some will reject the religion to the point of revolt and active opposition. Some will adhere to the established religion out of sincere conviction but will disagree with important tenets. They will attempt to recast the religion in more personally palatable terms, or possibly work to redirect the religion itself into more agreeable lines. The changes may be real reforms or merely redefinition into something more palatable.

Appendix: "Trust in God" was a major issue at the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. The reason for this in part was that it was a Musar Yeshiva. That means a yeshiva that introduced Ethics (Musar) into part of the daily sessions of learning.  "Ethics" here does not mean worldview issue or what is called hashkafa. It means simple books about ethical behaviour. Now part of the reason I think this was important at the Mir is that the students there were not learning Yore Deah for ordination. The entire yeshiva was learning Torah  because one is supposed to learn Torah. So people needed a kind of justification for what they were doing. 
Later on I noticed that this emphasis on trust in God was much less in other places. Sometimes it was completely absent. But at the Mir it was definitely a part of what was going on  and that affected my own worldview since then. [Just to prove my point there was a whole shelf at the yeshiva (in the Musar section) of about 15 volumes of the מדרגת  האדם  The Sum of Man the book by Joseph Yozel Horwitz. The major theme there is trust in God.

It should be noted that the trust in God at the Mir Yeshiva in NY was in order to learn Torah. That is the idea was you trust in God so that you will not have obstacles towards learning Torah.  It is directed towards removing obstacles from learning. The Gra has this in the opposite way. He says the entire purpose of Torah is to come to trust in God.

Reform Judaism

There are positions of Reform Judaism that I disagree with. Judaism is really about Torah. The Oral and Written Torah.
(Judaism is not equal to  liberal politics. Everything in Left wing politics is against Israel and the Torah.  Democrats are definitely the worst enemies of Israel since the Nazis.)

But idolatry  has become part and parcel of the insane religious world .
So my position is that we all need to keep Torah, but that no one is really doing it.
The closest I have seen is in Lithuanian kind of yeshivas. The best of them is Ponovitch. And in fact the best of all Torah books has come out of Ponovitch, the Avi Ezri on the Rambam and the Kehilat Yaakov.

While the Litvak world is not perfect, I saw enough horrifying stuff in the rest of the insane religious world  to make me feel the insane religious world  is been absorbed into the Sitra Achra. I know I am not the only one who has experienced this but I also know people would rather no discuss their unpleasant experiences. I any case I have to tell and warn people of the truth. I expect no one will listen but at least I have fulfilled my obligation to warn people to stay away from a  bad thing.