I feel like Kant in a specific way. Just like Kant found himself between two schools of thought and found something right in each one--and also something wrong. So also I feel I am in a similar kind of situation. I was in two great yeshivas in NY and saw a lot of what is right about learning the Oral and Written Law. But I also saw what is wrong. But I also grew up in an amazing home environment with my parents and brothers. My parents were the most amazing, wholesome, compassionate, responsible, loving,  and sincere people I have ever met. Yet there was something missing-- learning Torah. So what I feel I need to do is to find some middle ground. Torah with work and the natural sciences is my formula.

The Mishna says, "All Torah that does not have work with it is worthless." {Pirkei Avot chapter 2} You can say we "don't poskin [decide the law] that way" because it is a debate between Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai and Rabbi Ishmael. However we do poskin [decide the law] that way. It is an open Halacha in the Rambam.

People ought to learn Torah in the straight Lithuanian yeshiva path. Cancel all classes in pseudo Torah. [And most classes in "Torah" are pseudo Torah. One needs to be extra careful about from whom he or she learns Torah. Sadly most people that present themselves-as teaching Torah are teaching Torah from the Sitra Achra. It is hard to find legitimate Torah nowadays. What might be the best thing is to stay home and get a regular Talmud and go through it yourself--every last word of Gemara. Rashi, Tosphot, Maharsha, and Maharam from Lublin. When you learn the actual Oral Torah yourself at least you know you are getting the real thing.]

 But they also should work and not be using Torah as a way to get charity money.

Newton was a straight monotheist

My learning partner noticed that Newton was a straight monotheist. That is he believed in God but not the Trinity. I mentioned that there is a simple proof against the Trinity. It is this: Christianity is committed to two contradictory theses. One is that  a=g (God), b=g, and c =g. But a is not equal to b is not equal to c. That is the Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Ghost is God. But the Father is not equal to the Son. The Son is not equal to the Holy Ghost. 
But to knock Christianity over this issue does not seem to me to be  a good idea. The reason is that I think that Christianity misinterpreted what Jesus was saying. At the time there was no example of a Jewish Tzadik for Christians to understand what he was doing and what he was about.

The idea of "My father and I are one" is a simple expression of דביקות-Devekut -attachment with God. When one feels the light of God on him, and flowing through him, he can say he is "One with God." That does not mean the Trinity. But at the time how could anyone have understood this? The only similar types were prophets, but that was clearly not what was going on.

If not for this mistake, Jesus would simply have become another tzadik in the spectrum of Jewish Tzadikim.


That is not the same as a saint. A tzadik brings something special in the world. And people that follow that tzadik can gain. But they can wreak up the whole thing also.

In any case, the whole thing seems like a distraction from sitting and learning Torah.  But this seems like an important enough subject for me to at least state my opinion about it.  I have often found that when I need help in some way it is generally Christians that will help. The idea behind this I think is that every tzadik brings something special into the world. Thus the idea of compassion got into people that go along with that belief system. The problems however is the idea that the commandments were nullified. Also there is the problem with worship of a person. 

A nice thing about the Lithuanian yeshiva approach it that it tends to combine numinous holy and powerful experiences of learning and keeping Torah with great intensity along with a remarkable lack of religious delusions.  In fact, anything that even seems like  grandiosity is rigorously exuded.
To some degree this maybe over done. They tend to err on the side of caution. But judging by how many delusional religious fanatics there are than wander into Litvak yeshivas it seems that they are justified.

This leaves us with the question how to discern between delusion and authentic religious experience?
Probably there is no way.   

It is impossible to come to authentic Torah without a connection with the Gra. Each tzadik has his special area.

 I don't think  any saint/tzadik comes into the world for the same  reason as another. We try to define these people in certain ways and fit them into some pre-defined category.
But they cant be defined because each one receives a different ray of light from the Divine source.

What makes this confusing is the are the charlatans that .act the act and  other types that get their powers from the dark side.

But in any case the concept of a tzadik is a great conceptual tool--especially because there were in the past some people that fit the bill.
There were prophets that received one kind of ray of divine light. sometimes prophecy. sometimes miracles.there were people like the Ari that had a different kind of divine light. The Gra had his kind of special connection with Torah. It is impossible to come to authentic Torah without a connection with the Gra. Each tzadik has his special area.

I am looking for an argument that can justify learning Torah for its own sake. (When I say Torah I mean authentic Torah. Not what is always presented nowadays as Torah. By "real Torah" I mean the Old Testament and the פירוש המקובל--the traditional books that actually explained the written law according to the way the had been understood--that is the two Talmuds). You can bet that nowadays when ever you hear about someone giving a class in Torah that it is never about authentic Torah. It is always pseudo Torah.

In any case I am still looking for an argument to present here to justify learning Torah for its own sake.--That is to learn Torah without being paid for it. As we find by a guard of a lost object that when he receives  a monetary reward for it it is not a mitzvah. That is I am not trying to justify kollels. But I am also not trying to attack kollels.

Consequential-ism claims an act is justified if its consequences are good. But that is not what  I am looking for here. I want to claim learning Torah is good- regardless of consequences. This can be hard to say. Do I think even if it has bad consequences that it is still overriding? That seems a bit too far to go. Still what you see in the Gra and his disciple Reb Chaim from Voloshin is that Torah for its own sake is the highest of all mitzvot. 
What I am suggesting is that learning Torah for its own sake is, in fact, the highest mitzvah, but that making yeshivas might not be. For all we know someone might be learning Torah for money or some other reason. And that makes it not Torah for its own sake.  But if you are learning Torah at home and not for money, then you know why you are doing it. 

What is also possible to to take the local place where people congregate, and to make it  a place of Torah. That means to set it aside for authentic Torah. 
The religious world believes in in its superiority because stringent adherence to rituals but in the meantime forgetting  what Torah is actually about.

Cults are a direct result of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment point of view was that the scientific method could be applied to human problems to obtain solutions as rigorous and exact as mathematics. This idea lead to the development of pseudo sciences like psychology.
When people start to ask questions about the meaning of life it is almost inevitable for them to to be approached by cults.


Cults are relatively easy to spot. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck then it probably is  a duck. One of the most telling ways is the emphasis on the  appearance of being a part of a legitimate religion and the rituals.

False Leaders מנהיגים של שקר

leaders that lead people astray are very common.  they have spiritual power to hurt people that do not want to be their followers.
You can see this idea illustrated most clearly in the events surrounding Adi Da [a guru]. He was one of the best examples. He had great spiritual powers and was also a jerk and quite evil. One of his closest disciples broke away and exposed the events that were going on there.  That disciple was killed in a plane crash a short time after that.

How do people get involved in cults? There are consciousness traps. There is some idea that get inside one's head and acts like a seed. It grows and absorbs collects all the surrounding material and it grows.

I don't have a general answer for this cult problem. And I also do not even know the general conditions for an answer. However I might as well explain my own approach that is my own answer to the cult problem. My approach is that which you can find in authentic Lithuanian yeshivas. That is Talmud with traditional books of Musar. This path is connected to the path of the Gra. It is holistic. It encompasses everything about a human being.

 This is not a blank check for Litvak yeshivas . It is just my own approach and also I suggest this to others. But I mean this suggestion  in a tentative way. I know that in complex human relationships and change of variables is bound to have unforeseen consequences.

 I think today learning Jewish Philosophy is very important. [That mean medieval Jewish philosophy, Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, etc. However the actual book of the Rambam in philosophy I found too hard. But David Hartman wrote a great introductory text.]

I should mention that Lithuanian yeshivas were tailor made to be safe havens from cults. That explains the reason they are so ready to throw out anyone that does not fit into the mold. They are not just into learning and teaching authentic Torah. They rigorously exclude pseudo Torah. And the more successful they are in excluding pseudo false Torah to that same degree they succeed in learning and keeping authentic Torah, This is the reason why Ponovitch is the top yeshiva in the world, Rav Shach would not stand any nonsense.

 The trouble with Litvak yeshivas is the aspect of depth. To stick with Torah one needs some kind of justification that goes beyond Jewish philosophy. That is one needs more that intellectual justification. It has to be holistic. The trouble with philosophy especially after the Middle Ages is that it is all about "I" (the self). It's entire domain is the region between the empirical I and the abstract metaphysical "I". And God is a reasonable postulate. God is the beginning and end, the first cause and the final teleological cause. And the existence of the "I" is a reasonable postulate.