Two aspects of learning. One is  learning fast--to say the words in order and go on. And sessions in order.That is to start at the beginning of Shas, Yerushalmi, the Tur with the Beit Yoseph , the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. \
To these two aspects I want to mention a third--to concentrate on one subject for a month or more. I o not mean to cancel the other sessions, but rather to make the major learning for one month in one  book or one subject alone.
At least I must say that that kind of learning helped me gain a lot more understanding that I had before that.
This may not seem like earth shattering news but I thought to share it anyway. To give an example Rav Haim Soloveitchik [on any given law] --I found is good for me to go over daily for a month until it starts to make sense.Same with Quantum Mechanics. To get any understanding at all I found it good to concentrate on that one thing alone for a month or more. Similar with Rav Shach's Avi Ezri.

[One age with Tosphot I usually find takes me about a month to make sense of.  The sections of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri usually take me less time but do require a lot of review.]

There is a teacher of Torah that comes from the Dark Side

Rav Nahman brings this idea: אך דע שיש רב דקליפה והוא בחינת עשו כמו שכתוב בעשו  יש לי רב..ומהם מקבלים הרשעים רוח הטומאה.
"There is a teacher of Torah that comes from the Dark Side. And that is the essence of Esau. And from him the wicked receive the spirit of uncleanliness and evil."
ליקוטי מוהר''ן חלק א' סימן ח

You do not see there that many signs of how to tell the difference.

But in that particular lesson of Rav Nahman you can see he distinguishes between authentic Torah as opposed to Torah from the Dark Side.
And he does go into the phenomenon that you generally feel and tremendous spirit of Life and holiness the instant you walk into an authentic Litvak yeshiva because in the Torah is the spirit of Life. That is what gives you the ability to tell what to avoid--places that do not have that spirit of Life you find in Litvak yeshivas.
Other places have spirit but not from the realm of holiness. And the way you can tell is simple- they do not have the desire to learn Torah. They might learn for money or for show, but that does not count.
This is related to the Hafetz Haim klal 4 law 11 concerning laws of lason hara. There the Hafetz Haim goes into the need  to check out a business partner--to ask around-before you join him in business. all the more so when it comes to supposed teachers of Torah, one should not trust that automatically since they have a good reputation that they are trust worthy. Usually the good reputation is a result of good PR and and in fact usually indicates the person is in fact from the Dark Side.

Famous Torah leaders that are a lie.

The problem with מפורסמים של שקר (famous Torah leaders that are a lie.) come up in the writings of Rav Nahman from Breslov in ליקוטי מוהר''ן חלק ב' סימן א
 It comes up when Rav Nahman is emphasizing the importance of finding good teachers
And then he says this: אך צריך לידע ולהכיר את המפורסמים כי יש כמה מפורסמים שהם בשקר והם רק על ידי עזות כמו שאמרו חז''ל עזות מלכותא בלא תגא

"One must recognize and know the famous people because there are many famous people that are famous and thought to be righteous tzadikm because of lies and fraud."

[Sometimes it is not at all by fraud, but rather great powers and spiritual insights are given to them from the Dark Side in order to create formations of evil.]

The Na Nach groups are more aware of this kind of problem than any other group I have seen or heard of. Still as much as they are aware of this and careful to avoid these kind of  Torah scholars that are demons, I still think they are not as careful as one ought to be.
They also tend to include in that category than I think is fitting.
What I mean to say is that most Litvak Roshei yeshiva that I have known were great people, and certainly not the kinds of demons that Rav Nahman was warning about. [The Litvak Roshei Yeshiva that I knew were Rav Freifeld of Shar Yashuv, and Rav Shmuel Berenbaum of the Mir in NY. Those two I knew fairly well. Almost all Litvak Roshie Yeshiva I knew were very sincere and loved Torah for its own sake, and ran from fame and publicity.]

You can warn someone about a whole group and it is not lashon hara [slander]

You can warn someone about  a whole group and it is not lashon hara [slander]. As the Hafetz Haim himself brings from the Gemara that R. Yehuda HaNasi warned his son: "Stay away from people from the town of Shekenziv because they are לצנים [jokers] and draw in others into their joking."

The reason for this is that there is such a thing as group characteristics.That is not stereotyping. It s simple Game Theory.
The odd thing about this however is that the Hafetz Haim in another place brings that to speak about a whole group, you have to know that every single individual in that group shares those character traits.

We also see in the Hafetz Haim that he brings from Nida pg 61 that even though one can not accept Lashon Hara still he must be wary that it might be true.

So it makes little sense to me that the warning of the Gra is ignored. Especially nowadays when it has become clear [at least in Israel] that he was 100% correct for signing the letter of excommunication.

[That is to say there is such a thing as group dynamics. You can say a group of birds is flying north even if there might be individual birds that are flying sometimes north west and sometimes north east.]

Music for the glory of God

V36 G Major


V-38 F Major

V-31 3/4 time

V-39 A Minor

V-11 D Major

V-40 B minor

V-41

V-43 A


V-45 A Major

V-53

V-54

one Muslim climbed over the small fence that goes around the Yeshuv Adam [a town right outside Jerusalem] [a two minute drive from Jerusalem] and started stabbing people.

A few days ago one Muslim climbed over the small fence that goes around the Yeshuv Adam [a town right outside Jerusalem] [a two minute drive from Jerusalem]  and started stabbing people. One person he was about to stab but the fellow pulled out a gun and shot him.

Ed Feser in his blog has a few proofs for the existence of God. My comment on that is this

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   I think Anselm did a good thing with his proof. Things were unclear until Godel put the whole thing into simple logical form. I tried to reinforce it with another theorem of Godel. This is the theorem:  Compactness Theorem). A set of formulas Γ is satisfiable if and only if every finite subset of Γ is satisfiable.] [From the finite to the infinite. Perhaps the simplest use of the Compactness Theorem is to show that if there exist arbitrarily large finite objects of some type, then there must also be an infinite object of this type.] [Mathematical Logic ch 4 and ch 9][http://euclid.trentu.ca/math/sb/pcml/pcml-16.pdf

However I also the alternative Medieval approach based on Aristotle that Ed Feser is recommending makes sense.

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