When we say the whole world is full of God's glory in prayer we are referring to position, This is similar if I say Joe is in the supermarket. In neither case is one saying anything that relates to what makes someone to be something.
Position is a predicate that does not say anything about the essence.
One can come to God from anywhere. But he means it in the sense that one is never lost from God. No matter have far one has fallen he can always open his mouth and ask God for help-- and God hears him and sometimes answers also!

 The Rambam (Maimonides) had a system. The idea of his system was that in the Torah there are no contradictions; and he expanded that to include the Talmud. So in his system there is no contradiction between Torah and Talmud. Furthermore he also had a modified Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian system {that he does not define exactly} and this system he hold is the underlying world view of Torah.

The idea that there is no contradiction in Torah was common in the Middle Ages.  It led Aquinas to create his system based on his idea that there is no contradiction between the Old Testament and the NT and later people called the "church fathers" and Boethius.

This is very different from today when people feel they individually interpret the Torah to mean what they feel it means to them. Or when groups interpret the Torah to mean what it means to their particular deluded leader.

There is no idea that the Torah is a self consistant whole that means something very specific and and nothing else. And that meaning can be discovered by human reason. For if it could not be discovered, then why was the Torah given at all in the first place? So in terms of understanding the Torah we have to call the Middle Ages the "Age of Reason." The period starting after the Middle Ages we should call "The Age of Darkness."

Even in Musar you can see this. Musar had three distinct periods: (1) The Middle Ages, (2)  then all Musar became Kabalistic, and then (3) the post Israel Salanter Musar which was getting back to \the Talmud kind of Musar.

The Gra builds on a concept of Reb Chaim Vital about the human soul.
The idea of the Gra is a person has נפש יסודית (or נפש בהמית) (animal soul) that desires physical pleasures. Also there is a רוח יסודית (animal spirit) that desires less physical kinds of pleasure like honor  or social prestige. He says animal have both of these. That seems clear as we can see in many animals a social hierarchy--especially primates. It seems clear that the desire to be the alpha male or close to the Alpha male is by no means just a human trait. He then says that the holy soul נשמה (breath, neshama) desires Torah for its own sake. But he is hiding the idea there is a soul from the realm of evil.
That means one can have the first two levels of his body and soul from the realm of holiness and the third and highest level from the realm of evil. This explains a lot to me about experiences I have had with people who seemed to be keeping Torah, but had some very powerful spirit of evil by which they were able to seduce others and create followings and cults.
[To get the whole idea look at the Eitz Chaim of Reb Chaim Vital after Shaar Hanukvah. Excuse any mistakes here because I have not looked at the Eitz Chaim for many years. Mainly the idea of Reb Chaim Vital is there is the holy soul נפש השכלית, the unholy soul נפש הטמאה, and the soul attached to the body נפש היסודית.  But take a look at the Eitz Chaim to get a clearer idea if this interests you. Roughly this corresponds to Ego, Id, super Ego. But not exactly, If we take for example the Id as Nietzsche understood it, then we  certainly are not talking about the unholy soul but some deep levels of the soul that are really related to Kant's and Schopenhauer's Dinge An Sich. Thing in itself.]

You could start your own Lithuanian yeshiva in theory almost anywhere. The way these places started was actually ad hoc and informal. And the same could be done today almost anywhere.

You you need simply a building, and a Talmud and books of Musar [medieval Ethics].

But you also would need to keep out cults. One of the reasons for the success of Litvak yeshivas was that they were based on the Gra who put a excommunication on Jewish cults. There was clearly a distinction between who is "on the bus" (with us) and who is "off the bus."

[That expression comes from the hippies who also had a concept of "who is with us" and who is not.]

And the greatest danger to the Jewish people today is Jewish cults. They are the enemy within, the saboteurs. They  undermine the foundations of the Jewish people (i.e. Torah) by keeping the external form of ritual of Torah, but in place of worship of God they place worship their leader.
They should be rigorously excluded.

I had a lot of trouble convincing my wife that it is a mitzvah to learn Torah not for money.

And when things got tough for me, I had trouble convincing myself of the same.

I mean we all know that when people that seem to be following a certain path act badly this reflects on the path itself. If you hear about Buddhist monks complaining about a certain alternative group of Buddhists you think automatically that maybe the whole path itself is wrong.

So it is a challenge to defend the idea that learning Torah is a big deal.

So it is a matter of faith. Fine but what I want to bring here is the story. The story started early for me. I think from a very age Torah held a kind of fascination for me. And when I first arrived at yeshiva I felt like a fish that had been out of the water for so long that I could hardly breath and then someone had the kindness to throw me back into the water. There was nothing rational about it at all. It was a deep gut reaction I had to Torah.
When I told my future wife about yeshiva she also got the "bug" and jumped into the beautiful amazing world of Torah. But it was not easy to explain to her the idea that learning Torah is the purpose of life kind of idea of the usual Lithuanian yeshiva. Lots of people had the idea that learning Torah was to become a rabbi [God forbid] and to make money [may Heaven save us].
In fact outside of Brooklyn and Bnei Brak the idea of Torah for its own sake was unknown.

And nowadays the idea may have faded out completely. Even people in kollel tell the general public that learning Torah is a legitimate profession. The idea of Torah for its own sake seems so foreign to people that they think it is absurd.

The main obstacle to  Torah is  people that do not know Torah, nor learn Torah, nor keep Torah, but put on an act that they do.  They give the holy Torah a bad name. If not for them it might be easier to define the idea of learning Torah as the goal of life.

 There are times when prayer does not work because it is after the Divine decree. At that time when prayer does not help one needs to dress the request in statements, not prayers. In this way we see that learning Torah is not just a kind of prayer but in fact is even more effective than prayer.

But in the ultimate analysis the value of doing Torah and learning Torah is that it connects a person to God through the moral realm. Its value is only in so far as it connects you to objective morality.
That is insofar as the laws in fact correspond to objective morality and learning them causes one to keep them.

Since people are primates there seems to be an obstacle in becoming moral. For we have reason which perceives moral values but we also have our primate nature which goes in the opposite direction. So it does seem clear there is a need for work to get ourselves in alignment with objective morality.

In any case to be able to defend this any further I would have to go the the Guide and the commentary on the Guide by Joseph Albo. And there are limitations on my being able to do that.

When things were falling apart in my life, I knew I had to find one simple basic principle that I could hold onto to help me keep afloat. I decided that that principle had to be truth--to speak the truth always at all cost. I felt there was a kind of power in speaking the truth. That one who speaks the truth without any deviation gets a  protective shield of light.
And this worked in amazing ways. I can't count the times after I made that decision when I was literally rescued from the claws of death. And sometimes there were things less dramatic.

Also it seemed to me that to have a world view that corresponded with reality was important. And since there were lots of world views out there and my own world view at the time had serious questions on it I realized that it would be a help that if I myself spoke only the absolute truth and avoided any lie o white lie even by accident that that would help to come to the truth of reality.

The major problem today in the Jewish world is that of cults. And it is inevitable that the minute you walk in the door you will be confronted by someone who wants to traps you into one of their scams. This is completely pervasive in the insane religious world , and impossible to avoid.

Why do you have problems is a good question. This does not apply to you alone. I have thought long and hard about peoples problems, and mine in particular, and I have not come to any conclusion  And also during the years to learn Torah in a Lithuanian kind of yeshiva. Both these things seem to have a good effect on people that do them.



If there is no straight Litvak yeshiva around (straight means with no insane, charismatic leader), then learn at home. That is to have a of the Oral Law, the Two Talmuds, Mechilta, Sifra, Sifri, Tosephta. Also the basic Rishonim: Ramban, Ritva, Rosh, Rashba.
And the basic Poskim: Rambam, Tur, the big Shulchan Aruch with all the commentaries Taz, Shach, etc. The old editions. not the new ones which mess everything up.
You can get very cheap editions of all the above. When I first got to NY yeshivas I was shocked at how inexpensive  these books were. Even though the yeshiva itself had all these books I wanted my own copies for quick reference. In fact in almost any Mizrachi kind of yeshiva every student has his own cardboard or wooden box where he keeps these books near to where he sits and learns .

Yeshiva is incidentally a place for learning Torah for its own sake. This is an important issue because  nowadays there are so called yeshivas which learn Torah for money. And they encourage Baali Teshuva to drop out of collage and to become depend on charity and welfare like they are and these kind of places out to be shut down because they are damaging and cultic.

But to be frank I never saw such  thing in any NY yeshiva. Even my own Rosh Yeshiva ordered me to go to collage. NY yeshivas are definitely aware that Torah is not to be used for making money.

If people need an introduction to Torah before getting into the details, I can't give an exact idea.
But I think the Sefer Hachinuch was very good for me. It follows the order of the Mitzvot of the Rambam but gives a more thorough explanation of each mitzvah. Shimshon Refael Hirsh's books the Horev and The 19 Letters also seem to be very good. The major rule for getting an introduction to Torah is to avoid cults that divert and change to meaning of Torah to fit their hidden agenda.


The major problem today in the Jewish world is that of cults. And it is inevitable that the minute you walk in the door you will be confronted by someone who wants to traps you into one of their scams. This is completely pervasive in the insane religious world , and impossible to avoid. Thus in general I say to stay home to learn Torah until  people throw out the cults. And you know exactly what I mean.
{Lithuanian yeshivas are not cults but can be sometimes problematic. And judging by the current state of affairs it is a good idea to join one or to make one. But only on condition that it is elitist and lets in not noxious breezes from the insane religious world  cults.} The normal litvak yeshiva used to be very careful what kinds of books they would let in