The most destructive

 And here they are, the most destructive words said by a rabbi in the last 400 years:

He is making the incredible statement that one letter of Torah study is worth all your other mitzvos. His argument seems to be that one can be yotzei krias shema by saying one letter (doesn't reveal the source for this statement), and saying krias shema can fulfill your obligation of Talmud Torah (yom v'laylah), and TT is equal to all the other mitzvos.

I believe that the statement and his defense of it are highly problematic. They constitute a slippery slope argument with faulty premises each step of the way. It could be that one letter motzeis you from the mitzvah of Krias Shema in the sense that it's taking on the yoke of shemayim, which is the main purpose of KS. You can do that with one letter not because you took in the content of the Shema, but because you had in mind the yoke of heaven and in general you know the content of the Shema, that it's all about the yoke. Similarly, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik says that one can fulfill the reading of Megillah by hearing any piece of it because that publicizes the miracle. You don't actually have to hear every word - as people drive themselves crazy to do. Similarly, a person can do teshuvah in a moment. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein says you can bury with frum Jews a guy who committed suicide by jumping from a building because during the fall he may have done teshuvah in a moment. It's the same with a Ger and taking on the yoke of mitzvahs or a woman accepting a marriage invitation for a moment and then regretting it. Too late. That one moment binds her.

Reading one letter of krias shema is not the krias shema that motzeis you from study. I would think that for that you need to read at least one sentence as that has some meaning. One letter is meaningless. We say that you get schar for reading Chumash without understanding but not so with Talmud. There you need to understand something. One letter is nothing. Even a word is nothing. If you say Shnayim without saying Shnayim ochazin b'tallis you said nothing meaningful. Even Shnayim ochazin b'tallis is meaningless in terms of Torah insight. You need to continue on to "and they split it," the halachic conclusion. 

It may be the same with Chumash. You may not have to understand, but you can't say one letter. That same letter could be on the poster for a music concert or a translation of Kant. Might it be Torah only because you know it's from Chumash? I doubt it but maybe. But even then the guys who follow the Gra here don't study much Chumash. They are studying the daf, as the Gra says here, i.e. the Gemara.

How about a corner of a letter? A hey consists of a Dalet and a Yod. Is that two letters? How about a microscopic piece of a letter? And who is to say that reading the whole Shema is many mitzvahs of a sentence each? Your intent is one mitzvah, one reading. If you see Jewish life as collecting points, like some kind of financial equation, then maybe you look at it like separate items. If you look at it as connecting to G-d, as obeying his commands then it's one act. The Mabit says we connect to all mitzvahs by willing to do anything that Hashem asks of us. The willingness is the essential thing. Each act of intent would be the mitzvah, just as there is a concept of a sin requiring a korban consisting of one act of forgetting that can include many sins. 

If Litvaks really believed that each letter is a mitzvah then wouldn't they do bikiyus all day? Why spend a month on three lines?  

And why wouldn't each step in holding a lulav be a mitzvah? That actually means something if you are paying attention. I wave it to the left - one mitzvah. I wave it to right - another mitzvah. I crunch on a piece of matzah. I take another bite. Why would only Torah work this way?

Furthermore, his proof that not only is each letter a mitzvah, but it's a mitzvah greater than all other mitzvahs put together is shaky. His proof that it means greater than is that if somebody else can do a mitzvah, you do Torah, so Torah is greater. But that could be because Torah leads to other mitzvahs so if the action is being taken care of, then you study Torah as more mitzvahs than this one will come out of it. Or let us say that Torah is a mitzvah in itself, so you are doing a mitzvah that maybe the other person wasn't going to do. He wasn't going to study. You study. He does an act. You each are doing a mitzvah. That could be the explanation.

And even if Torah is greater than any one mitzvah, his proof that it is greater than all of them is weak. The Mishnah uses the term kneged kulam which doesn't mean equal and certainly doesn't mean greater than. It means adjacent to. This can be explained by the Gemara that says learning is greater because it leads to doing (Kiddushin). Thus, Torah is adjacent to each mitzvah. This conclusion follows a year long debate on which is greater study or action. If each letter is worth all your mitzvos, why would the rabbis in the Gemara have debated it for a year? It would be simple.

Besides that, we have other statements of Chazal that use the words kneged kulam, regarding Shabbos, tzitzis, milah, tzedukah, yishuv haaretz, and lashon hara. That can't all be taken literally because each includes the others.

In sum, I believe his arguments are faulty. He is reading his view into vague statements of Chazal that can be read differently. 

The result of his view is a disrespect of mitzvos, which we see everywhere in the yeshivah world. Why would you take an interest in any mitzvah other than Talmud Torah if the latter gives you a 100 to 1 return or a 1000 to one return.

Each page of Gemara has approximately 1000 letters. If each one is a mitzvah, and working all day is just 1 mitzvah, the yeshiva will guy will see himself has 1000 times better than the baal habayis. If he does a daf, he's 2,000 times better, which is how yeshiva guys see themselves. 

Yeshiva guys often tell me that they are the ones who care the most about mitzvos. But what I have found is that they only care about technicalities, not feeling, not changing the world, not connecting to Hashem. Their mitzvah doing is an extension of learning. So they only care about measurable mitzvos like matzah and esrog. They don't care about the qualitative ones like humility, chesed, and modesty.

I told one Litvak that Chasidim are far better with tznius. He said we learn modesty from the Shulchan Aruch and what Chasidim do is go beyond that unnecessarily. I responded that the Shulchan Aruch gives some technicalities for modesty, but the modesty is dependent on the era and local. It's something you need a feel for, and more is better. This is one reason that the Mishneh Torah and the Shulchan Aruch were both opposed at the beginning, they turn Torah into a technicality.

Mitzvos are life. I don't mean that poetically. Mitzvos shape your life. If you take them away, you cease to be a person. A Jew cannot be normal with mitzvos. Your discipline, character, and practices become what yeshiva guys tend to be, a blob. It's all replaced with study, not even good study but letters coming out of your mouth. And if you are condescending against mitzvos, certainly you will do much worse to people who don't study as much, to gentiles, and to the entire world. Everything becomes a joke to you. Everything is a waste of time. You become the enemy of the briah that Hashem made and see it as the enemy. Why would you engage in chesed which is said here to be one mitzvah, when you can review a daf, which is hundreds. Why would you even contemplate Hashem. There are no letters with that.

The yeshiva world has many problems that the Vilna Gaon didn't have. He didn't disparage secular studies or kabbalah.  He said that students shouldn't be overwhelmed with material that's too difficult for them. He said we should study many parts of Torah, with argumentation following, not preceding, the others.

But the contemporary mess is rooted, I believe, in these 10 sentences. These sentences, which yeshiva guys point to all the time, uproot the entire system of Torah and mitzvahs. And they rot the brain because they make no sense. If you base your outlook on something that makes no sense, you become illogical.

Esav was not Amalek but the problems within Esav bloomed in Amalek, his descendent. Likewise, R' Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer only called for a small yishiv in Israel, but saying that not promoting the yishuv held back Moshiach (as he told R' Hirsch) was an error that led to Zionism. Same with Rav Kook senior, who was a pacifist who said strange things on behalf of Zionism, leading to Kook junior who was off the rails with his Zionism which led to contemporary Zionist rabbis who are fascists. I'm not saying that the VG was Esav, but you get the point. He had a flaw. His followers say that his contemporary Baal HaTanya had a flaw, so why can't we say it about him?

You want to say how dare you question the Gaon? That's what yeshiva guys certainly will say. I say you can question anybody except Moshe because he operated from direct prophecy. And even Moshe made mistakes as did the Avos, as did Dovid.

Did you know the Gaon? How do you know what he was, because somebody told you that somebody told you? This constant promotion of the Gra is suspicious. Who says he can't make a mistake? 

And who says he actually wrote this? We get most of his writings through students of his. You are writing what somebody thought he heard the Gaon say. And this contradicts what he said in Even Shelaima: “Just as the prime purpose of a tree is its fruit, so is the study of Torah secondary to its fulfillment. Only the fulfillment of mitzvos qualifies a man as one of the righteous upon whom the world depends.” You never hear his students cite that statement.

The Gaon questioned the Rambam who was a Rishon and his interest in that "accursed philosophy." Rav Hirsch also questioned the Rambam and his focus on philosophy over action. The Gra actually attacked the Rambam. If he can do that, you can question him. 

Tell that to a yeshiva guy. He won't process the info. He'll say, well I heard this from my rebbe, as if his rebbe is the mesorah. That's how they defend everything. The mesorah isn't in your rebbe. It's in the great scholars of every generation, and even they don't necessarily have the mesorah perfectly. It's not perfect in any one of them. It's in the group of them in general, and even that might not be perfect.

So to base one's entire life on something that the Gra might have said, but something that contradicts his own words, and doesn't make sense anyway, and contradicts teachings from the Mishnah like study isn't the main thing, actions are, that seems pretty foolish to me. 

And then we have Shlomo saying that the sum of the matter is to fear Hashem and keep His commandments.

Then we have the entire Chumash which never mentions Torah study explicitly, but it mentions all kinds of mitzvos.

I'll go with the Chumash, Shlomo, and the Mishnah over something that maybe the Gra said that doesn't make sense.

And then you have his contemporary the Tanya saying that physical mitzvos are man's purpose in this world. See Epistle 20. Rabbi Yosef Wineberg in Lessons in Tanya explains:

The present epistle deals with a subject that has not been touched upon in the Tanya until now. Though it is one of the most profound and abstract principles of Chasidut, it has a practical application. It will be recalled that the introduction to Epistle 18 pointed out the benefits of ascertaining the practical lessons in Divine service—through the performance of mitzvot in general and the mitzvah of tzedakah in particular—that are to be found in each of these pastoral letters. For, as the Alter Rebbe’s sons state in their Approbation to the Tanya, the purpose of the letters is to “teach the people of G‑d the way by which they should walk and the deed which they should do.” And this letter is especially significant, for the Alter Rebbe wrote it (as the Tzemach Tzedek testifies1) “several days before his demise in the village of Piena.” What the profundity of this letter ultimately conveys is a renewed and deepened appreciation of the performance of “physical” mitzvot in general (i.e., those involving material things, such as wool for tzitzit and parchment for tefillin) and the mitzvah of tzedakah in particular. At the core of this letter is the principle that the creation of the physical derives from the Essence of G‑d Himself; it completely transcends the luminous and revelatory levels of G‑dliness from which all spiritual entities and worlds are created. For, as the Alter Rebbe writes, “Only G‑d Himself—Whose Being is of His Essence and Who is not, Heaven forfend, caused by some other cause preceding Himself—has the ability to create something out of absolute nothingness,” to create a being that seems (to the corporeal eye) to be a wholly independent entity “without any other cause preceding it.” Everything else that exists is possible and nonessential existence and consequently is totally dependent upon G‑d as the cause for its existence. By contrast, only G‑d Himself—Whose existence is an imperative and Whose being derives from His own Self and as such needs nothing to bring about His existence—has the ability to create a being so corporeal that it is entirely unaware that its existence depends on a Creator; indeed, it is satisfied with the delusion that it is responsible for its own creation. Apart from this grossly physical world, everything created has an apparent causal link with a source of existence. Light, for example, visibly owes its existence to its source—a luminary; speech, being an alul (“effect”), clearly owes its existence to the faculty of thought, which is its ilah (“cause”). When viewing material matter, however, one does not perceive that it derives from and is nullified to something higher than itself; it seems to exist as a wholly autonomous being. A being such as this, which is infinitely distant from its spiritual source—its source being Divine while the being itself is physical and hence has to be created ex nihilo (“from nothing”)—can be created only by G‑d Himself, Who is truly without limitation, and as such transcends the physical and the spiritual equally. Thus, it is specifically the physical things that were created by G‑d Himself, Who is, of course, infinitely higher than all the illuminations and radiances of G‑dliness that were responsible for the creation of all spiritual beings and entities. This principle leads us to a newfound respect for the performance of commandments involving physical things—for their creation comes about from G‑d Himself. This principle is indeed new. It supplements the explanation in the Tanya, Part I (ch. 35 ff.) of the distinctive quality of practical performance alluded to in the phrase quoted on its title page: “that you may do it.” That explanation highlights the superiority of the mitzvot performed in the realm of action over those performed with thought and speech. This superiority is explained there only in the light of G‑d’s ultimate intent: G‑d desires a dwelling place, i.e., that His Presence be revealed in the nethermost level, in this spiritually dark, physical world, which seemingly does its best to conceal G‑dliness. And this dwelling place is best built through the mitzvot involving action, for through them G‑dliness is drawn down into those aspects of this physical world that are lower than thought and speech. The same is true with regard to the refinement and elevation of the animal soul and its transformation into goodness and holiness (for which reason the Divine soul first descended into the body): the optimal refinement and elevation of the animal soul is achieved specifically through the performance of these mitzvot—donning tefillin, wearing tzitzit, etc.—for they engage the power of the animal soul to a greater degree than do the commandments that are performed only in thought or in speech. All this merely expresses the special quality of “action” as it relates to G‑d’s desire and intent; it does not, however, express the superiority of the physical object with which a practical commandment is performed. Seemingly, a commandment performed with one’s loftier soul-powers—such as the knowledge of G‑dliness, a mitzvah that engages one’s mind, or the love of G‑d, a mitzvah that engages the spiritual emotions of one’s heart—should be inherently superior to a commandment that merely engages one’s hands or feet. For as far as the Divine Will is concerned, since this is fulfilled both by the practical mitzvot and by those observed in thought and in speech, the spiritual result—being united with G‑d—would seem to be the same in both types of mitzvot. With regard to the object with which G‑d’s Will is being fulfilled, the commandments that are performed with one’s more spiritual qualities—comprehending G‑d with one’s mind and loving Him with one’s heart—would seem to be superior to the commandments that merely engage one’s physicality. However, considering (as in the letter below) the unique standing of physical mitzvot inasmuch as the physical derives from G‑d Himself, it follows that the practical commandments are superior to those performed in thought or in speech by virtue of the physical objects they involve, for these objects harbor energy that is released when they are utilized in fulfilling the Divine intent. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, once related that when “those few heavenly soul-words” that appear in the text below were first revealed, pointing out that it is from the infinite essence of the Ein Sof Himself that physical objects first come into being, the Chasidim of the time found that their performance of the practical mitzvot was invigorated by fresh wellsprings of vitality.

So if we question the statement printed in the name of the Gra, we have what to rely on, a contemporary of his.

Now why is this the most dangerous utterance of the last 400 years? It's because the yeshiva world took over everything. They are so merciless that they pounded Chassidus out of Chassidim and even took over the Sephardim.

And what do they all spend their time on? Brisker Lomdus, which is a type of study that the Gra didn't even do. The yeshiva world intimidated everyone into that. So much for being the true Mesorah that doesn't change anything "one iota."

I believe that even Zionism came from yeshivishness because once the mitzvos are gone you can base on entire life on one concept. The state replaced Torah study which replaced mitzvos and Hashem. The Litvaks took away Hashem more than the Zionists did. 

According to the yeshivish approach of tossing away anybody who makes any questionable statement (or one they don't like) we should toss away the Gra. But I don't share that approach. Just rip this page out of his book. 

What this means is that you can never go to a yeshivish rabbi for advice unless it's a choice between yeshivas. If you try to do anything else, he'll tell you to stay in yeshiva. If you want to choose where to live he'll tell you to live near a yeshiva. If you already are earning a parnassah, he'll tell you to do the one that makes the most money because you can give it to yeshivas.

The yeshiva world pounds you with this idea of having a rav and obeying him. Why is that? It's because their philosophy is so bizarre, that it needs to be pounded into you daily or you'd move on from it. Their call for a rav is essential to the indoctrination. I never got good advice from a yeshivish rabbi, and never get any insight into myself. It is always, 'study Torah.' That's all they ever have to say.

Also because this philosophy of life is so narrow, so limiting, they'll knock out any all kinds of worthy Torah scholars who say anything to counter this philosophy. They also will keep you from machshava because that might lead you to overturn this approach to life. They also will not be nice people because they don't put Torah into action, don't take lessons of musar into their hearts, and they all feel critical of anybody they deal with because of their insufficient amounts of Torah study, and because they are all in a competition since they have reduce Jewish life to a single, measurable activity.

One more thing, I never heard of this idea that one can be motzei shema with one letter. But isn't it interesting, this piece from the Gra was shown to me by a Brisker. Now that isn't that something, a Brisker relying on material that is based on saying Shema with one letter rather than their usual manic rereading of the full three paragraphs five times.