The attitude is embedded deeply in sociology departments-- to defend religious cults and claim there is no such thing as brain washing in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Is there such a thing as brainwashing? It seems there is. The academic community has tried to ignore this thesis in spite of the fact that the best scholars like Zimbardo seems to support it. Evidence suggests that new religious cults do use mind control methods   that have proven effective and they do it on purpose.

Some people in the academic community have been given lavish support to protect cults.[The very people that write reports on cults are getting lavish gifts from those cults. No wonder they give them  clean bill of health.] The attitude is embedded deeply in sociology departments-- to defend religious cults and claim there is no such thing as brain washing in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The setting is simple. Control of the young persons' environment by the group under the leadership of the charismatic leader. Once you have those two components in place, brain washing becomes amazingly simple.

That is not to imply all religious interest is due to this, but some of it certainly is.  If you can control these factors, you can convince anyone of almost anything, long after the group is gone.

[There is a lot of research that needs to be done here. There is a paper by Benjamin Zablocki that goes into some details, but there is much more insidious history behind it all.]

Still there are legitimate establishments like the authentic Litvak yeshivas which are on the side of good--but they border on cults just by the fact of the cults trying to gain entrance.

All in all I would have to agree with those parents who are wary of all yeshivas unless it is a place that is so well known and established like Ponovitch that there is no doubts about it.

The trouble seems to be that you can take even a good set of doctrines that point people in a moral and good direction and still easily turn it into a cult by these two simple mechanisms--a) control of environment b) charismatic leader. Thus even Torah can be turned into  a cult.

The trouble is also that sometimes decent and good groups partake of some of these characteristics. The Marine Corp, or the Shar Yashuv Yeshiva in NY.  Still the goal of the group seems to make the whole project worthwhile.
I have thought to mention that Dr. Zimbardo thought the only solution to the problem of cults is to have a healthy society in which the temptation of cults does not exist.

The idea of trust in God usually worked for me as long as I stuck with it. And I admit I did not stick with it.

You do see in Torah that different people come along and emphasize one particular aspect. This happened in Musar as you can see in Navardok with the idea of trust in God. But it is not confined there. I heard in Israel from a friend that this often leads to that one thing that is emphasized to be the very thing that people mess up. Still it does not seem to always work that way. It seems to be like corporations that sometimes they actually accomplish their goals, and yet in other corporations the accomplishment seems to go n the reverse direction.

No matter how you look at it the very principle in itself seems odd. Why would there be any particular command of the Torah more important than any other unless it is explicit in the Torah itself that that particular command is primary?

In any case the idea of trust in God and learning Torah has enough support to be able to commit to this ideal.
That is it might make some sense to start trusting in God to take care of your needs. The idea of trust in God usually worked for me as long as I stuck with it. It is rather when I deviated from it that it did not seem to work any longer.

In a rather strange way some people emphasize the very opposite of what the Torah requires and yet do so under the guise of Torah  Graves of tzadikm is one minor example see Deuteronomy 18:11. But there are many more strange examples.

וישבות ביום השביעי מכל מלאכתו אשר עשה. And He rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had made. [Genesis] What could this possibly mean? If he stopped working at the beginning of night on Friday night, but then simply did no more work, then it was not on the seventh day alone that he rested by the eight and ninth, and onward. So it must mean He continued working on the eight day in order for the entire seventh day to be one span of an interval of not working.

The Sages ask this and answer since then he makes "Shiduchim," matches-but that does not seem to come under the category of the 39 types of work.

I believe in the "noble savage" without the "noble."

I do not believe in the "noble savage" myth that was popularized by Rousseau.   Nor the Blank Slate of John Locke.  There are genes. Some genes are suggestions. Some genes are dictators. But there is also the social meme that plays a role [Howard Bloom in the Lucifer Principle.] Thus it is clear to me that Western Civilization had  at least these factors: (1) genes and (2) the Law of Moses (3) Plato and Aristotle.

Ellen White of the Seventh Day Adventists was definitely  using information fed to her (by informants) to appear to have the "Divine Spirit." This fact sheds light on the fact that Rav Shick was doing the same thing. It always seemed that way to some degree, but it was never anything I could put my finger on exactly.[I saw this a lot but never wanted to believe it. Clearly Erez was feeding to him information about me and others tat he would afterwards insert into hi public speaking that seemed to people to be "the Divine Spirit". Still there was some kind of trans-personal element about him that went beyond that, You could tell he was not getting his information by Divine Spirit because he made many mistakes. this was so clear to me that I could even tell exactly who had been his informant. But i till did not want to believe it because I really thought of him very highly. And without him  can see people can fall into much worse things.]


Even so Rav Shick had an almost Litvak approach to Reb Nachman that combined the best element of prayer with learning Torah and emphasized the best elements of Reb  Nachman instead of the more flaky aspects. All the better to get people to leave an authentic Litvak yeshiva environment and join his group.

[My general approach to this subject is based on the idea of the Intermediate Zone. People that get caught in that area definitely have some amazing spiritual power and manifestations, but all to give power to the Sitra Achra ( the Dark Realm).

In any case, Rav Shick was a lot better than all the rest of the Sitra Achra cults. He had the sense to emphasize the good aspects of Reb Nachman. Still, it is always regretful any involvement with any group that comes under the Cherem (excommunication) of the Gra.

path of Torah and how to accept "the yoke of Torah"

What makes it hard to recommend the path of Torah is the problem of the cults and kelipot that people automatically get involved with when they think they are coming to Torah. That makes the whole endeavor highly undesirable, and it defeats the whole purpose. After all, what do people learn when they imagine they are coming to Torah? The first lesson is to ignore one's parents. Next is to learn mysticism of the unclean realm as you can see on the faces of the people themselves. They get that Zombie look after a short time. Next is to despise the State of Israel and all secular Jews.
After all that, it is hard to see what possible benefit they could have out of the whole thing-- once they have lost their basic human decency.

So the basic issue is simple. How does one go about accepting the yoke of Torah in a way that does not lead to negative outcomes?   There seem to be only two ways. To learn at home as much as possible, Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot, Avi Ezri. Or to start an authentic Litvak yeshiva where bad influences are terminated with extreme prejudice.

If you are learning at home, I found a great way of doing Gemara, that is a עמוד [half page] per day with Rashi, Tosphot, Maharasha and Maharam. Also if you do get through Shas that way,  then do the Yerushalmi.

[There is a problem with time distribution. Taking the Rambam' four fold path of learning the Oral and Written Law plus Physics and Metaphysics, the question arises about time commitment. Each subject in itself requires a great deal of time.] [That is the 10,000 hours rule. That is: to become even half way decent in any of these subject takes 10,000. That is why Authentic Litvak yeshivas have their four year cycle. That end up being around 10,000 hours. Same goes for Physics.]

It would be the 12th day of the Omer today if you go by the molad. That would make April 11 the first day of peach. This is only to Tosphot in Sanhedrin. Most people think the present day Hebrew calendar was set up when there was real semicha but there i no record of that in the Gemara. And letters of the geonim have dates in them that do not correlate to today's calendar. To me it seems clear it was adopted during the middle of the geonic period. But with no semicha there is nothing to make it valid.