There is kind of Achilles heel in yeshivas. Some trip wire that people fall for. I am not sure what it is exactly but it perhaps is  a kind of superiority complex.

It is hard for me to recommend yeshivas.The reason is they purposely try to recruit people from university and say to come to the yeshiva to learn Torah all day. Then when one does this, and things are not working out for him as well as he expected, they treat him like dirt.
It is like the just want to recruit the beautiful people [college students with rich parents] because it gives them a good image, so as to be able to con and scam more people in giving them charity. Because after all is said and done, that is all it is about. They pretend it is a living, but all it really is is charity.


The idea of learning Torah is to come to two things objective morality and numinosity. But this does not happen if on learns for money. That is why the yeshivas are not effective any more in creating good character.

Torah is only effective in bringing to objective morality when it is learned for its own sake--not as a means to make money.

When people learn Torah for money that creates a kind of vicious personality. They have a need to show that somehow they are more deserving of people's charity than others. So if others are also learning Torah, the first groups has to show they are somehow superior. And if someone comes along that also wants to learn Torah that creates a situation where the first groups feels the need to put down and be rid of the second guy. It is rare to find much god in this system.

The only yeshivas I can truly recommend and think they are learning Torah for its own sake are the well known Litvak yeshivas Ponovitch, Mir, Brisk,Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat.

I also got the idea that there has been a great effort to bring people from 3rd world countries into the USA and to keep out white people. I also ran into a lot of people from first world countries that would have loved to come to the USA but getting any kind of visa was virtually impossible. Someone has been trying hard to change the racial makeup of the USA.

s25 D minor  s25 midi format   s25 nwc format

OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) has nothing to do with Fear of God, but to the religious world it is the same thing. The more one focuses on rituals, is the more holy they seem..

A lot of religious motivation has more to do with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder more than with any kind of holiness. But not all.

And the system of the Ultra Religious encourages and nourishes this kind of disorder.

This happens when nothing else seems to work. A time of anxiety brings this on.

The obsessions in the Ultra Religious world are the exact same things as classic OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) , [i.e. cleanliness, food preparation, obsession with sex, holy places. numerology and gematriot.

The leaders are people that have an exaggerated version of this OCD.

And this is the basic reason why the Ultra Religious world is insane.

OCD has nothing to do with Fear of God, but to the religious world it is the same thing. The more they focus on rituals,  the more  holy they think they are.

So, in spite of the great thing that Reb Israel Salanter did in emphasizing Musar and Fear of God, still there is this troubling side of things in which fear of God can't be discerned or told apart from a diseased imagination.


For this reason Reb Israel Salanter himself focused on the more rational books of Musar Ethics from the Middle Ages more than the later Musar books which were all fused with kabalah and probably were written by people with this disorder. The obsession with religion is not the sign of a healthy personality, even though being true to the word of God in the Oral and Written Law is important.

[After spending time with the religious, you will start noticing this just as I did. A lot the people there simply have diseased imaginations.]

You can see why in Lithuanian kinds of Yeshivas obsessive religious behavior was rigorously  excluded in order to prevent these kinds of crazy people from joining. Thus in the ultra Religious world you have people at the heads of the cults have different levels of OCD, but that is rare in the Litvak world which  excludes this kind of insanity.

However to avoid people with this kind of disorder it is safer to simply join a Reform Temple. I myself went to Temple Israel and also to a Conservative place in Southern California.

Math, Physics, Gemara Musar, Music, Survival Skills.

I mentioned a few times that my basic approach is Torah with Derech Eretz [manners and a vocation.]. That is Math, Physics, Gemara Musar, Music, Survival Skills. But also I wanted to add the learning these things does not depend on understanding. There is such a thing as a mitzvah to learn Torah even though you do not understand. This is not just because it is assumed that with lots of review one will eventually understand. There is also the idea that in the next world one will be reminded and understand everything he tried to understand in this world but was not able to do so.
This forms the basis of the type of fast learning that all authentic Litvak yeshivas do in the afternoon and I showed how this comes from the Talmud itself. לעולם לגרס איניש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר

I mentioned this in reference to Tosphot --just to say it over day after day, even for months until you understand.[Unless you are learning with a learning partner. In that case you do this kind of learning on your own time.]

But also this applies to learning Gemara, and Tur, Beit Joseph. To put a place marker in the book and every day do one whole page in order, and the next day to go on from where you left off.

I wanted to add the idea of learning standing. This is also a great help to understanding. I remember that this was how I did a lot of the writings of the Ari(zal),  Isaac Luria. I did not have "Stender" at home so I pulled out the shelf of one cabinet and stood up learning the Ari. [Not during "seder" or regular yeshiva hours 10:00-2:00 4:00-8:00]

This should not be taken as a kind of agreement with the Ultra Religious who are insane. This should only be taken as agreement with Lithuanian yeshivas  where Torah is learned for its own sake. Nothing else in the religious world do I consider kosher at all. [In fact the Gra knew exactly what he was doing when he signed the Cherem and it is wrong for people to ignore it, because it relates to objective reality.] This affected the entire frum world including the yeshivas. Even the yeshivas have gotten a share of the kelipot that penetrated into them. They will make a song and dance around secular Jews that have money but treat other people like dirt.

s24 A major

 Muslims  purposely target Jews on campus with insults and many other ways of making them feel no wanted.


Sephardim picked this up technique of subtle harassment from Muslims. They do it to Ashkenazim pretty consistently. But then you have some Sephardim that are appalled at this behavior, but they can't do anything about it. There is always at least one that makes life intolerable for the Ashkenazi until he is forced to leave town. [Unless the area is Ashkenazi and the sephardim are the guests.]