Even though Rav Nahman  said one should finish the entire writings of the Ari every year I have noticed a small book called Hasdei David from Algiers that sums up the Eitz Chaim of the Ari in a [cliff notes] shorter way but with most of the main details included. [That is printed in the regular editions of the Ari in the third volume of the Eitz Chaim along with the Nahar Shalom of the Reshash [Sar Shalom Sharabi.]   

 I was wondering which churches were  shut down in Ukraine. At first I thought they were only the Russian Orthodox. Now I found out they are also the Ukrainian Orthodox. They arrested the main guy [the ''metropolitan''] and anyone attempting to enter.  That is sad since is knew people that depended on these place for clothes and other sorts of needs.

So both kinds have been shut down. The interesting fact is that there was one time [in the 1970's or 1980's that the Soviets were thinking of shutting down the Russian Orthodox Church, but nothing ever came of that idea.

 My basic feeling about analytic philosophy is that Wittgenstein - Tractatus-was very wrong--as he himself realized and admitted openly. But that did not prevent the Anglo Saxon world of philosophy to sink into the endless mud of linguistics which has nothing to do with objective reality. [But to realize how wrong he was takes at least a year of very hard work to delve into that extremely difficult work Tractatus--his only book that made him into a superstar. He never published another book, but rather a paper years later. ] The last of his works was Logical Investigations.

My own disagreement with Wittgenstein comes from a deeper  problem than what he saw in his own work,  It is: language is 100% subjective, and has nothing to do with objective reality. [the word dog ha zero meaning except for the one who says it and the one who hears it. other than that it has nothing to do with the dog.]

Allan Bloom sees the problem in the USA as the result of a contradiction in Enlightenment though

 Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind points to the source of the problem in universities. and hints to a solution. Bible, the Great Books [that is the classics of ancient Greece and Rome] and Kant. [Not that he says as much openly, but you can see these three bits of advice if you read between the lines]

I would like to add that even though I agree with Allan Bloom, I have a slightly different set of great books i.e., Chiduhei Harambam by Rav Chaim of Brisk, the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach, Physics and Mathematics [but  I not to diminish from the point of Allan Bloom]

[Allan Bloom sees the problem in the USA as the result of a contradiction in Enlightenment thought that existed from the very beginning of the Enlightenment. Thus by implication, if one could find a solution to that contradiction, then automatically the problem would be fixed. It seems to Bloom that Kant and Hegel came closet to a solution. 

20th century philosophy was an attempt to get out of Kant and Hegel with no success. These were brilliant attempt in British American analytic philosophy but in the long run were futile and false a Robert Hanna ha pointed out in several books.

The issue is never the issue. What people hold in philosophy is which philosopher holds like their already established opinion in politics, If they are for Hegel, it is because they think he was for socialism. [Not that they understand his approach. 

However I prefer Kant and the new Friesian approach of Kelley Ross which takes Kant as a basis but modifies that approach with immediate non intuitive knowledge -which was used by Fries to repair the transcendental deduction of Kant and indirectly opens the door to faith, To my mind this is a continuation of the medieval approach to combine faith with reason

    The major point of the Gra was learning Torah, but the general path of the religions world to use Torah to make money was thought to be in violation of the command in Pirkei Avot to not make Torah into shovel to dig with. Using Torah  to make money is an old  practice, but no older than murder .

[Torah here means the old testament, two Tamuds and midrash ]

 Rav Nahman says [Le.M I;129] to honor the festivals and/or to be close to a true tzadik helps to rid oneself of pride. The question that I have here is that there is no indication of any method to be able to discern who is a true tadik- as opposed to who is a phony. But I do have a suggestion. In the Le.M  vol II Rav Nahman says to be in a Litvak yeshiva is the same essence as being with a tzadik.