When Litvak yeshivot mean to learn in depth, I think most people do not really understand what they mean. Even to me it seemed ridiculous. The first week in yeshiva you learn at most one page of gemara, And that does not mean to learn the commentaries at all. It means that there is inherent in the gemara itself that amount of depth that it takes at least a week of about 5 hours per day [in the morning session] to even begin to scratch the surface. And I freely admit that this really requires a very high IQ in the first place to see this. So when I was there just by force of circumstances I would read through all the commentaries that I could get my hands on. [For example the Shita Mekubetzet on the first page of Ketuboth is about twenty pages of tiny close lined print] but that was because I really was not on the level needed to see the depth on my ow,. And in fact never got there until many years later I began learning with David Bronson in Uman. and then I started getting the idea. [You can see a bit of this in my two booklets on Shas and Bava Metzia.]

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 Rav Nahman said there is a evil inclination in the service of God of going overboard. It is hard to know what are the exact parameters of this. I for one took myself to study of the Ari while at the Mir Yeshiva in NY and this certainly can be considered to be going overboard. After all right at the Introduction of the Eitz Chaim you have the warning and oath of Rav Chaim Vital that no one should look at his book who has not fulfilled a set of enumerated conditions. Take a look at them and you will see that no one who has looked at that book can possibly have fulfilled those conditions in the couple hundred years. No one is fasting from after Shabat to the next kidush.

  

[not to leave the subject in the middle let me say that the issue still is unclear to me --since after all i think that this learning helped me in many ways. Still  i feel i jumped in too soon and still needed to do a lot more of Shas] at any rate i do think that learning the ari for some time helped prepare me for the land of israel and the amazing light which shines there. so i would have to say that rav shmuel berenbaum was right when i asked him about thissort of learning. he said first finish shas. i said i already did. he said do it again. [of course when reb smuel said finish shas he did not mean the way some do it. rather he meant beiyun with tosphot, maharsha and reb chaim of brisk. ] 

 I noticed an odd fact. Julius Caesar was from the family of the Julii. The Julii were not originally Romans but rather from Alba which made war on Rome but the war was resolved by combat of three soldiers against three. The last one standing was a Roman so Alba came under  Rome. But then in the next war against the Sabians, Alba rebelled. So Rome killed their commander who ordered his troops to defect. Then the city of Alba was destroyed and all the citizens were  moved to Rome and some of their leading families were made patricians in the Senate.  And one of those families was the Julii.

There is some irony here. on one hand Caesar was from a people that were not originally Roman. And he in fact was the end of the Roman Republic, Yet on the other hand, it is hard to think of any Roman greater than Caesar. There must be a lesson here about baali teshuva [don't trust the newly religious.]

[actually I can think of one roman who was greater than Caesar, i,e., the philosopher Plotinus.]

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Rav Nachman did not say to go to his grave on Rosh Hashanah. He did however say so for the tikun klali, but not Rosh Hashanah. For Rosh Hashanah he said to come to him. He never said anything about his grave in connection with Rosh Hashanah. 

 דאשתמש בתגא חלף "One who uses the crown passes away." מכאן אמרו כל הנהנה מדברי תורה נוטל חייו מן העולם "From here they said, 'Anyone who derives benefit from words of Torah, takes his life out of the world.'"

Pirkei Avot chapter 4 mishna 7. see commentary of Rambam who writes that the roshei yeshiva who say it isamitzvah to give money to yeshivot are liars It is a strong sort of language that you do not see usually in the words of the Rambam. But it seems that he saw that Torah was becoming a business and saw this would    bring about a situation lie we see nowadays--when the vast majority of those who claim to be learning and teaching Torah are hypocrites.