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authentic Torah

There is little idea of authentic Torah nowadays. People think authentic Torah is rituals. This gives power to schizo personalities to dominate. After all if Torah is mainly about rituals, then who better to be  a leader that someone who does long hard rituals? That is the nature of the schizo personality.
They love love hard rituals.

Or perhaps an idiot savant who can memorize  a whole library of books without understanding a word? Or who can write tons of religious fanaticism? Hyper-graphia  also being a characteristic of schizo personalities.

Believe me these are all examples of what is considered an authentic Tzadik {saint} nowadays.

Authentic Torah is found only in Litvak yeshivas. And what is that. It is a hybrid. The original idea of a yeshiva was begun by Reb Chaim from Voloshin [disciple of the Gra] . This was a radical departure from anything that had come before. It was an institution independent of the city it was located in. It was in no way subject to the home owners nor the Rav of the city. Its job was to learn Talmud , the Oral Law.
Independently  began the Musar movement [Ethics movement]. The idea there was to learn Musar Ethics. That idea did not take off at all for home owners. But it was by certain yeshivas. Thus certain yeshivas became all about ethics. So at that point we have two kinds of yeshivas. The Gra type for Talmud alone and the Musar type for mainly Ethics and some Talmud. The Modern Litvak Yeshiva is a hybrid of these two types.  Good examples are Ponovitch, Brisk, Mirrer in NY, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat.

If you are near a Litvak place, then learn there. It does not have to be all day. In fact, when I was in Netivot I went to Rav Montag's place for an hour in the morning and an hour at night and Thanks to God made some good progress even in that short time. [Rav Montag is a disciple of Issachar Meir the friend of Bava Sali]
If you are an organized person you could learn a fast session for one hour  and another slow in depth session another hour and that would only take two hours per day and the rest of the day you could go surfing.
[If I had not gone to yeshiva in NY would not know how to learn. It would not make any difference how smart I am. I would have thought all the false paths were OK. ]

The typical spoiled brats of the cult that the Gra signed the excommunication on

Schizo type personalities. Meta magical thinking. Appropriate context. Hearing voices at the right time makes one  a "tzadik" (saint); hearing them at the wrong type one gets called "insane."
Cleanliness over done.
All human societies have great need for schizo type personality. They need the shaman. The basis for Torah to the Rambam is objective morality. The cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on turns it into the main thing being ritual;-- especially ritual cleanliness.

Obsessive rituals is the core of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on. But what makes the leaders "tzadikim" is the do it at the "right" times. They have enough control over it to make sure it conforms to the social norms that will get them accepted as true tzadikm, and thus get reproductive success and financial security.

Hyper-graphia. Reb Natan was a classic case of  the need to write obsessively and an uncontrollable interest in religious matters.


The problem is that every area of value has an opposite area of value that mimics it. So talent can take one only half way. For example; for every science where good work is being done, there is pseudo science. But people in pseudo science are easily able to fool the public because they are talented. But they can't fool the experts. So it is in every area of value,- including Torah. That is why  some people emphasize the rituals. That is  to be able to fool the public.


So it is important to come to authentic Torah and to avoid fake Torah which mimics it. The schizo personality types of hasidut are never good people. They are not decent people. They are rather good at doing the rituals. That is not authentic Torah.

Hasidim generally are Pre-schizoid personalities. These individuals have visions at the appropriate place and time. The visions are especially effective in the time of uncertainty and crisis. Mild form of OCD. These people follow rituals (in cleaning, eating to allay anxiety.    Epilepsy (temporal lobes). These people have keen interest in philosophy and in writing. They also have little or no sense of humor (hm...), stern. Hypocampus damage/development. These people are hypersensitive to dopamine spikes due to random rewards; prone to see agency behind random events.  Humans are social apes. Peer pressure, group thinking, and sense of belonging all contribute to development of religiosity.

WE LOVE GUYS THAT LEARN TORAH

Every area of value has close to it an area of opposite value that looks externally like a part of the area of positive value. You can see this in science where there is good work being done but also you can see crackpots that know enough to sound credible to fool the layman, but are just confused. So this is the case in every area of value.--including Torah. That is why it is important to use common sense to discern. 

That is why I am thrilled when I see people  that can discern the great authentic Torah quality in the Chafetz Chaim and Musar [ethics].

In "lumdanut" or "Lumdus" [learning deeply] there is also this aspect. But here it is harder for people to tell the real thing from the fake  when they are not themselves good learners. Concerning Rav Shach's book the Avi Ezri, of all books that introduce one to the idea of how to learn, I found it the most powerful and deep.  

WE LOVE GUYS THAT LEARN TORAH

Kelley Ross

Modes of possibility follow modes of necessity 

Modes of possibility and modes of necessity. This seems to me to be central to metaphysics. 

It seems to me there are different levels of unconditioned reality. 

What I mean to say in plain English is that I think the Kant Fries modification of Platonic thought really includes a very important ingredient from Aristotle. And to me this shows an important result that the Rambam was right all along in his combined metaphysics that made a synthesis between Aristotle and Plato. 
Sometimes the Rambam  says outrageous things  that seem utterly silly on the surface, but if you think deeply about what it, you can see how on a deeper level he was right.


What I am saying is here in Dr Kelley Ross's essay 

"tzadikim" [ religious leaders]

The problem with "tzadikim" [ religious leaders] or the cult that worships tzadikim is the problem that goes along with the wider range of problems associated with the cult of celebrity. The wider problem is easier to define. Mainly it is that people with no knowledge of justice or goodness or expertise of any kind suddenly become considered experts in all these matters and all matters relating to human life.  In the context of Torah it means people that have no knowledge of Torah nor are good or decent people in any sense, but are very good at doing long hard rituals, suddenly are considered to be experts in Torah and goodness. [That is the person chosen to be the head of the cult is usually a schizo type personality that has enough control over his voices and delusions to hear them only at the right times- the times that are socially accepted.]



"Everyone worships something. William Penn once said: men not ruled by God will be ruled by tyrants."



This topic is related to the larger problem of charismatic leadership. When the Torah itself is not considered obligatory then people go after a charismatic leader who then defines the Torah as to mean that everyone who serves the noble leader comes to human perfection. That is not what the Torah says but people believe this because they are no longer following the Torah.

Then next step is to make a pretense of bring people to Torah while in fact trying to get them into the cult in order to worship their Satanic leader.

[No offense intended to true tzadikim like  Reb Nahman. It was not their fault that their "thing" collapsed into idolatry.]

 I want to mention that it is often a very good thing to have good people to admire like the Chafetz Chaim. This is important because we humans tend to model our behavior after people we admire.

Still we need good judgment to decide whom to admire and we need not to fall for cults that are not at all related to the idea of admiration for great people but an approach which Reb Haim from Voloshin says is pure idolatry--spiritual connection with tzadikim.

Most people could be great in Torah even without being very smart.

I love Avraham because Avraham teaches the whole world how to learn Torah.

Most people could be great in Torah  even without being very smart.
At least that is what Reb Elchanan Wasserman said. He mentioned how he was not at all smart, but somehow being committed to Torah helped he gain in intelligence.

I think we would have to admit seeing his book, the Koveitz Shiurim that this is in fact true.  

How to become a gadol BaTorah. How? I The basic path is being interested in the Chafetz Chaim. Thi is a very important thing. It shows great promise.  Interest in not speaking Lashon Harah slander is an important step. 


But how to bring this to fruition? The truth is to learn and understand Torah takes time. I really did not even start to get it for a long time. Even all my years in yeshiva I was just absorbing it subconsciously but I really did not know what was going on. It helps a lot to be in a Torah environment. If you can't be in an authentic Lithuanian yeshiva which is the Noah's ark of this generation then perhaps you getting good learning partners like Rav Shach, Reb Chaim Soloveitchik, Reb Baruch Ber would help.