A lot of learning Torah depends on where you are starting from. sometimes being in Ponovitch is not possible.

So what you do is to first realize there is an obligation get through the Written and Oral Law. That is brought in the Gra. Plus there is te importance of what the Rambam wrote "Just like there is not adding or subtracting from the written Trah so there is not adding or subtracting from the Oral Torah. So that means the obligation of getting through Torah is the two Talmuds and the midrashie halacha and midrashi hagada."

Then there is the Seder HaLimud of Rav Nahman-which really comes from the Gemara but rav nahman spells it out clearly. Say the words and go on.

This is not to diminish in depth learning. Rather everyone needs an in depth session and a fast session. This idea of Rav Nahman relates to the fast session. 

There is also the importance of knowing about Bitul Torah. Bot anything you want to learn should you learn. Rather what you are required that you must do. That which does not come into the category of obligation is bitul Torah.

Then there is the fact that the basic idea of learning fast essentially applies to the first time. That is this: the first time just the Gemara with no commentary. Second time you add rashi, Third time Tosphot  fourth time maharsha and maharam 

This really depends on the situation. For if you have the merit to be in a litvak yeshiva then the best idea is just follow the regular sessions. But it occurred today that someone asked me the approach to take in their situation in which they are slightly older to be in a yeshiva,

Even though the basic approach of Litvak yeshivas is based on the Gra, it seems to me that that is  a bit too undefined. It would be better if there was a straight commitment to follow the Gra.

This way there is also a sort of protection against the Sitra Achra.

סביב רשעים יתהלכון "The wicked walk around the holiness". That is,-- the Dark Side is always going around places of holiness to see if they can find a crack to slip into the place.

[I should admit here that I am no where near following the straight path of Torah of the Gra. But I feel words of advice that might help others to walk on the straight and narrow are good-- even if I am not able to follow that path myself.]

 x23 F Major mp3 file

x23 midi file

x23 nwc file

 x22

"Warn the people not to come up onto Mount Sinai, least God attacks them."

 There is a sort of aspect of the religious world that is kind of like ריבוי אור excess light. Aspects that make it like Adi Da or Scientology.  Rav Nahman brings this idea in terms of individuals אל יעלו בהר פן יפרוץ בם This is what God told Moses, "Warn the people not to come up onto Mount Sinai, least  God attacks them."

But this applies as well and even more so the the superorganism of the religious world. Even when there is an attempt to pay attention to great tzadikim like the Gra or Rav Shach, there still enters this aspect of insanity that comes in. It is hard to know what to make of this.

But even with this danger, still I think there ought to be  a beit midrash on the name of the Gra in every city. Plus a branch of Ponovitch.

The new moon. The day of the Molad [conjunction] is Rosh Hodesh

 It is one of those odd kinds of years that got me wondering wondering about the new moon. The molad [conjunction of moon and sun] was yesterday. Today is when a court could have seen it. But tomorrow is when everyone is doing rosh hashanah.

To know the exact time of the molad is not hard. Hipparchus brings it in his book that he got it from the ancient Babylonians. But that is not the same thing as getting the lunar and solar time to correspond at least to some degree. 

The first time the calendar that is used was recorded was by Meton in Athens. That was considerably before the first mention of  a Hebrew Calendar which was by Saadia Gaon. The Gemara never mentions any calendar at all. and it just says the sages knew when the molad was קביעא דירחא. But that has nothing to do with the calendar.

Nor is there any mention of Hillel II setting up any kind of calendar. And during the time of the geonim we have letters bringing dates that do not correspond to the calendar.

What clearly happened was after the troubles that occurred in Babylon when the yeshivas were closed that there was no central authority and people needed to know when to celebrate the festivals. The calendar that was already widely used to made a reasonable correspondence between the solar and lunar years was Meton's calendar.

So the best idea is to depend on Tosphot in Sanhedrin [10b] that says that the day of the Molad is Rosh Hodesh

Saadia Gaon says the calendar is from the "shamua" but writing in Arabic uses the word that he uses elsewhere to refer to the general body of tradition. Not Halacha to Moses from Sinai.  Later people misunderstood Rav Saadia and thought he meant Halacha to Moshe from Sinai. But that not at all what Saadai wrote.

 There is an amazing wealth of advice in the books of Rav Nahman of Breslov and Uman. But also there was for me a certain kind of blessing that came to me when I got to his ziun in Uman. 

One of the most significant bits of advice is the path of learning--which is that of "girsa" say the words and going on.

By itself it does not seem to work very well, but together with the deep kind of learning that you have in Litvak yeshivas that seems to work well.

This certainly helped me in learning Gemara. In Shar Yashuv there was a tremendous emphasis on deep learning, but I felt kind of lost spending two weeks on one page of Gemara before I had even finished the tractate even once. But the deep learning combined with the girsa helped me a lot.

[Besides that after I took note of the opinion of some rishonim about the importance of Physics, this path of learning of Rav Nahman has been a great help for me. But I do have my little  addition I would like to make. Yes on one hand to get through the book, like Sting Theory or something like that, but then when you get to the end then instead of starting again at the beginning, you go back page by page from the end to the beginning.]\