The question is how not follow charismatic leaders. How to tell when in spite of everyone saying that such and such a leader knows Shas baal pe [the whole Talmud by heart] that in fact he is a fraud?
How can one be safe from charismatic leaders who are frauds and yet you have no way of telling.
Not that there is no difference between them.
How to be safe from charisma?
There probably is no way. There is no safeguard.this applies to the larger secular world and also in the world of Torah.
Learning Torah does not seem to do it since most of the Torah world follows scam artists. Prayer alos seem not to work well.

What is presented nowadays as Torah is usually just Sitra Achra Torah

It occurs to me that to learn Torah at the minimum limit which is to get through the entire Oral and Written Law on my own is an impossible task. And furthermore this same thought probably occurred to Rav Zilverman the founder of the Yeshiva on the name of the Gra in the old city [of Jerusalem]. In other words, people that found at a certain point that it was unlikely for them to fulfill the minimum obligation in terms of Torah learning may very well have thought that at least if they could found a straight Litvak yeshiva that would learn authentic Torah [not Torah of the Dark Side (Sitra Achra)], that that merit would go to their credit.
The obstacles towards learning might be different in each case. But the solution that some people settled on was to make yeshivas that would learn Authentic Torah. --not what is presented nowadays as Torah which is usually just Sitra Achra Torah.

[More or less it is almost as if everyone decided they they are better judges of what is authentic Torah than the Gra or Rav Shach.]

[This is not meant as a critique on Rav Nahman from Breslov whose Torah lessons I believe are authentic Torah from the Realm of Holiness.]

[The major issue here seems to be that the Dark Side has completely taken over the Torah world- so to find the real thing is more or less impossible. That is impossible unless there were yeshivot that walked in the path of the Gra and Rav Shach. ]

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המעפילים לעלות Those that dared to defy the Divine decree not to come up to the Land of Israel.

המעפילים לעלות Those that dared to  defy the Divine decree not to come up to Israel.

There is no question that when the children of Israel listened to the spies and did not come to Israel , they did a sin. But then, the time passed, and there was a Divine decree not to come to the Land, and rather to spend 40 years in the wilderness.
There is a deep lesson for me in this. Once, I walked out of the world of the straight Litvak Torah, there is no way to get back in;-- and even the attempt to try to get back is accounted as a sin.

This seems to be a deep lesson for others as well. You can not force your way in. Everyone has a place and a specific task in this world. As the Bahavagad Gita says it so eloquently, "You have got to do what you have got to do."

[The basic story there was there was a warrior who right before battle was worried that he would have to kill people. Krishna appeared to him and told him, "A man has got to do what he has got to do." But it is important to note that in that battle, Krishna was telling this to the fellow on the side of right and justice. He was fighting those that had usurped the crown. It is important to note that Krishna did not appear to the opposite side and tell them to fight. In fact, if Arjuna [that warrior] had in fact been on the wrong side, then it is likely that Krishna would have told him his obligation was to run away, and not fight.

Uman is no longer safe. There is no question in my mind that it is forbidden to go there nowadays since it is a place of danger.

  My impression is that it is worthwhile warning people that Uman is no longer safe. It took some time for the terror instilled by the USSR wear off. But since the thaw, the real traits of the local population have been rising to the surface.  There are still people around with Russian ancestry, but the basic population has some really evil, violent traits embedded in their DNA. [You could tell a long time ago that it was the Russians that made things stable.]

  A better way to say this is  ונשמרתם לנפשותיכם "guard your souls" which is a verse in Deuteronomy that refers to the idea that one is supposed to guard one's own life and health and not do things which put himself or herself in danger.

[The Na Nach group has been saying this for a long time.]


There is no question in my mind that it is forbidden to go there nowadays since it is a place of danger.

When Rav Nahman warns people about Torah scholars that are demons, clearly he is following the strict letter of the Law. One can and must warn people about possible danger to their physical, mental, or spiritual well-being. 

[In ליקוטי מוהר''ן I:8 RN goes into detail about the Rav of the Kelipa [the Rav of the Dark Side]

Later in I:12 Rav Nahman  goes more in depth about the problem of the תלמיד חכם שד יהודי the Torah scholar that is a demon. And it is clear there that he is talking about people that learn and know the Talmud well. The only problem is that their learning Torah is for the sake of honor or money.

Love and marriage are not well managed nowadays. Nor character development.

Love and marriage are not well managed nowadays. Nor character development.

You can see this be the sheer mass of the pretenders to this kind of knowledge.

Psychology is pure pseudo science. But people still fall for it because there is no where else for them to go [as far as they can see].


My own education and thinking about these matters began when I saw the amazing relationship of my parents. Later in the public library I stumbled upon the Symposium of Plato.
So I have a feeling that some aspect of these matters is deep and almost completely unknown
But at least I know to avoid people that pretend to know what they do not know.

Often Torah leaders are actual agents of the Sitra Achra [Dark Side]

I do quote Rav Nahman, but that is not to say that I am in agreement with everything in Breslov. Sometimes I think Rav Nahman is misinterpreted or interpreted in ways that take one off on tangents.[The Torah in Deut. 18:10-11 and Isaiah 19:3 condemns conjuring up the dead. I seem to recall also Isaiah circa 65:4 ] In any case he is very insightful.

  One of his remarkable insights is that often Torah leaders are actual agents of the Sitra Achra  [Dark Side]  which many people have discovered the hard way. But warnings about this problem are rare. It is something that Rav Nahman had the courage to bring attention to this very serious  matter. So many lives would have been saved, so many homes and families would have been saved if people had just be aware of this amazing piece of information.

  He does not give a lot of signs on how to tell who is who,- but even so, the simple warning is already a useful and important bit of information.
[Actually the Talmud itself brings this very same idea yet in the context of the Talmud it is easy to miss. But when Rav Nahman says it at the very beginning of his lessons it is impossible to miss.
[That is ליקוטי מוהר''ן חלק א' סימן י''ב and also סימן כ''ח]

It seems clear to me that I ought to at least here mention the place like Ponoviz where Rav Shach was the Rosh Yeshiva and similar kinds of places that are devoted to straight authentic Torah that I see in a very positive light. But I do not have any kinds of proof or even signs of how to tell.