A lot of what Torah is about is laws. The concerns about Torah are mainly about keeping the Law of Moses more that interpretation of the text. But there are also elements of Divine service.

With prayer the hidden self [ding an sich] gets connected with God. It is kind of  away to reach one's own essence and tie it to God. And besides that, I have seen enough people that learn Torah that are far from human perfection.


The basic way to do this is to pack a lunch and go off into the wilderness for a whole day and spend the whole day talking with God. If this is not possible then while you are walking down the street is a perfect time to engage in private conversation with God. One good idea about this is that the evil side disguises itself in good deeds. When people convince themselves they are doing some great mitzvah it is usually a heinous crime. The world would be a lot better off if people would stop doing mitzvas and simply be a selfish as possible. The way the evil side gets people is by conniving and convincing  them that they are doing some good deed. People doing mizvot is the destruction of the world. The Gra said it is better to sit in your room and twiddle your thumbs than to go about and look for mizvas to do. [See Sidur HaGra.]

Here is a very nice link to a interesting video concerning Islam
She is bringing up some very nice and important points and I highly recommend this video.I  heard from the daughter of Bava Sali also things along these lines. The idea was that Islam is bad news

Here is another fellow who also has some interesting ideas about Islam


I see in German News that the Spiegel is comparing the people that do not want Germany destroyed by an Islamic invasion to Nazis. This seems like  an unfair comparison. Islam is a real problem and inviting Jihadists into your country is not a good idea.


Here is a video by a German girl who is afraid of the refugees.

There is something strange going on in the world in terms of marriage.I

There is something strange going on in the world in terms of marriage.It is as if the human race is going through some kind of tidal wave that wrecks everything in its path.It is like a snowball effect. The more arrogant the women are, the more men want nothing to do with them, and then the women wish they were romanced and treated special like in the old days..

When Reb Shmuel Berenabaum the Roh Yeshiva of the Mir in NY was asked questions about human problems his answer was "Learn Torah" and I would have to say that is about as good an answer I have ever heard about almost all human problems.

Simply put that means to have about an hour per day of learning sessions in order The Old Testament. That is read one page word by word and then put in a place marker and put it down. The pick up a Mishna. Read one page or a few pages with the commentary. Put in a place marker and put it down. Then pick up a Talmud and again read one page with Tosphot the Maharsha and Maharam from Lublin. Then the same with a few session in Physics and Math. That is the light of the Torah that is in the physical world.

If you have done the Talmud a few times then you should also do the Ari. The Ari is mystical but based on a Neo Platonic world view. So together with the Ari it is good to have a session in Jewish Philosophy from the Middle Ages. That is Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed, Saadia Gaon's Emunot VeDeot, Crescas, Joseph Albo, and the two Abravenel's Isaac and Yehuda, and Ibn Gavirol.
[These people have a lot to tell us but their insights are hidden because of the mediaeval character of their works. It takes some effort to uncover the gems inside them.] [There is an amazing connection between German Idealism and medieval Jewish Philosophy. But this would have to be the subject of a whole new essay. }







No Kabalah after the time of Shabatai Tzvi is kosher. Sometimes knowingly, and sometimes not knowingly it all borrows from Natan of Gaza and brings people that read it into the Sitra Achra. Also there are secular subjects that do not reflect the glory of God and are forbidden to learn . That is almost any secular subject outside of the natural sciences are all from the Sitra Achra. So though I do emphasize certain subjects as being good there are many many more that are seduce people into the Dark Side. Thus we find most religious teachers that read these subjects are in fact agents of the Dark Side. That is the reason I always say to be in a straight Lithuanian yeshiva because every other type is a den of Satan. I am emphasizing the good on purpose.

Everything depends on good teachers. Everything.


I went to a very good high school. It had good teachers. I benefited very much from those teachers, though I did not use all the skills I learned there later. Mr Smart the music teacher was just one example. But I remember the other teachers who were dedicated, and very talented. My only frustration was that I wanted to be able to concentrate on just a few things. But today I can say going to a good school I think is very important.
I had lots of good examples around me of people that were motivated and hard working. Both students and teachers.


[Maybe good teachers can do only so much, but from what I saw, they can make a tremendous amount of difference.]

And later I saw this in yeshiva also. Going to a good school  is of utmost importance to be able to get anywhere.

I am not in yeshiva now, but I can say without having a great learning partner ,I would today not have been able to get anywhere in Gemara.

One trouble I did have was in recognizing what really is a good yeshiva. Shar Yashuv was and still is a Baal Teshuva Yeshiva. And I had trouble recognizing that Reb Naphtali Yeager and the other roshei yeshiva were really learning at the top level. So I admit sometimes you can find exceptions to the rule. Reputation is not everything.  Later, I was at the Mir with who was then the deepest thinker in the yeshiva world besides Rav Shach --Reb Shmuel Berenbaum And there I saw the reputation of being the top place was well deserved.

Musar [Ethics] of Torah does not deal with philosophical issues. And that I think is a flaw.

But if one would want to understand the philosophy of Torah there would be a problem. That is the major works about the world view of Torah are great works but don't deal with issues that are in most people's mind all that relevant. And my own education in these areas is zero.

I read a drop of the Guide. And I read a few times the first chapter of the Duties of the Heart which is neo Platonic. I did a good deal of work on the Ari and the Nahar Shalom of Shalom Sharabi but those later sources are dealing more with the mystic aspects of Torah more than the world view aspects.

If I could I would plow through the philosophical works of Torah, Saadia Gaon's Emunot VeDeot, the Guide, Joseph Albo, Crescas, Abravenel. Ibn Gavirol.
The point of this is simple.One does not need to be knowledgeable nor smart at all to be a decent human being. But one's actions invariably follow ones "deot" opinions. And with crooked opinions ones actions will be crooked. Without getting the right opinions about Torah from people that understood Torah fairly well like the Rambam and Saadia Gaon one invariably gets his or her opinions from people that do not understand Torah very well.  And thus one's actions will not reflect the Torah but rather the cruddy opinions of charlatans.

There is a lot of stuff going on in mediaeval Jewish philosophy but it takes effort to get to it.
The surface level is, well,..mediaeval. But under that level there are important insights



To sum up. Musar along with השקפה is important. In yeshiva what is needed is  a separate session for learning the philosophical approach of Torah. Without this people absorb their world views from the street but think well of themselves as being kosher because they do rituals. The rituals however have no effect if the inner center of their minds is filled with nonsense.


Some people others were not happy with the philosophical works of Torah. The result is that when people learn the world view of Saadia Gaon or the Rambam they think it is heresy. This can only mean one thing. That without the books of the Rishonim on the world view of Torah people fall into such mistakes that when they hear the truth they reject it.

Two songs for the glory of the God of Israel

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religious teachers

Religious teachers that are psychopaths cause perverted desires fall from the Divine Chariot.  I think this explains the reason why sodomy is so pervasive in the USA.

My thinking is that we find in the Talmud some serious criticism about religious teachers. But furthermore we also find that what happens in Israel is reflected in the larger world. So when our own house is not in order this is seen in the large in the general events of the world.

Now it is a good question about how to tell the difference between good and bad religious teachers. It is important to know that there do exist bad religious teachers and that because of them there are problems because of people that follow them naively thinking they are teaching Torah.


Now this problem does beg for a solution. The only possible solution I can see is individual. That is it is up to each individual to learn Torah on their own and thus not to be dependent on others to know what it says. And if it is too much to ask everyone to know the whole Oral and Written Law then at least Musar--the books of Jewish ethics written during the Middle Ages tell us in a practical sense what the essence of Torah is. [Musar is a well known set of books. I do not need to list them here. Mainly they are divided between books from the middle ages and the later books of the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter that went into more detail in how to apply the lessons of Musar in a practical sense. ] [In my non humble opinion the חובות לבבות Duties of the Heart is the best one.]

I should add that the problem about evil religious teachers is not just in that Torah lesson but begins in the LM from Vol I ch 8 and goes through the entire two volumes. This theme does come up in the Talmud also and even the Mishna. אם אתה רואה דור שפורעניות באות אליו צא ובדוק בדייני ישראל שכל פורעניות שבאות לעולם אינן באות אלא בגלל דייני ישראל I forgot where that particular Gemara is. It is somewhere near the end of Tractate Shabat but I forgot the page number.

So who then can decide a halacha issue? In monetary cases where there are two opposing parties we do know who can decide--מומחה לרבים. someone who has been tested by experts in the Talmud and been found never to make a mistake. But in other cases?

The irony is that the people we would hope and expect to teach us morality and true principles of how to guide our lives are often the source of the most damage. In fact, I think this is so in the majority of cases.

I should mention that none of this is meant to disparage the sincere people who are sitting and learning Torah whether privately or in straight Lithuanian yeshivas.

People of intellect and morality are disqualified and  attacked when the religious  world  is under the control of a tyranny backed by the mob.  Don’t ask where all of the smart people are.  Don’t ask where all of the leaders of men are.  The religious world wants to be ruled by psychopaths and imbeciles. 

The best solution would be to fire all religious teachers. Save the money or give it to yeshivas where real Torah is learned [Lithuanian Yeshivas].