1)  It looks like the religious world as a movement directs people away from God and towards their own leaders.  Graves of tzadikim tends to be a major theme by the religious world. And it seems that at least Elijah the prophet did not think it was possible to serve God and any other being at the same time. Otherwise the simple answer to him would have been: "We serve God and Baal," or "We serve Baal as a means of getting to God."

To Elijah that would not work.

And now we can understand what it was that the Gra was seeing when he put his signature on the cherem (excommunication). He saw pure and simple idolatry. No if's and's and but's. And he saw it was idolatry that was using mitzvot and Torah as a disguise and a mask. And that made it infinitely more dangerous and evil  than open idolatry.






2) Eliyahu [Elijah] the prophet in Mount Carmel told the Jewish people, "If the Lord is God then go after Him; and if the Baal is god, then go after him." And they could not answer him. And then fire came down from heaven  and they cried out, "The Lord is God; the Lord is God." The implication is, "The Lord is God, and the Baal is not God."

Why did they not simply answer him, "When we need a blessing from heaven, we pray to God.  When we need a blessing from the earth, we pray to the Baal, or we go to some Tzadik?"
Elijah would not have been satisfied with this. He would have said, "If the Lord is God, then go after him; and if the Tzadik is God, then go after him."

3) But to me it seems that we have to look at what the philosophy of the Torah is and and then the philosophy of other groups. And also to look at their prime directive.  The prime principle of faith that ones entire portion in the next world depends on.  And we can see that the philosophies of each are different.
 Believing in some person seems to be inherent in  other groups and this is not what the Torah tells us.

While it seems on the surface the Torah itself is fairly straightforward that one should keep Torah and mitzvot and there are no short cuts.


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Appendix

1) The fact that one can find examples in Torah or Talmud of importance of closeness with a Tzadik is along the same lines that we find in Torah of elements of polytheism. And the Rambam says in fact that many mitzvot were given to wean people from polytheism. For example the Rambam said God knew he could not command people not to bring sacrifices. So instead of eliminating sacrifices he said people should bring them to God alone. And so we many other mitzvot. The Torah makes allowance in going to a true tzadik because it knows if it would forbid such a thing people would go to false tzadikim. So instead it allows one to go to true prophets  and tzadikim even for blessings and guidance even though it know it would be better to go to God directly. And it hopes the true tzadik will then guide people towards God and to depend on God alone.

2) When people believe that is is allowed to worship one tzadik, they tend to downgrade other tzadikim--as if this gives them an excuse to be worshiping one and not the other.
You see this often by people that are devotes of any particular person.

3) In polytheism you can find conflict between kinds of services that are required. A devote of Venus will be required one thing and a devote of Artemis something else. But the point of Elijah was that there is an essential conflict in worshiping God and also being a devote of any other being, the Baal or any Tzadik.--even if they are real tzadikim.


4) In Torah believing that any person is Divine is idolatry. (That is either a part of G-d or G-d himself.) Pure shemad שמד . Only God is Divine.  But believing God is Divine is sadly not enough to get one into the Garden of Eden. There are mitzvahs also, and learning Torah too.


5) In any case for a Jew, no matter how afraid one is from hell or tortures of destructive angels, believing in idolatry is not an option.
"Woe to so and so who rebelled against the Torah and against its commandments," is what the angels cry out when they bring the body to the grave. Who wants to hear that? Not me.

6) So my suggestion is to keep the Torah. And though I realize that in Torah there are moral dilemmas. There is a kind of tension in knowing what one must do. And that is characteristic of keeping Torah. And yet the basic framework is simple. learn Torah keep Mitzvot, and let God worry about your portion in the next world. "And don't worry about worries of tomorrow." אל תצר צרת מחר

7)  I am trying to point out that belief in some person's divinity is a problem but I was not trying to go into the details because it was simply to point out that such a belief can't be the condition of getting into the Garden of Eden.  This seems to relate to Christianity because it is the fundamental tenet of Christianity to believe in the Divinity of Jesus. (Not that he ever said such a thing.) But I will leave that to Aquinas  and Anselm. My interest here is simply to approach the question from the viewpoint of the Oral and Written Law.
For Christians interested in these topics let me say that even though belief in the Divinity of Jesus is the most central tenet of Christianity in Torah thought, belief in anyone's divinity is wrong and idolatry. This is mainly treated in Saadia Geon. Maimonides treats the issue of an intermediate. And these are separate issues. Maybe I could get into them someday. But right now I wanted to concentrate on the Torah aspect of these things.

 Torah is easy to walk away from and hard to return to. You should at least make sure that when you go to the next world you have finished at least once the Oral and Written Law, i.e. the two Talmuds [the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud], the Tosephta, the Sifi and the Sifra.

I am not trying to disparage learning natural sciences or any kosher means of making a living.
But I also think that if one accepts the yoke of Torah, many other distractions disappear.
There is an idea of the Gra is related to this. It is the idea  that certain things are decreed for a person. So it does not help to run after things. What is supposed to come to you, will come anyway; and what is not supposed to come, whatever you will do will not bring it closer. So one should therefore simply do what the Torah requires of one, and let God take care of the rest.



I think it makes sense here to defend Torah. This I do by means of Isaac Luria, With Luria we get the Torah referring to higher worlds. We don't expect this world to be an accurate representation of the higher reality.
That is: the way I defend Torah is by a Neo Platonic  approach. And though the Torah philosopher, Maimonides was going in the direction of Aristotle, still he is definitely between Plato and Aristotle, so I am firm ground.
[I know  there are plenty of ways to look at the Torah. Allegory was suggested by Saadia Geon and Maimonides when the simple explanation does not work. But my feeling is with Luria the simple explanation itself becomes mystical.]

The reason Muslims kill Christians and Jews is because they can read.

The official doctrine of Islam is to kill infidels unless they accept Islam or if they accept to pay the tax and submit to the rule of Islam. That is that every man woman and child is already under the death penalty in Islam  ipso facto. Only if you redeem yourself by paying the tax can you be allowed to live. (But Muslims do not have to accept the tax. They can kill even if the Jews or Christians surrender.)
The reason Muslims kill Christians and Jews is because they can read.
In Yemen Jews also had a situation in which their girls could be taken against their will by the local Mufti in marriage at the age of 12. That is why they were always married off as children before they reached that age.

But I should mention that conversion to Islam is very simple. It is just saying that basic paragraph of Islamic belief. If one does that he or she is  automatically Muslim (according to Muslim law). That is why Muslims try to get children in elementary school and in high schools to say that formula.  They present it as a lesson in religious diversity but their intention is to make people Muslim.

And one can't convert back to Christianity or to Torah. That is an automatic death sentence. Even to keep any Jewish or Christian ritual at that point is a death sentence.
The reason Muslims kill Christians and Jews all over the world is because most have not accepted Islam. A good example is Israel. It is fair to guess that a Jew in Israel does not pay the tax to the Muslim authorities nor does he submit to Islam. Therefore he is automatically under the death penalty in Islamic Law [Sharia].

Of course insulting Islam is more serious. That is even if to Muslims every non Muslim is under the death penalty still to actually go out an find a person that has insulted Islam is a much more urgent command.

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.