There is a basic canon of Torah that is different than the Christian canon. The basic Torah cannon includes the written Torah which we have together with Christians but also the Oral Law which Christians don't accept.
But the Torah cannon is not fluid. You can't just write a book in Hebrew about Torah topics and say it is a part of the Oral Law.--even though people do this all the time. The reason they do this is the basic Torah cannon is hard to read. It is not light literature. And it is hard to understand. And it is against worship of people. If some person has  a particular figure he admires and he wants to worship him or her, they add some book or series of books that  make worship of that person to be considered kosher and desirable.


Appendix:
1) The Torah cannon is the regular "Tenach" (Old Testament), the two Talmuds, Mechilta, Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta, Torah Cohanim, Midrash Raba. It is  lot to read, but you could go through it in a year or two.  When you add the commentaries, it takes more time.
2) The Torah cannon also is different in the weight given to each section. The Oral Law is not given the same weight as the Written Law. We know it is just human beings trying to understand the Divine wisdom of Torah. But it has more weight that just anyone's opinion.
3) Halacha literature has a funny kind of status. Because it tends to stick with the Oral Law it partakes in some aspect of the respect we have for the Oral Law. It at least has the advantage that it is understandable. You don't need to spend two weeks on one page as you do when you study Talmud. But it has the disadvantage that it is not in fact the Oral Law. It is just someones opinion of what the oral law would say about some issue.
4) Kabalah also has a funny kind of status. It is not the Oral Law. But some people think it was handed down in some kind of secret tradition. Even so, it is not the Oral Law. It is, at best, a possible addition.
5) Shelomo Luria had a few choice words about the Rambam. Let's say he did not like the idea of anyone trying to rewrite the Oral Law--even someone of the stature of the Rambam. Nowadays the divorce between halacha and the Talmud is complete.  People that follow halacha don't know nor care what the Talmud says. And the modern Halacha books of the Charedi world are perversions of halacha as understood by the Talmud--even those of Rav Ovadia Joseph. Certainly Reb Ovadia did not intend this but the simplifications he introduced into a halacha are definite perversions.
E.g. you can crack nuts on Shabat and put the shells on the table. To say otherwise is a perversion of halacha. You can't make a pile. So what you have is people supposedly trying to make halacha simple but what they end up doing is distorting it into Picasso portraits.
And in fact even this is being stricter than you really have to be. Because that Mishna (Chapter Beit Shamai in Shabat where this issue comes from) is Beit Shamai--the Gemara reversed the order right there. The opinion of Beit Hillel right there is even shells of nuts that you can't eat are not mukza. [That is Rashi's opinion there on the page.] And that is  Stam Mishna (a mishna with no names) [Beit Hill and Beit Shamai is considered "stam"] coming after an argument and the Halacha is like Stam, Not to mention Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai who does not hold by mutza at all except for things that are not fit for any use and which one put away like figs on a roof to dry.[The halacha is in far like Rabbi Shimon, but the Talmud itself does state cases in which R. Shimon would agree there is muktza --so I am not using his opinion here to find a permission. I am just mentioning it as another factor to add to the role call.] And if you look at the reason for muktzah the Raavad brings, the reason for it don't apply when there is no public domain around. [600,000.]
So I am not saying Reb Ovadia is not right. Rather it is possible to simplify halacha without perverting it. Halacha today means taking the most strict opinion and making it stricter (in the name of making it "simple") and then presenting it as an unquestionable immutable law given at Mount Sinai.

So fine that Reb Ovadia wants to say that shells are muktza. Fine, he has plenty of support. All I am saying is when people write in his name not to peel the shells and put them on the table that is plainly false. And even the shells --it is not to everyone that they are mukza. What if not everyone wants to be strict?  But strict or not is not even the issue. It is the fact that the Talmud is considered irrelevant to this discussion. No one would even dream of opening up  a Gemara to discover a halacha. That is what I mean to say when I say the Halacha has been divorced from the Oral Law.

People believe in Torah and yet worship humans.

And this creates  cognitive dissonance. People believe in Torah and yet  worship humans. It is a true critique that I feel should not be ignored. [In fact, most of the so called religious world is subject to this phenomenon.]
Some Litvaks, like my friend Rav Silverman [pronounced Zilverman] in the Old City (Jerusalem), see this flaw and therefore decided that the Gra was right to dismiss the entire realm of anything coming from the Baal Shem Tov. [Even though the actual Cherem was on the school of  Magid from Meztrich.] SinceRav Nahman of Breslov was not a disciple of that school so the Cherem did not apply to him. The Cherem was not on the Baal Shem Tov or all his disciples. See the book that brings the actual letters.




Appendix:
1)There are other Litvaks [Lithuanian Jews] who see this flaw

There is a verse in the Torah which Rav Shick used as a proof of pantheism, "There is nothing without God" אין עוד מלבדו. But if you open the Rambam יסודי התורה א:ה you can see he explains that verse to mean there is nothing without God, not there is nothing but God.


There is a word that is used to describe the faith of the Torah--that is traditional Jewish Faith -Monotheism. Rav Shick has tried to present panentheism as traditional Jewish faith and some people are taken in by this scam because of lack of learning Torah.

Now Rav Shick himself was probably never aware that what he was teaching was not the Jewish faith. He never read the basic works of traditional authentic Jewish thought. That meant he never read the Guide of the Rambam, nor the Emunot VeDeot of Saadia Gaon or the Ibn Ezra. or the first chapter of the Chovot Levavot. So if all his reading consisted of Kabbalah, it is easy to see how he might have missed this basic fact of Jewish faith--monotheism.

Not that I have anything in particular against pantheism as a philosophical possibility. Just I am not thrilled when it is presented as Jewish faith.


So Rav Shick made an honest mistake. But it is no credit to him if we continue believing this mistake.The Torah is Monotheistic.]

The main idea of Israel is the idea of protection of individual rights for everyone in its borders-regardless of faith. This is displayed very well in the case of enemies of Jews that live in Israel that work to kill Jews and yet their rights are still respected unless they actually break some law. It is a degree of respect for individual rights that you don't see anywhere else.

At any rate the only way that I can see one can defend the state of Israel is from a libertarian point of view, of respect and protection for all people in its borders--even those that ought not to be protected.



 There is something about the superorganism and the State that is interesting at least. All I am saying is that you can't defend any state from the standpoint of Hegel because I just don't think nationalism is that great of a principle. While people certainly choose their morality based on group identity but I see that as a negative thing. I think it is better to choose ones morality based on principles that are perceivable by reason.

In Israel, there is a tight kind of community that believes in just learning Torah. This is different from the American yeshiva world, in  that going to work in Israel is considered a bad thing. The thing that keeps this going is government stipends from the State of Israel. Some use this stipend system even though they could not care less about learning Torah. But that is to be expected with any kind of institution. There will always be people around that will try to misuse it.
In any case, it seems to be an ideal situation for people that want to learn Torah their whole lives. And some people manage within this system fairly well.  I can tell by a glance who is learning Torah seriously, and who is just playing games. And I can tell there are a considerable number of people that are very much into the idea of sitting and learning all their lives for the sake of Torah alone. You don't see this much in the USA, even if people say that that is what they are doing. But in Israel you see this in  cities where there are traditional Lithuanian yeshivas.

I should mention this is an ideal I believe in, even if I don't have the merit to do it myself.

On the other hand there is a parallel community of Religious Zionist yeshivas that do believe in work and this system also I approve of. And each one I think is good and I have no preference one over the other. But it is when I see abuse of either system that bothers me.
The advantage of the Religious Zionist is that you see less abuse of the system. If people want money, they work.  If they are satisfied with little, they learn. You don't get that freedom in the Lithuanian yeshivas. But in the Lithuanian yeshivas, you get a degree of learning that is of the highest quality.
Both systems and communities complement themselves. It is like a natural ecosystem with its natural balance.
I cant stress enough how essential this idea of sitting and learning ones whole life is in the Israeli system. And the source of the idea is legitimate. [See the Nefesh HaChaim from Chaim from Voloshin. He brings the main sources. But you can see this yourself in the Gemara and Rambam.] And throughout the ages this was considered the highest ideal. It is just that it was never realizable until the State of Israel was born. Before that it was kind of ad hoc. The best a person could do who wanted to be learning was to accept some rabbinical post but that often had the unfortunate effect of taking ones time away from Torah. There never was sufficient funds in any community to support anyone who wanted to get married and still spend all their time learning. So people found arrangements with rich father-in-laws. I am not saying you have to like this, or agree with this. It is just that you have to understand it in order to understand what the Litvak yeshiva world in Israel sees as the goal of life.
But in the USA you see less of this, perhaps because of the expenses involved.
Certainly I saw plenty of people in the three great NY yeshivas, Chaim Berlin, Mirrer, and Torah VeDaat that also wanted to spend their whole lives learning Torah and somehow managed it. But in no case did I ever see this without the support of the wife.

 I would have to say the Religious Zionist approach is probably closer to the actual path of the Torah.
Mainly because as you have guessed that living off charity ones whole life is not the path of Torah. And in the USA, I have even seen places that claim Torah is a legitimate means of making money in order to get people to support their kollels. [That is, of course, a lie; and a malicious one at that. It is meant to scam people.] So there are enough kinks in this system to get me thinking the Religious Zionist approach is better. Torah with Work. And if one does Torah alone, then he does not lie about what it is he is doing. Torah is not a means for a living. Rather there is a kind of permission  (to some opinions) to accept charity in order to learn. But that is all it is -- charity.

דברים שבלב אינם דברים

Words in the heart are not words

The two blank areas are where we do not know what Rav Shach and the Rashba would say. [Unless I could get around to learning this with my learning partner.]

I mean we have Truma and kadshim where we know words in the heart are words and we have an open Gemara in Shavuot circa 26 that says we don't learn from them because of the rule שני כתובים הבאים כאחד אין מלמדים
Marriage is an act so we clearly need words. Buying and selling are acts so we need words to show intention.

See Kidushin 49b and the Rashba there , and Ketubot 75 and the Tosphot there.
Rambam Hilchot Shavuot 3 about an oath to a person that is using violence.
And what about Chametz and הפקר letting go and abandoning something. מבטלו בלבו ודיו he nullifies the Chametz in his heart and that is that." What about דברים שבלב אינם דברים

The Golden Calf and Joining something to God.

R. Meir said that if not for the vav in "These are your gods Israel which brought you out of Egypt," the Jewish people would have been destroyed. The vav meant they were not denying that God brought them out, but rather God and the Golden calf. ["These are your gods," not "this is your god"].
R. Shimon Ben Yochai said joining (שיתוף) is liable destruction. So rather it means they desired many gods.
 How is R Shimon answering R Meir?
I think he is claiming "joining" is worse than regular idolatry.
At least that is how Rashi explains this saying that they in fact accepted other gods.
In any case, I think we can see clearly from this Gemara what the problem with the Golden Calf was. It was either adding something to god [that is R Meir's opinion] or it was worshiping another god in which case joining would have been worse.

Now once I was connected with Moharosh's group in Safed and I think they were giving hell to the local rav. [I am not sure of all the details but I think they had tried to take over a local building under building 7, to make it a Breslov shul. That is a law in Israel that once a building has been made into a synagogue you can't do anything with it after that.] In any case the Rav was bothered and so made  a speech that was critical of Breslov. The idea of the speech was that the problem with the golden calf was not that they denied God but they said the God is everywhere and in everything and so it was the part of God in the Golden Calf that brought them out of Egypt. I felt he was being critical of me, but later I decided that I was mistaken in that notion. [Later he invited me back to the community after I had left so clearly he was not mad at me. ] Rather I think he was just being critical of that group. But was that in fact the problem with the Golden Calf?  Not according to our Gemara here in Sanhedrin 63. Here in Sanhedrin 63, the Gemara is thinking God  made the world and he is not the world. The trouble with the Golden Calf was adding something onto God. "Joining."
But what that rav said might be true anyway. It is just that you don't see it in our Gemara. They were not subtracting but rather they were adding.