Here is an idea about idolatry from my learning partner. Here I have written down our basic discussion in Hebrew and then in English.

 יש ארבעים ושלשה חטאים שבשבילם אדם מביא קורבן חטאת. יש שני מיני שגגה בהרבה מהם, שגגת מציאות ושגגת דין. החברותא שלי רוצה לומר שרק כשיש הנאה יש שגגת מציאות. למשל אדם אכל חלב ולא ידע שהוא חלב ואחר כך אמרו לו. הוא חייב חטאת. אבל אדם הרים ירק בשבת בחשבו שהוא תלוש, והתברר שהיה מחובר, הוא פטור בגלל שהיה מתעסק. לפי זה אפשר להבין אביי בסנהדרין סב:. אביי אמר שאם אדם השתחווה לאנדרטא (ורש''י מוסיף ולא ידע שפעם היתה נעבדת והתברר שהיתה נעבדת), לא כלום הוא.
אני שאלתי על זה מהרמב''ם הלכות שגגות ז:א' וב'. זדון עבודות ושגגת עבודה זרה חייב רק חטאת אחת. אבל החברותא הראה לי שהרמב''ם מסיים שהוא חשב שאינו עבודה זרה בגלל שלא נעשה מכסף או זהב. משמע שטעה בדין.



My learning partner suggested that the only way of doing idolatry by accident is by a mistake in pesak--in the legal decision not is actual material facts of the case.

Just for the general public let me mention that for most kinds of sin by accident there are two way for there to be a mistake. One is in the material facts and the other in the legal decision.
So when we have for example a sin offering in Leviticus 4 we know that can come for either reason.
So this idea of my partner was a bit of a surprise to me.


He is thinking that only in a case like fat where there is some pleasure in eating does the please turn a non liable  accident into a שוגג liable accident, but with no pleasure it is מתעסק a non liable accident like picking up a turnip on Shabat and it turns out that it was rooted and still growing.



But it makes sense if you look at the argument between Abyee and Rava in Sanhedrin 62b. Abyee says if one bows down to a statute that he did not know was an idol it is nothing. And Rava has to agree with that according to the logic of the passage over there.  But we can ask is not this the classical example of an accident. One eats fat and it tuns out to have been Chelev/ forbidden fat. That is an accident.
So I asked on this from the Rambam הלכות שגגות ז:א וב. There the Rambam says one who knows serving an idol is forbidden but did not know this was an idol brings one sin offering. But my partner showed me that the Rambam continues " because this idol was not made of silver or gold and he thought something not from silver of gold cant be an idol." So he made a mistake in a legal decision.

I know what you are thinking. This would seem to be a mistake in the material facts of the case.

But in any case we can see that idolatry by accident is when one serves an idol but does not think that what he is doing is idolatry. That is he knows idolatry is forbidden but he thinks what he is doing is different.

I would like to go more into this but the basic idea of my friend is that in all of the 43 types of accident where an accident can be in material facts or in the legal status of something, we find pleasure. Pleasure is what turns mistake in material facts into an accident. Without pleasure it is not even an accident. לא כלום הוא

The problem here is that both the Talmud and the Rambam when they are looking for an example of idolatry by accident go to this idea of not knowing at all. In the Talmud in Sanhedrin when it is comparing idolatry with Shabat it makes a point that one was שוגג in Shabat. And Abyee in his search for idolatry by accident goes right away to the example of the statue which one bowed down to and did not know that it was once served to be completely (patur) not liable. And that helps him in his argument to get to service by fear or love to be idolatry by accident. and the Rambam has to come on to some example like a person thinking since it is not gold or silver it can't be an idol. Why can't the Talmud and the Rambam both simply say the case of idolatry by accident is just like Shabat--he forgot it is Shabat, he forgot it is an idol?
What you learn from this is this difference I made at the beginning of this essay only applies to idolatry.
 Because on Shabat forgetting it is Shabat is considered a mistake in  material facts and still he is liable.

הבעיה כאן היא זאת. כשהרמב''ם רוצה למצוא שגגת עבודה זרה הוא הולך לטעות בדין ואז הבן אדם חייב קרבן. וכשהגמרא רצתה למצוא שגגה שהוא פטור בשבילו היא הלכה לטעות במציאות. איפה הדיון הפשוט? שהוא שכח שהצורה הזאת היא עבודה זרה?
  רואים מזה שהגמרא והרמב''ם מדקדקים לומר דווקא טעות בהוראה
לא כמו שבת שבמצב שאדם שכח שהיום שבת כן הוא חייב קרבן.

Who are the main enemies of Western Civilization?  Muslims, Blacks, and whites who are traitors to our race.
The reason these groups are enemies of Civilization is genes and religion.  In other words I claim that civilization is a direct product and printout of white Jewish and European genes. I claim that Western Civilization could not have arisen in the Congo. And if it could have, it would have. After all, all races started at the same starting line.

Muslims are enemies not by reason of genes, but by reason of religion.

Many people think that discrimination and racism is bad.  It is not inherently bad in itself. In fact it is good for people to be cautious. You have to drive the barbarians out of the gates and back into their own mud swamps. There are people that wish harm to Jews and Christians and not to recognize this is willful blindness. And the fact that these enemies have human DNA does not mean an thing. My fingernails also have human DNA.

The problem is that Jews will be blamed for Muslim violence. The more Muslims make The West hurt the more the West will turn against Jews. So it does not help to warn people about Muslims or blacks. What then could help?




 My advice to counter this terrible onslaught of barbarians is to learn Torah.
This at least I can say was the advice of Shmuel Berenbaum [of the Mir in NY]. And to me it looks that it is an accurate representation of the attitude of the sages of the Talmud.
That is to say that self improvement is the one and only solution to individual and world wide problems. And how can we improve without learning Torah? We don't even know what is the difference between right and wrong without revelation. Human reason is not able to discern moral values on its own without some kind of Divine input.

So my approach to solve this terrible mega-tsunami, is to learn and keep Torah. But that is in itself a hard project. Even after one has gone through the Oral and Written Law it  still a challenge to  implement.

So to make things easier I suggest learning Musar and the Sefer HaChinuch and the Mishna.

Musar is books of Jewish ethics written during the Middle Ages. That is to say Musar is not theology but it is based on the understanding of Torah of Maimonides and Saadia Geon. So they lack the fuzzy logic and circular reasoning of later books of ethics.
Sefer HaChinuch is simply the list of the mitzvahs of the Torah with some explanation of why they are commanded. Its author was a disciple of Nachmanides.
Mishna was written by Yehuda Hanasi. It is the basic outline of the Oral Law.
In some places like Russia they are smart enough to pay lip service to racial equality but keep the barbarians out of the gates.

The Nefesh HaChaim says intention to bind oneself in spirit to a tzadik is idolatry.

  I consider worship of people to be idolatry. Even if the person one worships is a tzadik and truly righteous person. I base this on a few sources. One is the Tenach. The Old Testament. We can see many examples of this but one that comes to mind is the book of Daniel. There we have the friends of Daniel being pushed into a furnace and their general approach was to ask God for help. They did not pray through any intermediary.

  Another source is the Talmud in Sanhedrin 62a. מאי שנא איהו מינן דידן. the gemara brings a case when someone says, "Serve me." One opinion in the Gemara is the idea in itself is absurd because people would ask, "What is the difference between him and us?" [But if people actually serve him then they are idolaters and he is a מסית ומדיח one who tries to convince someone else to serve a false god.]
[You could answer the person served God with great self sacrifice. But the the Gemara still considers it as absurd that anyone could worship another human being. And worship is not just the four regular types, also service according to its way עבודה כדרכה. for example if it is the way to bring charity to the person to have them pary for you, then this too would be considered idolatry.]


  Another source is Maimonides. In the 13 principles of faith on Sanhedrin he goes into detail about idolatry. I forget the exact wording, but the basic idea is that God alone is proper to worship and praise and  serve and nothing else. And also in the Mishna Torah he says idolatry is in its essence going to God through an intermediary. He says serving gods as gods in themselves was only a later derivative of idolatry.

The Nefesh HaChaim also says intention to bind oneself in spirit to a tzadik is idolatry.

Who are the main enemies of Western Civilization?  Muslims, Blacks, and whites who are traitors to our race.  This is not to say there are not individual blacks or Muslims of outstanding character.
The reason these groups are enemies of Civilization is genes and religion.  In other words I claim that civilization is a direct product and printout of white Jewish and European Christian genes. I claim that Western Civilization could not have arisen in the Congo. And if it could have, it would have. After all, all races started at the same starting line.

Muslims are enemies not by reason of genes, but by reason of religion.

 My advice to counter this terrible onslaught of barbarians is to learn Torah.
This at least I can say was the advice of Shmuel Berenbaum [ of the Mir in NY]. And to me it looks that it is an accurate representation of the attitude of the sages of the Talmud and the mystics of the Kabalah.
That is to say that self improvement is the one and only solution to individual and world wide problems. And how can we improve without learning Torah? We don't even know what is the difference between right and wrong without revelation. Human reason is not able to discern moral values on its own without some kind of Divine input.

So my approach to solve this terrible mega-tsunami, is to learn and keep Torah. But that is in itself a hard project. Even after one has gone through the Oral and Written Law it  still a challenge to  implement.

So to make things easier I suggest learning Musar and the Sefer HaChinuch and the Mishna.

Musar is books of Jewish ethics written during the Middle Ages. That is to say Musar is not theology but it is based on the understanding of Torah of Maimonides and Saadia Geon. So they lack the fuzzy logic and circular reasoning of later books of ethics.
Sefer HaChinuch is simply the list of the mitzvahs of the Torah with some explanation of why they are commanded. Its author was a disciple of Nachmanides.
Mishna was written by Yehuda Hanasi. It is the basic outline of the Oral Law.
In some places like Russia they are smart enough to pay lip service to racial equality but keep the barbarians out of the gates.

I had two issue to discuss today. One is Kabalah and the approach of the Geon from Vilnius about it. First I want to say that too many people in the world of Kabalah try to make it out as if the whole thing depends on the authorship of the Zohar.  And they think that if someone does not accept that Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai wrote then they are a heretic. And on the other hand there are people that do not see any value in it at all once they find out that it at least is not what we call the Oral Law.

Frankly when I was learning the writings of Isaac Luria it never even occurred to me that this was traditional. It seemed completely obvious that these were the השגות the revelations of the Ari. The same way that we assume other tzadikim had revelations. And we don't try to suppose they had some tradition going back to Sinai.

On the other hand when it comes to understanding Isaac Luria we do assume people are using their own intelligence.

  There are three basic authentic approaches to the Ari'zal: (1) Moshe Chaim Lutzato (the Ramchal) and this was clearly that of the Gra also. And recently they published the writings of the disciple of the Ramchal which seem to me to be very important to learn. (2) The Moroccan Mystic Yaakov Abuchatzeira, the grandfather of Bava Sali. (3) the Yemenite Kabalist, Shalom Sharabi (the Reshash).


[I forgot to mention the Kabalah Center. They are I think going with the Ashlag and the disciple of the Ashlag. I confess I never studied the Ashlag very much, but his writings look good. Especially the notes of his disciple  on the Shalom Sharabi's Nahar Shalom look very good.] From the little that I have seen it looks to me that the Ashlag is basically going with the approach of the Shalom Sharabi. But since Shalom Sharabi is very difficult it looks like the Ashlag is trying to make it a bit easier to understand.

In any case I think all this is very good and important to learn because it does give a deep understanding of Torah. But I think also it should be learned only after one has finished the Oral and Written Law.

 Try to learn Kabalah only with a Sefardi master and preferably with a descendant of either  Shalom Sharabi or Yaakov 
The Nesfesh HaChaim is mainly a Musar book though it does quote from the Zohar and the Ari. I highly recommend it but as Musar, not Kabalah.

I want to introduce the public to the idea of bitul Torah.


ביטול תורה  wasting time from Torah is considered a sin. The idea has its origin in the Talmud.
We have a minimum amount of learning that one is required: saying the Shema in the morning and evening. But when one has time he must go back to learning during the day. It means that one is not free to choose what mitzvahs or activities he wants to do. Even prayer.
The Gra said it is better to sit in a room and twiddle ones thumbs than to go seeking for mitzvas.
This is important to know because though one is required to learn a profession and also to learn survival skills and do all the things one is required, still when one has free time he is not allowed to decide what he wants to do. it is already decided for him.

One is not allowed to speak slander. This is a prohibition in the Torah. [It is one of the 613 commandments]. There is a difference of opinion between the Rambam and Rabainu Yona in this issue. And it is divided between what the slander is about; between God and man, or between man and man.
The later has seven conditions for it to be allowed. The former has no such conditions but still is similar in many respects. [There has to be rebuke and to see it yourself, etc.]
Rav Shick once said that if you hear someone saying slander about some third party, you should know that eventually they will say slander about you behind your back.
In any case there is a law that slander [lashon hara] that was said in front of three people is allowed to be said. The reason is once it was said in front of three it is already public. It is assumed they will go and tell it anyway.

The question here is the guy is coming to beit din and asking, "Can I say it?" Then tell him, "No," and then there will not be three advertising it. I heard this question at the Mir (NY) I think from the grandson of Avigdor Miller. I never found a good answer for this.

A similar question just came up today about the opinion of Rabbi Yochanan in Shabat.
שגגת קרבן forgetting a sacrifice is not called forgetting. Shabat 69a. Why is forgetting the punishment of karet (cutting off from his people) considered an accident? Because he can say, "If I had known it was karet, I would not have done it."
  So say the same about forgetting the sacrifice. Well, you could answer he does not bring a sacrifice since it is considered as if done on purpose. But this goes back on itself. It is only considered on purpose because we don't consider it as forgetting.



The way my learning partner and I decided to try and tackle this issue is to look at the Gemara in Shabat 69a, but so far it is not clear what we will discover.