So the fact that the religious world is now idolatry, it makes more sense to pray at home or in a Reform Temple [or Conservative.]

I noticed in the Old Testament that the major complaint is always idolatry. Rarely is any other commandment mentioned.  Go and check yourself. When there is a complaint about the kings of Israel or Yehudah and Benyamin it is always about idolatry and almost never is anything else even mentioned.
Even with King Solomon the complaint is not the women, but idolatry. The problem in fact with the women is that they turned his heart from God to serve idols. You see this clearly when God comes to him a third time to tell him that because he turned to other gods therefore his kingdom with be torn from him [all except one tribe] (Benyamin was no included in that promise even though they later in fact sided with the tribe of Yehuda) the complaint stated there is that he worshiped other gods. Not the foreign women.
So the fact that the religious world is now idolatry, it makes more sense to pray at home or in a Reform Temple [or Conservative.] [Nowadays there really is nowhere safe. Even the great Litvak yeshivas which one supposes go by the Gra have also been infiltrated by the Dark Side.]

[That is because the Dark Side is always trying to infiltrate into the would of holiness. So this is no surprise. But after the fact, it still means that to learn Torah one has to do so alone and avoid the religious world.]

Here is the longer Bezmenov Video

Bezmenov [What is going on in the USA.] This is the short Bezmenov Video

I have to add here that like he says here that a lot of the demoralization only started from the KGB but once the ball got going, it simply is done by Americans to Americans.


No one knows if he engineered his fictitious death in order to get the KGB off his tail, or if they actually got to him. I knew the KGB agent who discovered his whereabouts in Canada by monitoring the broadcasts from the West. But if they actually ever got to him I have no idea. [Needless to say the KGB lost no love on defectors.]

The religious world is mainly idolatry even though there are some areas that are true to Torah. The areas of true authentic Torah would be the Lithuanian yeshivas.

The religious world is mainly idolatry even though there are some areas that are true to Torah. The areas of true authentic Torah would be the Lithuanian yeshivas that are based on the Gra.
That is the three great NY yeshivas Mir, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat. In Israel that means Ponovitch and Brisk.

However this is not meant to exclude Rav Nahman of Breslov. The reason is simple even though I would rather not go into it here. There was a book that collected all the letters of excommunication pus the testimonies in Villna that I went through and that led to my conclusion that Rav Nahman should be thought of as outside the excommunication and in fact a great tzadik. But to see the subject in detail, you have to see the actual language of the letter of excommunication that the Gra signed.

But the issue is more severe than simple idolatry. This is even though in Torah the most severe thing is idolatry. Still there is an aspect that is adds confusion to what is already a mess. The problem is label. Lets say you would take an idol of Krishna or some other Hindu idol and put a stamp of approval on that. Would that make it OK? Well clearly not. But in the religious world that is exactly what has happened. The label does not make it so.
So it would have been better in the first place to accept the approach of the Gra and Rav Shach before it had to be shown the hard way.

We see a lot of idolatry in the religious world. Thus Gra signed the letter of excommunication. But the result is that anything dedicated to idolatry is forbidden.

The prohibition of idolatry is a bit subtle. On one hand like my learning partner David Bronson explained to me that one can not be  guilty of the death penalty unless he worships a physical object.
But even not of the side of legal guilt, clearly there is guilt if one worships in the abstract.
You can see this in the Rambam in the 13 principles of faith [and also in Mishne Torah] that idolatry is worship of anything in heaven or earth, any of the four elements, any angels etc. That is anything other that the First Cause.

But what is worship exactly? Well there are the regular four services [sacrifice, bowing, burning pouring] that one is guilty, but then there is included the specific type of worship that is done for that idolatry even if it is not one of the four services.
And Rav Shach explains the basic essence of idolatry is the fact that someone believes that idol can save. That is how he explains the argument between R Yochanan and Reish Lakish about an idol that fell apart by itself. So people would say, "If it can not help itself, how can it help me?"

We see a lot of idolatry in the religious world. And there is in particular a commandment to get rid of it whether in Israel or outside of Israel. [Outside of Israel one is still required to get rid of idolatry but not required to pursue it.] Clearly this was the reason the Gra signed the letter of excommunication, and it seems to me to be a good idea to take that letter seriously,--even to the degree of considering it valid according to the letter of the law.

Plus there is a further result: Idolatry is not just forbidden to do, but any objects that are set aside for use of idolatry are also forbidden.

w96 G Minor   w96 midi   w96 nwc

The Kennedy approach to communism was to not let it come anywhere near the USA. He was willing to risk nuclear war to keep the Soviets away as the Cuban missile crisis showed. 


The same approach today would make sense. Keep Communism out of the USA. But how when already it saturates all schools and universities? There is not a front to fight at since it is everywhere.

[Allan Bloom already pointed out the problem years ago in his Closing of the American Mind. His said openly that the Social Studies and Humanities departments of universities are the problem. The implication is to get them on track or close them.]