The Gra, Eliyahu from Vilnius says that every word of Torah is a mitzvah that outweighs all the other mitzvahs.
In this context he is talking about the Oral and Written Law. You need to be careful about this because nowadays many people think any ideas that any jerk says in Hebrew is called Torah. Some go further and say that anything  some idiot with a paper of ordination from three other idiots says is a halacha. [The Oral Law is the two Talmuds, Mechilta, Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta. Five books. Nothing more or less. ]

In any case, the Gra is getting this from a Mishna and a statement in the Jerusalem Talmud.
And that is important because it has become customary to change what the Torah's view is on things in order to make it more compatible with some delusional idiots ideas of what Torah ought to say.

So this idea is money in the bank. We can count on this idea as being accurate, that every word of Torah outweighs all the other mitzvahs.
And when the Talmud says when a mitzvah comes along that can't be done by others one stops learning, the Gra says that means one is allowed to stop learning to do the mitzvah, not that he has to.


And here the Gra is making a lot of sense. For one who is occupied in one mitzvah does not have to do any other mitzvah even if the other mizvah is greater. So it makes sense that one can go and do the other mitzvah if he wants to, but he does not have to.

This is all in the way of introduction. I know the Rambam holds from learning Physics and MetaPhysics as the fulfillment of the command to love and fear God because of how it inspires a person. I just wanted to bring the idea of the Gra as a first axiom and then

 And learning Torah is like sacrifices that need to be for the sake of heaven for them to have any value. A sacrifice that is offered with intention to eat it after its time allotted is not just not a mitzvah, but karet [cutting of from ones people].

I am not one to try to decide between these people. But what I would suggest is that if we can't be learning Torah with the kind of התמדה constancy as the Gra was advocating, at least we can put in a couple of hours per day. [For people just starting that would be the written law that is to go through the Old Testament word by word from beginning to end, and the Mishna. upon which the Talmud is based. Also one session with Talmud in depth to begin to get an idea of the depths of the Talmud because that is important at the very beginning of ones learning. If you don't get that right away, you never get it. You find lots of people that think learning Talmud in depth means memorizing lots of commentaries  or other nonsense.

To the Rambam learning Physics and Metaphysics brings to fear and love of God which are the major goals of the Torah.
Let me try to be short.
The Torah is clothed in the Creation. So when you learn about God's creation you are learning God's wisdom.

But you could in theory go into this in detail with bringing different places where the Rambam go into this in more detail. This is probably a worthwhile project also since for some reason people tend to go away from physics when they start learning Torah thinking there is some kind of contradiction.

Major sources: Rambam beginning of the Guide, beginning of Mishna Torah, end of vol III or (vol II) in the Guide in the story about the palace of the King,


 To put this all together you have to start with the idea that the goal of Torah is to come to love and fear of God. Then you need the idea that the the world was created by the ten statements of Genesis, and thus those statements are the life force of all that is in the world. And that those ten statements are the clothing of the Ten Commandments. And the highest statement is the first one "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" in which it does not say openly God said. It is the hidden statement which is the life force of everything and everywhere where God's glory is hidden.
Thus Torah is God's revealed wisdom and Physics and Metaphysics is his hidden wisdom.

That is the short and simple of it.
 There are people that if exposed to straight Torah will not be able to accept it.  This explains also how often it is better for people to learn the natural sciences rather than open Torah, because זכה נעשית סם חיים, לא זכה נעשית לו סם מוות. By being exposed to open Torah one can become worse. And in fact this often happens before our very eyes.
Also seeing the wisdom inside ever aspect of creation binds ones soul to the purpose of that individual creation which in it s higher source is close to the purpose of all creation which is God's glory.




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Appendix:
1) I want to suggest that this learning should be coupled with regular books of Fear of God. Mainly books from the Middle Ages. The world after the Middle Ages lost a lot of Fear of God and so to be inspired in that direction one needs books from that period. Also Musar books after the Middle Ages have a lot of Kabalah and that tends to side track people from good charter into religious fanaticism.
This is why I think the original Musar Movement of Israel Salanter was based on Medieval books of Fear of God and not books based on Kabalah.
I was in fact in a place once that was following this approach of Israel Salanter (Musar),  and the effect was electric. (That was the Mir in Brooklyn, NY.)

To the Gra  learning Torah means the Oral and Written Law.

That is the two Talmuds and the Mechilta, Sifra Sifri and Tosephta.

You can see this even more clearly in his disciple Chaim from Voloshin. In one letter he says אין לנו אלא דינא דגמרא. we only have the law of the Talmud when he is arguing with some rav about some decision of his.

But learning Halacha was not on the agenda of the Gra. The Gra wanted people to learn the Oral and Written Torah, and after that kabalah after they had finished the Oral Law.


What I am suggesting  is to learn like the Litvaks: Gemara Rashi Tosphot with the Rambam and Chaim Soloveitchik.
 On the side I would have a Halacha session in Rambam, Tur Beit Yoseph, Shulchan Aruch. But I would not make halacha into the main thing. In the Mir in NY halacha was a half hour in the morning compared to four hours of depth Gemara until Mincha and the 4 hours of fast Gemara in the afternoon.

What does trust in God mean?

  Do you  go after your own needs, but also trust in God?
Or do you need to sit and learn Torah, and assume that what is decreed for you will come automatically? [As the disciple of Reb Israel Salanter wrote in his book Madragat HaAdam מכאן שאין אדם צריך לשום סיבה אלא מה שנגזר בשבילו יבא ממילא בלי שום סיבה כלל] (Translation: "From here we learn that a person does not need any cause, but rather what is decreed for him will come to him without any cause at all--as the Ramban/Nahmanides concluded.")

The Gra said this issue is addressed in the Gemara Rosh HaShanah 26b.
The actual text of the Gemara is just about two lines. It says:
"The people in the local study hall did not understand a strange word in a verse in Psalms יהבך. 'Cast on God  יהבך [burden] and He will support you.' And then they saw Raba Bar Bar Hana walking with a merchant, and the merchant used that word and said, 'Put  יהבך on my camel'; and so then they understood it."
The Gra explained:  "They thought that one should do השתדלות (effort), one should take actions to get his needs meet, but also trust in God. But because of that, they did not understand the verse. They thought it should say צרכיך, 'Cast on God your needs and He will support you.'  After they saw that their original assumption was faulty, and that rather one should just sit and learn and then what one is supposed to have will come automatically, then they understood the verse." (This was in fact how all Navardok yeshivas were started: two students just would come to any Russian town and simply sit and learn Gemara and Musar in the local beit midrash [study hall] and a yeshiva would just pop up around them.)
They would not ask for money. They simply learned Torah.]
This above approach was clearly what people were saying or implying in Far Rockaway [Shar Yashuv] and later in The Mir Yeshiva in NY. The idea was in incredibly simple and straightforward: "Learn Torah and God will do the rest. He will take care of everything else."  [Though if you actually try to pin me down I could not tell you if anyone actually put it in such basic fundamental terms.] [In any case, I could not say I could fulfill this. I wish I had.]

 I have a modified version of this. That is there are things which  are obligations upon me that it would not be right to shirk. And when there are actual obligations that the Torah puts upon me,  I need to do. The cases where one should trust are things that are not actual obligations.
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In the above I am presenting the idea of Navardok of trusting in God, and assuming He will help without any effort on my part. That is the path of the Gra and Navardok. On the other hand the Duties of the Heart [חובות לבבות] says one should do effort. So what we have here is an argument among Rishonim [first authorities, i.e anyone from the Middle Ages]. And I was trying to show how I try to navigate my way between these two options.
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So trust is  a kind of value that has nothing in the secular world to correspond to. And it is like walking on a tight rope over Niagara Falls. You really never know when to trust, and when to put out your own effort. It is highly personal. To bring this message to the larger public, the way to do so  is by starting a kind of Navardok yeshiva --which means a regular Litvak Musar Yeshiva, but with an extra emphasis on trust in God. [Or to set aside one room of your home or a yeshiva just for Musar. I saw this in Netivot in the yeshiva of Rav Montag there, and this makes a lot of sense to me. This helps to bring the basic message of the Torah into focus: to be a mensch, that is to have good traits.
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This kind of conflict- when to trust and when to expend effort- is really just a single example of a larger set of conflicts in values that occur in life. Much of moral philosophy deals with conflicts in values. But even conflicts in moral values are even more basic to nature that we are aware. This is an example of  logical contradictions one gets into when he enters into areas where not just human reason, but even pure reason can't enter as Kant goes into. [That is this is an area of numinous value, the dinge an sich. ]

On a personal note I think I should have stuck with the basic approach of yeshivas in those days -"Trust in God, learn Torah and God will take care of the financial issues." When I left this kind of framework, not only did things fall apart from a Torah perspective, but from a financial perspective also-- almost with a vengeance. That was  to tell me in so many words, "You abandoned Me, so I will abandon you."  Whether you ascribe this interpretation to the events that occurred at that time or not does not really matter, because the fact is this: as long as I  trusted that God would take care of things, and I sat and learned Torah,  God did take care of everything in the best possible fashion possible. And when I stopped, so did He.

Appendix:

(1) I am not going into The problem of Evil or Theodicy. While I  try to have this attitude of trust, still when things do not go my way, I do not  make that a question on God. And it seems that this is required in order to have true trust in God. It has to come with its complement--of a determination not to ask questions when things go wrong.

(2) We know the self is hidden. We can't know our motivations. We often think we are acting from the most noble motivations. It is obvious to others that this is not the case. They can see through our self deception easily. The reason we fool ourselves is we think we have some kind of  special access to know out own motivations. And that is a delusion. But we do know what we are consciously committed to. And to know that is absolutely simple. We can only be committed do what is right or not. Those are the only two options and we can know every second whether we are acting in accord with what we know is the real truth of if we are putting self interest ahead of the truth

(3) Thus what I suggest is to learn the Madragat HaAdam [the book of Musar by  Joseph Yozel Horwitz  of Navardok] in order to try to get to trust in God as much as we can. That is what I am suggesting is that learning Musar is a way of penetrating into the Hidden-Self [the Ding An Sich]. And I am pretty sure that Reb Israel Salanter must have been thinking along these lines also. Reb Israel Salanter must have thought of his system of learning Musar as being a kind of spiritual practice that can penetrate the veil that separates us from the hidden reality. And I am inclined to agree.


(4) I should mention that the greatest yeshiva in the world Ponovitch has a connection with Navardok. The Stipeler Rav, Rav Kinevsky was a son-in-law of Rav Yoseph Yozel Horwitz the rosh yeshiva of the Navardok yeshivas.  

(5) The story with Navardok was the students were taught Ethics and Trust in God along with Gemara. And the kinds of students that came out of such schools really had good character. [Students of Navardok would just go to any random Russian city and sit and learn in the local synagogue and a yeshiva would automatically pop up around them.
Kelm learned Musar most of the day. The Mir (in the city Mir) learned from I think about from 1.5 or more hours per day of Musar after it became  a Musar yeshiva. [But in NY, the Mir had a 20 min. session in Musar before the afternoon prayer and 15 min. before the evening prayer.]

(6) Trust in God has become considered to be opposed to work. That is if you see someone learning Torah all day that is supposed to mean they trust in God. If they are working, it means they are not.
I disagree with this formulation of the problem. While it is true that to get a good picture of what trust in God is in practice, I do not agree that this formulation is the right one.  The way I see things is that Torah ought to be learnt along with a vocation, and survival skills.
That is in fact what you generally see in "Mizrahi" institutions. Or "Bnei Akiva." That is religious Zionism.

(7) I do not want to make it seem like I have trust in God nowadays. But I try to repeat that small paragraph about trust from the Gra when I wake up in the morning in the hope that eventually it might sink into me to begin to trust God again.

(8) Musar today I think should be directed towards finishing all of the four classical books of Musar along with the books of the disciples of Israel Salanter.  [There are two books from Isaac Blasser. The אור ישראל and a second one that just came out recently in Bnei Brak of his writings and letters. I saw this book in Netivot in Rav Montag's yeshiva but most people are completely unaware of the existence of this second book. The letters of Simha Zissel from Kelm I found completely unintelligible and no one has reprinted them. The מדרגת האדם {Level of Man}is  a masterpiece. The book אור צפון {Hidden Light}from the Rosh Yeshiva of Slobodka I think is important, but for some reason he wrote in every chapter something that seems contrary to the simple explanation of the Gemara. I was not able to make much progress there. That is incidentally where Rav Avigdor Miller went to yeshiva.]

(9) Trust also goes with accomplishment in Torah, not intelligence. See this note: "But in any case, is there any compelling evidence of a correlation between IQ and achievement? Richard Feynman  had an IQ of 123, which is OK, but not exactly astronomical, Yet he was one of America’s greatest theoretical physicists. ... Amusingly, William Shockley, inventor of the transistor, was among the elementary school children tested by IQ  researchers (in the 1920's). His IQ was not high enough to be a “termite”, so he was shut out of the experiment and was not deemed “gifted”."


(10) I have been hoping that by saying over to myself that piece of Musar [That Gemara Rosh Hashanah along with the commentary of the Gra] that somehow the concept of trust would get inside me. I can not say that I succeeded in that, but it did help me withhold action. I was in a situation which was very terrible but I thought that unless I am actually force to leave that I should not do so based on this idea of the Gra that if it is from Heaven it will happened whether you like it or not. So I stayed and somehow after years of torture somehow the situation just seems to have been resolved.


(You might that you are not allowed to learn in some beit midrash. That happened to me but that is from Heaven. In that way God will guide your steps to where you ought to be.  )

Asking for money to learn Torah seems to violate the Rambam's idea that for one to seek charity in order to learn Torah causes one to lose his portion in the next world. But to accept charity that is offered seems to be OK in terms of the end of the Laws of the Seventh year --"not just the tribe of Levi but all who put themselves out to serve God and turn from the pleasures of this world, God will provide." This seems to be in accord with the Mishna in Pirkei Avot. [Perhaps this is an issue of סוגיות חלוקות (differing approaches in the Gemara)? But I think this is not a case of disagreement but rather to seek charity to learn is forbidden, but to accept it if offered is OK. ]  But in a practical sense I think the majority of people have  a kind of intuition of who is learning Torah for its own sake and simply accept money in order to continue to do so,- as opposed to those who are learning Torah for ulterior reasons of personal gain. And all intuitions have a prima facie plausibility on the face of it unless some other intuition comes along with more prima facie plausibility that can defeat the first one as Dr. Michael Huemer goes into.

What ever people say about the Ukraine, they are hospitable to Jews coming for Rosh Hashanah. I have heard complaints but in general it is clear that they make a great effort be hospitable. I don't know why people accuse the Ukraine of antisemitism, but that seems to me to untrue. Very untrue.
There is every Rosh Hashanah a massive national effort to make sure people coming to Uman have a good time. The Ukraine sends in every type of police and military force  force to safeguard Jews. I have rarely seen such a massive effort to safeguard Jewish people. What you see on Lag BeOmer in Meron [a festival in Northern Israel] does not even come close.
[To safeguard Jews, the Ukraine brings in every division of their military and police force--to make sure there is no trouble on Rosh Hashanah. Not just the Ukraine version of special forces, the Berekt, but many other branches of their military and special expert units. The Israeli police also come. And the local people bend over backwards to make sure Rosh Hashanah is nice. To accuse these people of Antisemitism is the height of absurdity. I have never met nicer people.]

And this is important to me because I think Rosh Hashanah in Uman is important.
From perceptive I was definite going down until I got to my first Rosh Hashanah.  My world had turned into a surrealistic nightmare.  My world had turned into a Faustian fall, more distorted and nauseating than portrait by Picasso.
One Rosh Hashanah was enough to turn that all around.

Appendix
This post is based on an idea I learned from Reb Shelomo Friefeld  and my first year teacher in Gemara in Far Rockaway. That  is the lesson about gratitude. Since Ukraine has been in fact hospitable to Jews it seems to me to be the height of ingratitude to deny it or to be silent about it in a case when the Ukraine needs someone to tell the truth about how it has been treating Jews for the last twenty years since it gained independence.
In any case I urge the governments of the Ukraine and Russia to settle. The Russian and Ukrainian people are good people and there is no reason for this conflict to continue. As for the eastern provinces I know there was a referendum twenty years ago but I think the eastern areas  should have a degree of autonomy. In that way they remain a part of the Ukraine, but have their own system of education--like Quebec in Canada. In that way Russia is happy, and the Ukraine is happy.
Russia is not trying to annex the East of the Ukraine. They are simply supporting people that want closer ties with Russia. But this can be done without a war.

Three core principles Joy, Private conversation with God, learning fast have been my core principles
But I added another one about truth.
And I want to discuss them each briefly.
1) I might seem serious, but in fact I have taken this idea of joy of as central.
First I want to say that this idea of  can be defended. I know some people might wonder where in the Torah is there a command to be happy? I wondered about this also.
But in fact Reb Chaim Vital, the disciple of Isaac Luria, list the four good character traits thus: (1) humility, and to be infinitely low in ones own eyes תכלית השיפלות, and to go away from all kinds of anger, (2) Silence,- to speak only Torah, or what is absolutely necessary for the body, or for the honor of people; (3) to  minimize body pleasures--even those that are necessary, (4) and joy in ones portion for "Everything that happens from Heaven is for good," and also joy in mitzvot. And these good character traits are the very essence of the Torah and the purpose of the Torah as he explains there. [This short chapter of Chaim Vital is quoted in full in the beginning of the אבן שלמה of the Gra that came out recently.]
So being always happy is a even more that a mitzvah as these four good charter traits are essence of the mitzvot. [To the Rambam the purpose of the mitzvot is to bring to good character and to Reb Chaim Vital good character depends on the foundational soul (which is composed of four parts) and that is the clothing of the Intellectual soul upon which depend the 613 mitzvot. That is basic good character is needed to keep any mitzvah. Otherwise one just thinks he is doing a mitzvah but it is in fact a sin. The evil inclination always dresses up in mitzvahs and come and tells you "come and do a mitzvah." But then after one has good charter the mizvot are to bring to a higher level of good character.


The idea is that there is no mitzvah to be miserable. Nor to make others miserable. And this determines what is a mitzvah is.

2) Conversation with God. People often think of God as being far away. And they think he is accessible only through hard types of actions.  all you need to do to get close to God is to talk with him as you would talk with a friend.
Where can you find God? In Times Square, in a church, even in a synagogue. In any place you decide it is time to tell Him your troubles and ask for help.
If possible I would like to start a world wide talking with God movement. That is to make it a project to go up into the mountains every weekend (with proper outdoor gear and boots) and to go off to some secluded spot and talk with God. But also to speak with Him on the way to work every day and on the way back home and on the subway. And to know and believe that this is all you need to get to God. You don't need to go to any spiritual person. You can go to God directly.


3) Learning fast has been a big help for me. Not only has it helped me learn the Oral Law much more thoroughly than I could have without this advice but also in the natural sciences.

[But in terms of learning Torah I ask people to learn at home. Get yourself a full set of the two Talmuds Babylonian and Jerusalem, Mechilta, Sifri, Sifra and Tosephta and plow through them.}
Also the Mishna Torah of the Rambam with the commentaries on the page.

4) Truth at some point become important to me. When my world was falling apart and I saw myself sinking rapidly I decided the one thing I needed to hold onto was never to say an untruth under any circumstance. I discovered after that the amazing power of truth to hold one up under all kinds of floods and disasters. It provides an invisible force field than nothing can penetrate.

The major support of Reform and Conservative Judaism comes from Musar Ethical books of traditional Judaism
I mean the major principle of Reform Judaism is what? That between man and your fellow man comes before between Man and God. This is the exact same principle of Musar.
The Chafetz Chaim brings this from the verse, "You should walk in his ways, and keep his mitzvot."
The command to walk in his ways we know is the commandment: "What is he? Kind. So you too should be kind."
R. Chaim Vital (the disciple of Isaac Luria) in chapters one and two of his Musar book Sharei Kedusha makes the same point. And the great Yemenite Kabalist, R. Shalom Sharabi, goes into this exact point in detail. He says the soul of a person is his character traits. The mitzvot are simple the clothing and food of the soul but not the soul itself.
Reb Chaim Vital says, "One must be more careful to stay away from bad character traits than be keeping positive and negative commandments because bad traits are very much worse that sins."


Reform Judaism is right about Ethical Monotheism. This is first of all true. Also it is what the Torah is about.  But Reform is wrong in ignoring the Oral Law and the efforts of the  Sages to understand Divine Law. Also-It is bourgeois. They have no Gra, or Chaim from Voloshin,   or Issac Luria, Israel Abuchatzaeira. No juice. No taste. The batteries need charging.

And it ignores the most important aspect of Torah the holy numinous aspect.
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Also "social justice" is an 1840's invention of two catholic priests meant to replace noble obligation (Noblesse oblige). It is not the main idea of the Torah, nor the prophets, nor the writings. 

In spite of this I would only pray in a Reform temple or a Conservative one. I would run from the insane religious world  like one runs from a charging leopard. That is just how frightened I am from them.

And it would not matter if the only mikvah in town was in an the insane religious world  (Synagogue). I would still simple refuse to go anywhere near the the insane religious world for shear and utter terror what they would do to my immortal soul.
The Sitra Achra just got too much intertwined with the insane religious world  until it is impossible to separate the two.

This fact is hidden to many religious people because they think their approach is based on Talmud and Halacha. They are unaware that it is not based on Halacha at all but rather it takes a few halachas and rituals to cover up  a vast body of Sitara Achra. The few halachas they do only serve to cover the real essence.

This was not always the case. Before the time of Shabati Tzvi things were straightforward. But after his time the energy of teachings of the Shatz (Shabati Tzvi) got totally entwined with the insane religious world . What makes this almost impossible to know is that people today rarely every learn the books of the Shatz and his prophet Natan from Gaza. But if you have had the sad experience of A reading those misguided books then you can see right away how the most basic teachings of the Shatz are part and parcel of the insane religious world  today.