I terms of Torah what I suggest are the books of Rav Shach.

I terms of Torah what I suggest are the books of Rav Shach and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik. And  the basic Musar books I think you should know. There is a set of the classical Musar books the are the Chovot Levavot, אורחות צדיקים ספר הישר של רבינו תם. There are also a few books from the direct disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. מדרגת האדם אור ישראל. That is Reb Israel had one disciple Joseph Horvitz from Navardok and Isaac Blasser. 

Not everything the people say that sounds like Musar (Ethics) should be accepted as Musar. 


You see Musar itself is based on certain world views that the rishonim [mediaeval authorities] had. So even if you do not see them discussing their world views in their Musar (Ethics) books, still there is a strong connection between their world view and the Musar they wrote. So learning only the Musar means often people pick up world views from other sources without knowing it. So I see learning the Emunot VeDeot of Saadia Gaon and the Guide of the Rambam as being very important. 

I think the main reason people support Trump is they are thinking of the kind of freedoms that had before the Federal Government began intruding in every single aspect of private life.

What Donald Trump has done is launch a full-scale anti-Federalist counter-revolution. Many of his backers reject the idea that the Federal government has any power at the State or local level. They call for the repeal of Constitutional amendments that have increased the power of the Federal government, like the 14th, 16th and 17th. What they ultimately want is to recreate a free world. To paraphrase Michael Moore's documentary, "Dude, Where's My Country?" The Donald Trump answer is "The people you took it from are taking it back."

"physics envy,"

The harder the science you do, the more you look down on anyone not on that level. If you are in math, you think physicists are stupid. If you are a physicist, you have "math envy," and think biologists are stupid. If you are a biologist, you have "physics envy," and think psychologists are frauds and idiots, along with being insane themselves, and their motivation in going into psychology was to project their defects on everyone they do not like. 
Also, the scale of jargon is reversed. The more of a pseudo science it is, the more they have to invent jargon for simple things- so that they can sound profound and call what they do "science." Thus, "social sciences," which are at the bottom, have jargon invented for things that there are commonplace terms for. It is a scam in order to be able to call what they do "science." [I feel nauseous just writing the two words together.]


The result of envy is to try to de-legitimize whatever anyone on a higher level is doing and make yourself sound as if you were at the top. 

There is a lot to go into here but this will have to do for now.
in every vector of value there is a hierarchy. 

So what I m suggesting is a hierarchy in each area of value.
So you get a string a values. E.g. the one I started with in the above essay. Math --Physics-Chem-Biology etc.. Up there in (8) Beauty will be Bach-Mozart-Beethoven-etc. Politics also will have its own string. Another string will be in the Holy-"Pietative" Old Testament-Talmud-Rishonim-etc. 


So what you need here are different kinds of awareness or knowledge of universals. That is some universals are "It must be." The next level is "It can be" and the next is "one ought to do such and such a thing." That is for the different modes of necessity and possibility there will be a different kind of non intuitive immediate knowledge.

Mir Yeshiva in New York

The Mir Yeshiva in New York was a unique kind of place in that every day was a new class that was along the lines of something you would see in the book from Reb Chaim Soloveitchik or Shimon Shkop. That is:- the classes consisted of expanding the approach of Reb Chaim to every single page of Gemara.

So this gives me an idea of how to explain simply what it means to learn Gemara on a small scale. To get the basic idea you really do not need to go through the whole four year program. If you just would have one tractate of Talmud and one essay from Reb Chaim Soloveitchik or Rav Shach and go though that one essay along with the Gemara it was written on, then you would already know what it means "to know how to learn."
You might not yourself at that point "know how to learn" but you would have understood the basic idea.

Now I do not claim this deep knowledge myself. In fact, in the two books I wrote on Bava Metzia and Shas I sometimes see the kinds of trivial concerns like are like Freshman Level. Like "Why did the Maharasha write such and such a thing."  That might be slightly interesting, but it is not called "knowing how to learn." Knowing how to learn is global.  It means knowing how to calculate the sugia [subject] in front of you--so you know thoroughly the Tosphot. And then the crucial step is to know how it connects with the rest of Shas.
There are not a lot of places on that level. Mainly they are in NY (Mir Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat) or they are offshoots of Ponovitch in Bnei Brak.

This gives you a general idea of how education should be pursued. You should look for the highest quality. For some reason God directly my steps to almost always have teachers of the highest quality--even when I was not looking for this. If it is worth doing it is worth doing right.

[Sometimes people jump towards the global thing and are missing the first step in knowing the sugia. So I think my two books are important because they tend to combine both things. I deal at first with knowing the sugia in its place and then see how it connects with the global concerns of the rest of Shas.



If you want an equal of a Litvak Yeshiva in your home, then you only need one Shas, plus the books of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik and Rav Shach and the basic Musar books. If you also want to more mystic side of Torah after you have finished Shas twice, then what I recommend is simply to plow through the writings of the Ari (Isaac Luria) straight from beginning to end-or at least the Eitz Chaim which gives you the basic idea. But I should mention I think the Eitz Chaim goes with the idea of direct mystical awareness at least as far as the Ari was concerned. That fits with Hegel but not Kant.

Music r32 a minor

r32 a minor   [r32 in midi]

religious teachers have found way to mislead the public about Torah

I was naively optimistic about what most religious teachers are. I thought they were sincere and wanted everyone to learn and keep Torah.


Why is a good question which I do not have an answer for. But the fact is there are three main characteristics of most religious teachers. In these three things they are the exact opposite of what they claim. They are anti-Shalom Bait, Anti-Family values, anti-learning Torah. They do everything they can to break up homes and make sure the children are taken from their parents, and they hate it when they see Jews learning Torah. It rubs them the wrong way. They claim to make yeshivas as a public service but all they are in chat rooms for them and their buddies. If anyone actually tries to sit in one and learn Torah they make sure to throw him out.

I know they are extremely dangerous to ones mental and spiritual health. The worst mistake one can make is trust in anything they say.


They are failures when it comes to human decency and sincerity. How can they teach that to others?


However Torah is important. It is not a reflection on Torah the fact that it can be misused. There is no system that is immune to abuse. And it there is any way to abuse a system people will find it.

The problem is that religious teacher have found way to mislead the public about what the Torah says and means. They are enemies of Torah.

I will forever be their enemy because they are enemies of the Torah.
To them Torah is a set of rituals and as long as they are the center of worship they don't care what people do outside of the rituals that have little or nothing to do with Torah. They found some schizo persons that were addicted to rituals and found way and making everyone else do them.

It is not that they are buffoons. It is that they are outright damaging and dangerous.

I already dislike word play. Ordination from Sinai stopped during the middle of the period of the Talmud.

Religious teachers are the equivalent of the Sophists in ancient Athens claimed to be able to impart moral virtue to youth.  Moral education is their  venture. Now, I might say “Please spare me. I am not impressed. You oafs wouldn’t know virtue if it bit you.” But I would say it, or think it, partly because I already mistrust religious teachers .
But the question still remains - education of youth and also education of  adults that still have not yet acquired thorough knowledge of the Oral and Written Law. They too are like youth in that they are vulnerable because of their lack of knowledge and experience.
Almost anyone can come along and like the sophists claim to teach Torah and make  a nice bundle off of it.
I already dislike word play. Ordination from Sinai stopped during the middle of the period of the Talmud. So why do they play this word game? Could I just start to call myself and my friends "Doctor"? Why not? Is it not just a word?
I do not think these are innocent word games. They openly declare their intention that everyone has to listen to them.

They think they are the wisest of all men and  are also thought to be so by very many men—and  the only thing that prevents them from having a good reputation among everyone is natural science and those who study it. They believe that if they ruin the  reputation of Physics and Math, they will then be awarded celebrations as the undisputed champions of wisdom. They believe that they are truly the most wise, but whenever in private conversations they come up short they are shielded by their followers. These men, who think they are superior to all, are in fact inferior to all. They may pose greater dangers to Torah than  buffoons who do not go with Torah at all. These  are ambitious men who would like to discredit natural science by reducing it to its lowest common denominator: clever words and weaponry.

They gain power by being supposedly pro family and family values. They in fact highly hostile to any families but their own, and use their authority to dismantle families of people they do not like-- if anyone is stupid enough to listen to them. Mainly what they want to to weed out the smart so that they -the religious teachers- will be the smartest kids on the block. Religious teachers are inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when they are trying to disguise and deny their vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious religious teacher who jumps at such a chance to show off his holiness.