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.]

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"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.]\

A lot depends on whom you marry.

 A lot depends on whom you marry. This was conventional wisdom in the Litvak yeshiva world. 

When it comes down to choosing a wife, you need to find one that is a bat talmid chacham (daughter of a authentic Torah scholar from the realm of holiness). The reason is that if you want to continue learning Torah after you marry you need to find a wife that wants you to be sitting and learning.

It was said that, "If she wants you to learn, you will learn. If she does not want you to learn then you will not."

You can see this even in the wider world. It is know that one of the major mistakes that caused the downfall of the Confederacy was John Bell Hood [known as Sam Hood]. He had an amazing steak of victories  up until he fell in love with Sally Preston. She was so well know as a flirt  that one soldier who was thought to be interested in her was asked about this. He answered, "I would rather face a charge of Yankees. I do not want to end upon the casualty list."

Yet John Bell Hood did fall in love with her, and not just lost battle after battle, but in one of the most crucial aspects of the war, he was put in charge of an entire army, and really messed up so much so that it caused the loss of the entire war.  

[He thought to attack Sherman's supply lines. Sherman could not have been more happy. He said he soldiers ate and sleep better living off the land.]