There was on Friday afternoon an Arab with a blue id card [i.e. Israeli Citizenship] plowed into a bus stop and wiped out a whole family. Aristotle wrote that two people's that are not getting along, there is no solution but separation. the idea of Israeli Arabs maybe was an ok idea at first, but after 70 years of experience that is clearly unreasonable already. 

The evil inclination uses false mitzvot to bring people into the paths of darkness.

 I was in a local sort of Litvak kind of Beit Midrash and worked on some sugia there for a while. Then I noted that they had there a book of a collection of ideas if the Gra on the Five Books of Moses [Chumash]. There I noted a comment by the Gra that reminded me of the very first lesson of Rav Nahman (in his book the Le.M vol. I, chapter 1). That is that the evil inclination uses false mitzvot to bring people into the paths of darkness,

This is why the straight path of Torah of the Gra is important--, it is that it is too easy to be distracted and fall by pseudo mitzvot, and they lead from one thing to another until one's whole life is ruined. [Breslov itself, while based on the teaching of Rav Nahman, tends to have that same sort of aspect [being a half way house] between holiness [kedusha] and anti-holiness.  It is like a door by which people leave the straight and narrow path of the Torah [the Litvak Yeshiva world],  and by which some people come into Torah after being outside.. Rav Nahman has great and powerful advice, but also there is there things that can be (and are)  misunderstood from how he intended them.

People in Ukraine are afraid to say their true feelings

I can imagine that people in Ukraine are afraid to say their true feelings, but when I was there in Middle Ukraine [not the East] people told me openly that they were upset that the USSR was gone. The vast majority of people in Uman went to the Russian Orthodox Church [near the local bazar]. Now you might counter that that was because it was in the city center, while the large Ukrainian Orthodox church was out a bit from the main city. But even so, that does not answer it, because there was also a small  Ukrainian Orthodox church on Sadova  Drive [also city centre], and that was open just a few hours on Sunday. But the Russian Orthodox Church was open all the time--from morning to evening every day, and always had plenty of people in it. And on Sunday, it was packed--hardly room to move.

Of course, now the government has closed it, and made it illegal. Even the Communists never did that during the entire 70 years they were in power. [I admit that there was talk among the Communist officials during the 1980's to close it, but they never did.]

superiority attitude in the religious world

The Litvak Yeshiva world really was a great place for me for some period, but I did not have the appreciation for it and the straight path of the Gra as I should have had. Even so I find it important to show respect of it's tremendous value, even though I did not manage to stick with it. And I think that is an important lesson--that Rav Nahman pointed out: "Even if I can't be "איש כשר" kosher person, I should at least want my friend to be one." 

[However, there is a kind of  superiority attitude in the religious world. Gentiles are not considered human and baali teshuva [newly religious] are thought to be sub human. This attitude displays itself in subtle ways at first when they are love bombing teen agers with rich parents. Only later when they have no more use for you, does this attitude become apparent. 

The State of Israel, Reb Moshe Feinstein and Rav Aaron Kotler

 Even though there is a certain amount of criticism from the religious world on the State of Israel, I think it is mistaken from a few different angles, --mainly by the fact that both Reb Moshe Feinstein and Rav Aaron Kotler held ''the law of the country is the law'' in regards to Israel. [That means it has the legitimate category of a state with all the implication of that in halacha.] So I would say it is  great mitzvah to serve in the IDF. If you look into history yoas in their area in the old city.

The book of the Rav of Satmer is meant to show that the State of Israel is not legitimate is based on a midrash about not to go up to  Israel "as a wall" against the nations. This ignores the League of Nations and the Balfour Declaration. 

 I have been thinking about the importance of learning Torah and the straight path of the Gra. But I also see that one aspect of the Gra is ignored what was known as the "seven wisdoms".[note 1]That was the name that several secular subjects were known by during the Middle Ages,- but not all secular subjects.

There is at any rate some difference between rishonim what would be permitted to learn and not count a bitul Torah. To find some middle ground I recommend the authentic sciences, but would leave out the pseudo sciences like psychology.

[note 1] the translation of Euclid by a disciple of the Gra quotes him saying, "To the degree that one lacks any knowledge of the seven wisdoms, to that degree he will lack in understanding Torah a hundred fold."

American education

 The whole  problem with American education is that it starts too late. For the real root of the USA is England. If one does not know the origin of the Parliamentary system, the Magna Carta. and trials and tribulations that led to the English system of government, then his understanding of the Constitution of the  USA itself has to be superficial. It can not start either with John Locke who was encoding facts that were already history. He found the justification for the Glorious Revolution.