I have had a hard time trying to convince people about the importance of learning Torah. One thing that is often thrown back at me is, "what about keeping Torah?"  To that I say the only places I ever saw people that kept the Torah was in places that were devoted to learning  Torah.
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That being said I want to tell you how to start your own yeshiva in several easy steps.
First you need raw material--that is a person that knows "how to learn." Knowing how to learn means knowing that you can't know a halacha without knowing the Gemara, Rashi and Tosphot that it is based on. And it means knowing the actual Gemara, Rashi, and Tosphot on the basic seven tractates.[the three bavas and the four on nashim.]
Second  you need Musar. That is ethics, not just Talmud.
After that you need to learn yourself about an hour or more a day and then things will just happen.

Yeshiva has nothing to do with money. If people ask you for money to support their yeshiva be assured they are not learning Torah. 99% of all places that call themselves yeshivas are scams.

q16 [mp3]  q16 in midi format

Sex in the Five books of Moses is not symmetrical. A woman can be married to only one man. A man can be married to many women.  ניאוף  adultery is when a man has sex with a woman who is married to another man. That gets the death penalty. It is in two lists in Leviticus  that go though the עריות.
Sex outside of marriage is  not ניאוף-adultery. It comes under the category of פילגש concubinage.

עריות in Leviticus are generally close family relations. But adultery gets thrown in also in both lists.




There were a good number of people in the Old Testament that had concubines. One well known such person was the friend of Joshua the disciple of Moses. [כלב בן יפונה ] He was not considered a sinner because he has a few wives and few concubines. In the Five Books of Moses he is praised with a kind of praise that is not applied to anyone  else in the Torah, וימלא אחרי השם "He was filled with God."

I am not saying this is the best option. And we do have the Rambam who says a concubine is forbidden to anyone but a king. All I am saying is that there are plenty of opinions to depend on here that allow a girl friend.
Still if you can get married in the traditional way that is best. But for some people it is hard to find such a  situation.

The issue of the borders of Israel is difficult.
For one thing we have the Tosphot in Tractate Yevamot 16a.To Tosphot you have either full holiness or nothing. There is no "in between" state.

The first answer of Tosphot is OK as far as I can see but how can we explain the second answer?
The basic Gemara there says that Amon and Moav are obligated in the tithe for the poor. Later on that same page the Gemara explains the reason being: הרבה כרכים כיבשו עולי מצרים והניחום עולי בבל כדי שיסמכו עליהם עניים בשביעית. "Many cities were conquered by the Jews that came up from Egypt but were left by the Jews that came up from Babylonia in order that the poor will be able to depend on them in the seventh year."
 Tosphot asks from, "There are three lands concerning ביעור." One of those lands in עבר הירדן. So the land beyond the Jordan River is obligated in the seventh year laws.  The first answer of Tosphot seems OK. There was an area of Sichon and Og that was originally of Sichon and Og [lets call it Area I] and there was an area that these two kings had conquered from Amon and Moav. Area II. Tosphot suggests that Area I was settled by Jews returning from Babylonia, --not area II. The next answer of Tosphot is the one I can't understand right now. There Tosphot says the area that is obligated in tithes to the poor in the seventh year was not even part of the area settled by Jews coming out of Egypt. Or at least that is how I understand Tosphot. But if that is so then how does it fit with the Gemara?

This is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more questions. For example the Rambam in the beginning of the laws of Truma seems to make no sense. In one Halacha he says everything on the right from Aco until Kaziv is outside of Israel. and then in the next halacha he seems to contradict this. And in the end of that chapter he says the whole area even of עולי בבל is obligated in tithes only by rabbinical decree. But this last question I might have a kind of half way decent answer for. Maybe--I am suggesting- the Jews returning from Babylonia sanctified the land but the sanctification does not set in until all the Jewish people return to Israel.

The so called leaders of Breslov are all dangerous con men. The only group I like is the Na Nach group that rightfully suspect any religious leader of nefarious motives. They may go a little too far in that direction but their approach lends a healthy balance to the playing field. I never met a religious teacher  who did not lie all the time and the Na Nach people are aware of that. They lie because they have contempt for everyone outside of their group. That makes them incapable of telling the truth ever.
[I mention this because recently I was looking at the Musar book אורחות צדיקים and that book warns not to flatter. I am afraid if I discuss the greatness of Torah but don't warn people about the con men then I would be guilty of flattery.

They lie mainly to fill in the gap between what they want to think about themselves and the reality and also to make their institutions seem to be about charity. But then they get so used to lying they do it out of habit. And eventually the habit gets to be malicious. They lie about people not part of their group that they don't like in order to hurt them.

Without any idea of obligation  at this point, let's just try to think of what a Maimonides kind of program of living Torah would be like. If we try to mix obligation with it at first, that might damage the clarity.

We might not want to do want the Rambam says, and that might cause us to not recognize or admit to ourselves that he is saying certain things.

We want to separate the variables.

The Rambam's idea of an education is the Oral and Written Law, Physics and Metaphysics. He is not describing Kabalah because he openly says he means Physics and Metaphysics as understood by the ancient Greeks. Physics and Metaphysics have both made some progress since Aristotle, so a Rambam kind of program would have to include modern Theoretical Physics and Kant' Critique of Pure Reason.

But you see right away what happens when we think about the Rambam. Immediately there is resistance to anything he says that one's social group does not approve of.  That is why I say it is easiest to think of what he actually said, and only later to think about how to accomplish it.



The advantage of this approach is if we can get a clear idea of what Torah is, then we might be able to keep it. But without a clear idea of what it is, it is hopeless to imagine we can fulfill it.

Also we need a certain degree of confidence that he understood the Torah fairly well. Faith in the wise.

This approach to Torah cancels out a lot of things that present themselves as Torah true concepts.
Because of the Rambam's clarity many issues become clear in this way.

I would like to suggest to make a Lithuanian yeshiva in every town.  The idea would be that you would have a regular normal Litvak yeshiva program for four years but it would be open house for people to come in and learn just like in the great Lithuanian yeshivas in NY.  The basic program would be an in depth session in the morning and a faster session in the afternoon. Plus it would have the regular Musar Jewish ethics books. That is it would be following the basic orientation of the Gra.

This would not be teaching people to use Torah for money. It is not a kollel. Nor would it be to get people to repent. It is rather to teach people to get to the level of proficiency that an average guy needs in order to be able to learn Torah on his own.  And that takes about four years about 10 hours a day.

And it is clear that Christian civilization can't survive without yeshivas. They lose track of what the law is.