abuse of religious authority.

In your own personal experience, what was an incredible abuse of power you have ever witnessed?
In my experience it has been abuse of religious authority.
There is no name for this but the basic idea is that people believe some authority who uses his authority not to teach what he is supposed to but rather for criminal  and non moral purposes.
This is kind of related to what you see in cults but not exactly.

Practice of Torah has nothing to do with the religious world.

Practice of Torah has nothing to do with the religious world. These are two exact opposites.

This is obvious to anyone with an experience. That is to say the principles are opposed one to the other.

One is to concentrate on Jewish rituals in order to get secular Jews to give them money. That is the basic meme of the religious world.
The essence of practice of Torah on the other hand is modesty--to serve God privately without public display and to be self sufficient   and to work on one's character trait and keep the commandments.
For example, "Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not steal, etc." The polar opposite of the religious world.

Just to be fair, I have to exclude from this critique authentic Lithuanian yeshivas and their surrounding communities that do make an effort to keep Torah sincerely as it says, and not from any alternative motivations.

[There was in fact an incident with a group of followers of Rav Nahman of Breslov. They were living in a different city, and in that city the rav was against Rav Nahman. There was at the time some questions about Halacha [Law]. Rav Nahman told them, what ever that rav says is teh law, be sure to do just teh opposite. And in fact what ever law that rav said , the followers of Rav Nahman opened up the Shulchan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo and saw that the exact opposite of what that rav said is the true law. This incident can be taken as an archetype. What ever the religious say is the law of the Torah, in all likelihood if you open up the Shulchan Aruch you will in general see the exact opposite. 

Ideas in  Tractate Bava Metzia chapter 8+9   [Ideas in TALMUD]

[These are two different books. The one on Bava Mezia is only on ch.s 8 and 9. The one on Talmud is on general areas of Talmud]

r57 g minor mp3 r57 in midi   r57 nwc

[marriage ideas]

Yeshiva [beit midrash] starts at 18 years old. The emphasis is at that point to start thinking about shiduchim [marriage ideas]. In the USA it was expected to marry sometime during the first four years --from 18-22. The idea was to be supported by one's parents or in laws for a few years after that until some viable other form vocation becomes available.
This seems to me to be the best idea and applicable to everyone. Even for people in STEM.

A lot depends on the kind of institution one is in. People depend a lot on their immediate environment for their attitudes towards life.

Kant and Hegel

The ground of knowledge is in the long run intuitive. It is almost the same kind of thing as intellectual intuition.


 neither the subject nor the object is primary. Neither causes the other. Both need a Ground--the subject itself.
For Hegel, the ground is the Subject. 

For both this is the privileged position. The bird's eye view. I have difficulty seeing how any of this is all that different from neo-Platonic thought with the Logos Mind having the privileged position.
And I should mention this is not God as the Rambam already made clear. He knows there is a kind of internal spiritual principle in the Universe a kind of Gaia spirit. But that is not God and worship of it is idolatry.

Oral Law in capsule form

Fast food is an idea I like. Even in home cooking I do not like to wait.  And in learning also from a very young age I loved the idea of condensed learning. You know what I mean. This is the difference between reading and outline series or reading text.At about 7 I remember getting an outline of college chemistry. That is I do not have the ability to concentrate for a long time so I like things that get to the point immediately.
So it occurred to me how to get the Oral Law in capsule form. I think the best condensation is "Musar and Gemara." And in Musar itself the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות and or the Or Israel by Isaac Blazer and in Gemara I think the most powerful pill form is any essay from Rav Shach in the Avi Ezri. That is to learn it with the Gemara and the Rambam it is going on. That would contain the basic essence of the Oral Law in fast food form. In that way you do not have to wait for twenty years until you have gone through the actual entire oral law and even then to probably have not gotten the idea. [If you like you could take an essay from Reb Chaim Solovieitchik also. It is just that I personally often end up more confused than I started out when I read Reb Chaim. Rav Shach makes the most complex and difficult subjects as simple as apple pie.]

You could apply the same idea to Isaac Luria. The fact is the Eitz Chaim
really is the whole thing in capsule form.

{Just for clarity. I am not saying this makes one an expert-or can take the place of the normal four year program in  an Authentic Lithuanian Yeshiva or studying STEM in  college. Rather I am talking to people like me to whom options like these are not available.}