My basic feeling is it is possible to learn and keep Torah without being a fanatic.
But it is hard. The reason is that for every positive value there is an equal an opposite value. There is Music and anti Music. Literature and anti literature. Natural Science and pseudo science. And each anti-value tries to present itself as legitimate. So without experience and knowledge people can easily fall into cults. What makes the religious issue hard is that when one falls from holiness, he falls into unholiness, that really  bad stuff. That is not the same as falling from Rembrandt or Leonardo Da Vinci into pseudo art.

So we see why Lithuanian yeshivas are so rigid in keeping out cults and cult members. They realize how easy it is for positive value to be corrupted and fall into negative value.

Here is an idea from Steven Dutch which relates to this

The Fundamental Fallacy of Modern Philosophy might be defined as the idea that it makes sense to study structure divorced from content. This is the idea that has given us businessmen who think they can "manage" without knowing anything about what they manage, critics who claim that only the technical excellence of a work of art matters, not its content, and sociologists of science like the one with whom I corresponded who think you can study the Velikovsky affair without regard to the scientific validity of Velikovsky's ideas.


What Steven Dutch is pointing out is that content matters. Maybe external forms do also but the major issue is content, in any field. You may have heard complaints about religious fanaticism but tat totally ignores the question of what people are fanatic about. It places a Catholic nun on the same moral plane as an Islamic suicide bomber. Content matters.

And this leads to the interesting question about  a true tzadik and yet  numerous cults being formed that supposedly follow his teachings. This fact is what  causes Lithuanian yeshivas to have doubts about how to deal with this. They would like to have his books in the yeshiva because of their high value but are nervous about what they can lead to.
The higher and better something is--when it falls it falls to a more negative value.


The best approach I think is that of balance between different areas of value. And also to take one specific area to strive for excellence.  This was how my parents raised me and it makes a lot of sense to me that this is the best approach.

Song of Love for God L44  [L44 in midi format]  l43
[l43 IN MIDI FORMAT]
L39 [L39 in Midi format]

Introduction. There are 43 kinds of sin that one must bring a sin offering for. [i.e. a female goat or sheep.] A sin offering can only be brought for accidental sin. So here we have a case where there was a piece of forbidden fat cooking the stove. John walks in and eats it. The Peter walks in a minute later and asks where is the piece of forbidden fat I left on the stove? John has to bring a sin offering.
[For the general public let me mention of the 43 a lot concern sexual relationships between family members and the Temple. Besides that there are few others likely idolatry, and Shabat.]


If one eats a piece of forbidden fat חלב, he brings a sin offering [a female goat or sheep]. If he ate a piece and then knew that it was forbidden, and then ate another piece and then knew that was forbidden, he has to bring a one sin offering on each piece. From Tractate Shabat 71 Rambam 6:9. Laws of Accidental Sins.

If he ate two pieces  in one span of forgetfulness and then knew about the first piece. Then in the same span of forgetting he ate a third piece, when he brings a sin offering for the first piece, he is absolved for the sin for the second piece. Rambam שגגות 6:11.

The Beit Joseph brings in the name of the Ri bei Rav an answer that is flimsy. And the Kiryat Sefer says another answer which is worse. Both answer are contradicted directly in the Rambam himself chapter 8:8
Rav Shach offers a third answer that makes lot of sense to me even though there still seems to be some question that remains about it.



What Elazar Menachem Shach suggests is based on two premises. 1. knowledge causes a sin offering. 2. one span of forgetfulness is one sin. Thus he ate the first two pieces in one state of forgetfulness. And he knew about the first piece. So he brings a sin offering for the first piece. but since the second piece was eaten in the same span of forgetfulness the sin offering takes care of both pieces. The beauty of this answer is powerful. And it is common to see this in Rav Shach. And he and Reb Chaim from Brisk himself have no problem in dismissing even the greatest of achronim. And the Ri Bei Rav was the one that renewed the semicha. Still we don't say his words are Halacha LeMoshe MiSinai. We don't even say he was right. The reason is clear. There is such a thing as סוף הוראה (the end of the time it is possible to make a Halachic decision.). As the Gemara says and the Rambam brings in his introduction to Mishne Torah רבינא ורב אשי הם סוף הוראה. The idea here is really two ideas. One is there is no true ordination today. [All legitimate yeshivas teach this openly and it is straight from the Gemara and the Rambam. ] The second idea is that even with true ordination as the Ri Bei Rav had still that can't go against סוף הוראה.
In any case, the problem here is this: We understand now the halacha in the Rambam, and also the end of that halacha that if he brings a sin offering for the third piece that takes care of the second piece also. That is fine. But what about if he only remembered that the second piece was forbidden? It certainly makes sense according to Rav Shach to say that everything would be forgiven and in fact that is exactly what the Rambam says. But then what about the fact that he remembered the first piece and the third piece was not eaten in the same span of forgetting! should not then the first and third pieces be considered separately?

Ideas in Bava Metzia

Title page  for bava metzia


Ideas in Talmud


Title page for ideas in Shas

The Rambam combined Torah with Aristotle. This leaves open the question what would he do today?
I do not ask what he would think of 20th century philosophy? That is clear. But the question I ask is more along the lines of what he would do with Kant? [Or the different schools based on Kant--or stemming from Kant?]
I have suggested that he would continue in his approach. That is his way is really a kind of synthesis between Plato and Aristotle. So what I have thought is he would simply continue this process.
Mainly I think he would accept  Kant's structure of the mind but he would justify knowledge by a kind of third kind of knowledge that is not reason and not sensed--but known. [The Rambam was not in the habit of denying the truth based on criteria like, "Who said it?' ]

I wish I could show this more clearly but you can see this idea in this essay on Kelley Ross's site.

See also this article in the this  Philosophy magazine from Cornell.


Here is

my picture of Kant's idea of the way the Mind works.


If you go with the Rambam (Maimonides)  you have to add another kind of knowledge that is known not by sensory perception and not by reason, i.e. immediate non-intuitive knowledge.

L47 A song for God  l47 midi  l47 nwc

L46mp3 l46 midi  l46 nwc


organ piece  organ midi organ nwc
Choral 1 choral midi choral nwc

I have seen a good deal of cults. Maybe it is just human nature to be curious about exotic religions. But what people involve in these cults don't seem to get is how it affects their children. Maybe that is in other religions also.  I have heard that Muslims like to train their children as suicide bombers. So apparently the problem of cults is not confined.

The best remedy for this is common sense reason.

The Rambam understood Torah as intending to bring to natural law. Common sense morality. 

The more reason is divorced from belief,  the more problems with cults we get.  When cultural relativism started in the USA, this provided the model for people to look for true values in all kinds of exotic places.

So what I suggest is to reunite Reason and Faith, Natural Law with Torah Law, This was certainly the approach of the Rambam. At any rate you can see why Lithuanian yeshivas are so strict to keep out cults and cult members. They would not have to be so careful if Torah was a secular discipline. It is because Torah is holy that the flies are attracted as to honey.

Every value has an opposite value. And when the positive value loses its purity it decays into it opposite. So when people use the Torah for personal motives, it causes the holiness of the Torah to leave it and in its place is unholiness.

I have heard that Germany is especially concerned with the problem of cults, but I doubt if they made much progress in understanding or dealing with the problem. And I myself only became aware of my own weakness in this area recently. It is a hard problem. I have suggested before the idea of Rishonim. That is if you are Jewish then the best place to learn about it is books from the Middle Ages before cults became a problem and the emphasis was to combine reason with revelation. I suggest that this applies to Christians also. That is to go back to the Middle Ages and read the source material from that time --like Aquinas etc would be the best approach. I got this idea in my first yeshiva and I think it is  the cure for cults. [That is go back to medieaval sources.]