Even though I have  a great deal of respect for Isaac Luria, and I was very inspired by his writings, still I think that it makes more sense to learn Talmud. This is a shift in my thinking. For  a few years back I used to think learning the writings of the Ari  was the most important kind of learning Torah one could do.

That thinking was based on various statements in the introduction of the Eitz Chaim itself and also the Ramchal's Pri Eitz Chaim. At some point I saw the statement of the Rambam that just  as one can't add or subtract from the written Law so with the Oral Law.  So I realized that although the Ari is an important interpretation of the Torah still it does not count as the Oral or Written Law.
That is just as the written law is fixed--the Old Testament, so the writings that constitute the Oral Law  that were complied during the period of the Tenaim and Amoraim constitute the Oral Law.

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Baali Teshuva [Newly religious] in the USA are animated by Torah. The Torah literally gives them a kind of high--but more powerful than a drug high--because the Torah high has numinousity and meaning. It has ontological significance.
Baali Teshuva in Israel are animated by group identity, by animosity towards the State of Israel and by the particular Charismatic leader they happen to be following.

How this sad state came about I don't know. But there is a cure. That is to learn Torah in the straight Lithuanian way--and stop the nonsense. At least the police are looking for the con men that are the leaders of Breslov. But why it took the Israeli Police this long to start an investigation is beyond me.
The rule is anyone under the excommunication of the Gra is a con man.Take it or leave it. But that is a fact.

The basic idea of a  excommunication is subject to a debate between the Beit Yoseph and the Rashbatz. The Rashbatz considers it to be in the category of  איסר which has the law of neder (vow). That means it חל (-it applies) on the object and even in the case of a mitzah.
The Beit Yoseph thinks we should consider it to have the stringency of both a  neder vow and a שבוע
The Magid Mishna brings an open Gemara that it has the law of a neder.

[Thus the excommunication that was signed by the Gaon of Villna is still in force and those that ignore it are in the category of transgressing a vow.]]

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I saw there has come out a book on Jews that were in Berlin during WWII. That is they were hidden  by Germans during the war. This I suppose must apply to the grandparents of my wife, Leah. They were definitely German Jews and were in Berlin during WWII. But how they managed to survive I never inquired about except just to ask once and never got any answer. It was like people that go through some kind of hard experience and afterwards cant talk about it.

My wife's mother herself had been on the kinder transport so she did not have any first hand information about how her parents had survived. 

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