I think there is a lack of serious understanding of Torah when one is not proficient in the school of Rav Haim of Brisk.[i.e., the sort of deep learning that Reb Haim was known for.] That had a beginning with the Mishna laMelech but was laid aside for a few hundred years as the later authorities concentrated on Tosphot. But now I think that to really have any kind of decent idea one needs to be proficient in the Chidushei Reb Haim, Reb Shimon Shkopf, the Birchat Shmuel [the two students of Reb Haim], and the Avi Ezri. 

     The major reason that all secular Israeli Jews go to into Far East religions [mainly Tao, the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhism  ]is that the rabanim have given Torah a terrible name. Regular Jews just take one look at the religious teachers and say to themselves, ''I want nothing to do with them''.

i think that many people are unaware of this problem-- if you look at it as a problem. Rav Nahman i think was the only one who pointed out the source of the problem in the few Torah lessons where he referred to rabanim a  Torah scholars who are demons.

I think a lot of what people learn in school is a waste of time. The main things ought to be the oral and written law, Physics, Mathematics for their own sake. I mean that learning Torah loses its value when it is done for the sake of making money. But there are practical disciplines that are also important. But I would suggest that some disciplines that ought not to be learned even if one can make money from them i.e. pseudo sciences.

 Psychology is pseudo science. It can not predict any effect. It's experiments are never repeatable since repeats of the same experiment always led to different results.    It is just a religion with its own priests and kinds of worship

 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.]