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11.2.23

The evil inclination uses false mitzvot to bring people into the paths of darkness.

 I was in a local sort of Litvak kind of Beit Midrash and worked on some sugia there for a while. Then I noted that they had there a book of a collection of ideas if the Gra on the Five Books of Moses [Chumash]. There I noted a comment by the Gra that reminded me of the very first lesson of Rav Nahman (in his book the Le.M vol. I, chapter 1). That is that the evil inclination uses false mitzvot to bring people into the paths of darkness,

This is why the straight path of Torah of the Gra is important--, it is that it is too easy to be distracted and fall by pseudo mitzvot, and they lead from one thing to another until one's whole life is ruined. [Breslov itself, while based on the teaching of Rav Nahman, tends to have that same sort of aspect [being a half way house] between holiness [kedusha] and anti-holiness.  It is like a door by which people leave the straight and narrow path of the Torah [the Litvak Yeshiva world],  and by which some people come into Torah after being outside.. Rav Nahman has great and powerful advice, but also there is there things that can be (and are)  misunderstood from how he intended them.