Emunas, here’s the question – which gedolim say to spend a substantial amount of time on chasidus when one is not a massive talmid chacham, against the psak of your very own posek achriti – please name a posek, not statements in the kisvei Arizal (which the baal hatanya was well aware of) or a contemporary mekubal – a posek, someone like rav landau in bnei brak, who is Lubavitch, for instance.
You can’t, because they don’t exist.
And this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Lubavitcher take the heiligeh words of the baal hatanya and say that they don’t apply in halacha! Ths shu”a harav IS Lubavitch halacha, not only in chabad but in chassidishe circles everywhere, and even in litvishe circles, his shitos are taken very seriously, as the mishnah beruruah quotes him extensively.
Truly amazing. Did the Lubavitcher poskim who followed the baal hatanya, such as the tzemach tzedek, ever make this distinction between the shu”a harav and what the baal hatanya held “later in life”? Or is this just your own pretzel of an answer of how to get around a glaring, huge hole in your ideology – the rosh verishon of chabad did not hold of learning chasidus for hours a day, and that’s that.
There’s no “chiyuv” in halacha to learn kabalah until one masters shas and poskim. Many Achronim recommended learning it for yiras shomayim,and it’s true that the Arizal held that generations in our time need it – but how much do they need it? He never said to spend hours on it before one masters shas. Ever.
And what he meant about tefilah being “ikar” has been discussed at length in the past; it’s a gross misrepresentation, besides the fact that no poskim take it that way in halacha, as talmud torah’s status in haladha vis a vis other mitzvos does not change, because halacha doesn’t change. We’re not reform. Again, the shu “a harav quotes talmud torah kneged kulam word for word from the rambam, that there’s no mitzvah even among the “keneged kulams” that is equal to Torah. And the shu”a harav knew the Arizal plenty more than we do.
Not only that, but in tanya perek 5 and 25 he goes through the importance of Torah, and doesn’t say it’s any less “nowadays”.