What I would like to do would be to begin a new era of learning Torah that would concentrate on Tosphot. [Tosphot is the commentary on the side of the Gemara on the outside of the page.]
This is not to belittle the value of the contribution of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and his whole school of thought. [That is: Chidushei HaRambam by Reb Chaim, Baruch Ber, Shimon Skop, Elazar Menachem Shach.]
But it seems to me that this whole track of thought is really more relevant to halacaha than to learning the Gemara.
And in fact, I do think that one should go through the Rambam--[every last word that he ever wrote including his son Reb Avraham] with the commentaries on the page and then do the whole Reb Chaim straight and then the Avi Ezri which I think is the most important book to be printed in the last hundred years.
But there is something about Tosphot I think people are missing. And I have noted this for many years.

It all began in my first yeshiva where my teacher was Naphtali Yegear. He had a really intense and deep way of looking  at Tosphot. [That was in a Baal Teshuva Yeshiva in Far Rockaway.] And I thought that that is what everyone else was doing. But then I got to the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn  and even though it is an Ivy League school, still there was something I was missing about the way Naphtali Yeager was learning.

I can't  make up for lost time. But at least I would like to share with people this idea of how great and significant Tosphot is.


But as I wrote elsewhere, I have no secret formula for getting into Tosphot. You can keep reviewing it by yourself for a month or so until you start to see the depths. Or you can get a smart learning partner. For reference it is good to have on hand the R. Akiva Eiger. And the first thing I always do is to look at the Mahrasha and Maharam.
It has always surprised me and in fact shocked me to see people that thought they understood the Gemara or Halacha without knowing or  understanding Tosphot.

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Torah of the Dark Side [Sitra Achra]

That not everything people claim is Torah is in fact Torah.
Much of what people claim is Torah, is from the demons. And it is for this reason, I will in general avoid teachers  that arrogance and rudeness characterizes them. And therefore whatever they teach must be from the demons, and are consciousness traps. [The arrogance and rudeness are sure signs  according  that their Torah is from the Dark Side. That means it sounds good, but it leads one to destruction.]

And it is this exact same reason that I regard highly  Lithuanian yeshivas. It is the humility I see there that indicates to me that they are good people.


In any case, what I recommend  in order to be safe from the Torah of the Dark Side is to learn authentic Torah= the Old Testament (which is the written law) and the Oral Law (Bavli, Yerushalmi, Sifri, Sifra). [When doing Talmud you don't have to do every Rashi. But you do have to do Tosphot. Rashi is just for understanding the page. Tosphot is for understanding the subject.] Mainly I would avoid mystics. But that does not mean all of them.  And I like Issac Luria, Moshe Cardovero, Avraham Abulafia,  Yaakov Abuchatzeira, and Shalom Sharabi.
They are from the side of good but still learning them does take a certain degree of caution.

I have a lot of confidence in the power of the Torah to change everything in peoples lives.
My suggestion is mainly to learn Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot. For that is the Oral Law.
I get the impression that not everyone feels the same way as I do but I think that is because they have not tried it. It is like ice cream. How can someone not like ice cream?
You might intellectual questions about ice cream. Were the cows treated properly? Was the factory inspected? Is it good for you? But how can someone not like ice cream if they have at least tasted it? The Torah is the same thing.
One condition:
This works as long as you are not learning pseudo Torah, and as long as you are not learning from the charlatans and scam artists that put on the right clothing to make it seem like they know Torah.


And there are lots of scam artists. The way to avoid them is to make sure you learn Torah only in a legitimate, name brand Lithuanian Yeshiva. That is Ponovitch, Brisk, Merkaz HaRav [in Israel] and  Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaath and the Mirrer in NY. Nothing else.
Better to have nothing than to buy a fake product. Don't accept anything but the name brands or their legitimate branches.

The Torah is also libertarian. It protects liberty by means of negative commandments. For example, instead of arguing for protection of personal liberty and limited government based on the Constitution of the USA and the Bill of Rights, the Torah says it all simply "Thou shalt not steal."

An nice site for people that wish to turn the USA back into a citadel of freedom.
I wish them success.


Freedom is important and I think Ann Rand is an important foundation of liberty. But Liberty I think needs a foundation in the Kant school of thought. Empiricism or any of the other justification of liberty and freedom seem to be to fall short.  Today I think it is mainly the Intuitionist school of G.E. Moore, Prichard, and Michael Huemer that defend liberty, but I think the Institutionist school is a type of quietism. That is to say it is a kind of way for saying you have questions and that is OK because any answer will be impossible to defend.

But that does not mean to vote libertarian. As far as I can see every libertarian candidate has just split the republican vote and effectively given the elections to the Democrats.

The Torah is also libertarian. It protects liberty by means of negative commandments. For example, instead of arguing for protection of  personal liberty and limited government based on the Constitution of the USA and the Bill of Rights, the Torah says it all simply  "Thou shalt not steal."
And in teh Torah there is no special permission given to the King to steal any more than you the local Mafia. As far as the Torah is concerned everyone is equal. Though shalt not steal refers to the loftiest to the lowest.

Music written for the glory of God.

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Gemara Rashi Tosphot

This last one might need some editing but I have to run to my Gemara Rashi and Tosphot session.



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There is a certain amount of Sitra Achra [Dark Side] that got mixed up with Torah world. And that is the major reason that Reform Judaism is right. They might not be doing this by intention, but at least subconsciously they are trying to keep the Torah and at the same time avoid the Sitra Achra problems.
Of course Reform Jews should keep all the mitzvot, down to the last drop. But they are trying to avoid the idolatry and Dark Side that seems inescapable when people get involved in more religious types of groups.

So while I see Torah as a cure for all evils,--but it has to be Torah from the realm of holiness.

Torah of the Sitra Achra is not my own idea of a good time.

However, I am fairly happy with Lithuanian types of yeshivas. As long as someone is following the Gra and the Gedolei Lita [the Lithuanian type of Rosh Yeshiva] I think they are safe.

I say this because on this blog I try to focus on the positive aspects of Torah. But I would be amiss if I did not warn people about the negative forces. And that is after all why most people became Reform and Conservative. They were trying to avoid the Sitra Achra.

[The Torah of the Sitra Achra.
It is hard to know how to deal with this problem. My suggestion is to learn Musar. That is the books of ethics that were written during the Middle Ages along the lines of the Chovot Levavot and the books from the direct disciples of Israel Salanter which deal with Ethics. I have heard of other solutions but from what I can tell all other solutions to this dilemma lead directly into the  dark side.
Musar is the only thing which from what I can tell works to any degree.

But even Musar has problems. Kabalah got into all Musar books and that changed the basic approach of Torah and that Kabalah thing does seem to be the type of thing in which people think they are gaining holiness, but in fact losing it. Not because of any problem in the Ari himself, but people usually get into Kabala without having finished the entire oral Torah first. The Ari warned about this himself.

The way that the Sitra Achra (the Dark Side) seduces people is by saying "Come and do a mitzvah."
 Reb Chaim from Voloshin said a similar idea. "It is better to sit in your room and twidde your thumbs than to seek mitzvot."  That is in the sidur HaGra in a small booklet printed in the back of statements and halachas from the Gra and Reb Chaim