An idol can be anything from heaven and earth. It does not have to be a physical object.
If one accepts it as his god by accident, then he is liable to bring a sin offering. If on purpose, he is liable the death penalty.
What if he did not accept it as his god, but served it from love of the image, or fear that it might hurt him?







This is the argument between Abyee and Rava about doing idolatry from love or fear. [Sanhedrin 62b]
The argument is very simple at first. Abyee says: One who serves an idol from love or fear is liable. Rava says, he is not.

Then Abyee finds some place where the idea of idolatry by accident is mentioned and he asks what is it referring to? One who bows to a house of idols thinking it is a synagogue is not doing anything wrong because his heart is towards heaven. If he bows to a statue thinking it is not an idol also it is nothing. Why does he skip the simple case-he forgot it is an idol?

Now my learning partner has suggested that  a sin without pleasure (הנאה) will be liable only if it is a mistake in material facts. [For in most sins either a mistake in facts or law would be counted as an accident.] Now that idea would help us here in Sanhedrin 62, but not in Shabat where we know if one forgets Shabat he is liable. Forgetting Shabat certainly is not the same as making a mistake in law.

That leaves us where we began. So far I have no decent idea of why Abyee skips this seemingly obvious case.


 (A case of mistake in material facts would be if he ate forbidden fat חלב which he thought was normal fat שומן. That is liable because there is pleasure involved. A case of mistake in law would be if he thought there is no prohibition in eating forbidden fat חלב. That also is liable a sin offering.)

הבעיה כאן היא זאת. כשרבא רוצה למצוא שגגת עבודה זרה, הוא הולך לטעות בדין, ואז האדם 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.




Appendix:
1. A person can be an idol. If a person says, "Serve me." He is automatically liable. [Sanhedrin 62a]. If others tell you to serve a certain person or that if you serve him you will get such and such benefits then they are liable the death penalty. This explains why the Gra [the Villna Geon], signed that particular excommunication [the famous cherem] on hasidim. He must have known that with hasidim serving a tzadik is an important principle.  Since in the Torah, serving a tzadik is idolatry, he decided to sign the excommunication. If the terminology of destructive manipulative cult leaders would have been around in those days that is what the Gra would have said about it.

Stay put.

The Gra defines the path of Torah.
The Gra  equates Joy with the world of "Bina" Understanding. Which is the root of all holiness.

1) Joy is holiness in itself.
It is much more than just extra extra credit. If I was doing some kind of practice that I thought was obligatory according to Jewish law, but I knew this practice made me depressed, I dropped it.

I said to myself, "If this would really be an obligation according to the Torah, it would not be making me depressed."

This would especially apply to how I would keep Shabat or pray.

The idea in  the LM: "Joy is the realm of holiness in itself. Depression is the evil realm, and God hates it."
And I also thought that to make people upset also was not a mitzvah. This related to how I would interact with others. I assumed the only interaction with others that could count as a mitzvah would be when I would bring them joy. This in fact has support from the Gra when he equates Joy with the world of "Bina" Understanding. Which is the root of all holiness.

2) Talking with God. It is the highest goal of all to be talking with God all the time. Mainly in a forest.  When I was down and out, this gave me a connection with God that has kept me going through thick and thin. I dread to think where I would be today without this amazing piece of advice.

3) Say the words and go on. This amazing piece of advice has gotten me through the Talmud and Rambam and writings of Isaac Luria  and much more. And he was right that when I thought I was not understanding, later on understanding just came spontaneously. Without this advice, I would never have gotten as far as I did in the Oral and Written Law,-- or Mathematics and Physics either.
(Obviously there are lots of things that remain mysteries to me. I am just not very smart. But in this way I learned and understood a lot more than if I would have gotten stuck on details and ended up dropping the whole thing; or even worse--think that I understood stuff when if I had gone on to read the whole subject, it became clear only by the picture  what the  details were about. In fact, it is a lot easier to decide what a DNA molecule of a tree is saying by looking at the forest, rather than trying to decipher the actual molecule. )
4)I learned from the Rambam that the belief system of the Torah is Monotheism. This is not the same as Pantheism. Pantheism is the faith of Hinduism and I can understand why people might be attracted to it. But then they should just say they are teaching Hinduism. Not claim to be teaching Judaism. 

In Shabat the Rambam decided like Rabbi Yehuda that מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה [work done not for its own sake]  is liable. So then why is צידת נחש [capturing a snake so that it does not hurt one] allowed? Because it is פסיק רישא דלא ניחא ליה. [Something not intended but which had to happen by his action and he has no pleasure from the unintended result] (Like the Aruch.) But the obvious question is why is it דבר שאינו מתכווין (something not intended)?
I mean Reb Chaim has a point that it is only in the opinion of Rav Yehuda that it is considered a work done not for its own sake. But here  we are not in the opinion of Rav Yehuda. So surely it could be something not intended, but why?








This idea I had yesterday when I was think about Tosphot and then it occurred to me today that it might apply be what Reb Chaim is trying to get at.
The idea is this we find that something not intended can be composed of lots of subsets. We find for example with find even a total accident מתעסק can be liable if there is pleasure involved. And even if one does something he know what he is doing, but makes a mistake in law thinking it is allowed, is also an accident.

And the list goes on and on.

It is for this reason I think that Tosphot (Shabat 94) wanted to confine  מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה [work done not for its own sake] to a very limited set, i.e. a small and closed set. That is work done for the purpose for which it was done in the Tabernacle alone is called "work done for its own sake." Everything outside of that is not for its own sake, but it can be intended.

This type of reasoning can help us understand Chaim Soloveitchik


I want to say the reason is because the Rambam is like Tosphot in wanting to define מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה [work done not for its own sake]  as a very restricted category and that everything outside of it is in category of דבר שאינו מתכווין. [That is the Rambam will not define it like Tosphot, but he still will confine it to  a very restricted area.]

The question on this is that something not intended is not at all the same thing as being obligated a sin offering. So I still have to do some thinking about this way of explaining what Reb Chaim might be getting at. Until I can get this idea past my learning partner I don't want to present it as anything but ad hoc. [I would like to say there is a connection between not intended and normal sin offerings. My idea is that sin offerings need some degree of knowledge but not to actual intend them.E.g picking up a radish on Shabat that one thought was already picked but turned out to be attached to the ground is not liable, but to cut it is to Abyee. So some knowledge is needed to be liable--but not too much. And that is what makes something an accident.]

אני רוצה להסביר תירוצו של ר' חיים הלוי על הרמב''ם בעניין  דבר שאינו מתכווין ומלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה וצידת נחש. דבר שאינו מתכווין יכול לכלול הרבה דברים, למשל מתעסק במקום שיש הנאה. שם ההנאה מספיקה קצת כוונה בכדי שיהיה חייב קרבן.ו עוד יש טעות בדין או במציאות שנחשבים בכלל אינו מכווין. נראה לי שזאת הסיבה שתוספות רצו לצמצים את גדר מלאכה שצריכה לגופה להיות רק מלאכה הנעשית לצורך מה שהייתה צורכה במשכן. הסברא הזו עוזרת לנו להבין ר' חיים סולובייטשיק.בשבת הרמב''ם פסק כרבי יהודה שמלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה חייבת. ולכן למה צידת נחש מותרת?בגלל שהיא דבר שאינו מתכווין דלא ניחא ליה כשיטת הערוך. אבל למה זו דבר שאינו מתכווין? אני רוצה להגיד שהרמב''ם כמו תוספות רוצה לצמצים את הגדר של מלאכה שצריכה לגופה, וכל מה שחוץ לגדר הזה הוא דבר שאינו מתכווין.

If you look at the book of Reb Chaim you will see why this whole commentary is necessary. Without this explanation it is not clear what he means at all, nor is it  not clear how  his explanation of the Rambam  does not contradict  how the Rambam explains דבר שאינו מתכווין in chapter 1 of Laws of Shabat. I think you have to come to this commentary of mine to have the Rambam make sense.

I think I saw the Chazon Ish ask this on Reb Chaim, but I have neither his, nor Reb Chaim's book. I am writing this from memory. Nor do I have the Talmud Shabat in front of me.
Certainly, I remember my learning partner ask this on Reb Chaim. I tried to tell him the basic idea of Reb Chaim, and I remember his first question was from the way the Rambam explains a ''thing not intended.''

I had some idea that part of my family [Rosenblum] was in Poland during World War II.
Now I see the NY library has a book on Poltusk and I found some of my family members who were killed during the Holocaust. I did not not see any pictures of the people that were killed. But there was one of my grandfather's brother, Fishel ben Alter Rosenblum.  It looks like we were a semi religious family. Fishel Rosenblum in the picture had a tie. It seems we were probably what you would call Conservative.
I know my grandparents kept Shabat and Kashrut, but certainly were not obliviously religious.



Before this all I knew was that my Dad was a captain in the US Air Force flying B-29s.

I saw on a list of victims,  two families of Rosenblums that were killed in the Holocaust, Avraham and his wife Zirel and a daughter Feige, and another Rosenblum, Ben Zion with his wife Finkel and children, Mendel, David, Reishel, Roiza, Golda, Feiga.

They all must have been young because the father Avraham was one of the children of Alter.

 His father was Alter Rosenblum (1870 – 1922) and his mother was Shaindel Marcusfeld (1870-1903). 

His younger brother Yaakov was my grandfather who came to the USA right after during WWI.

The Rambam has an idea of what constitutes the Oral Law that gives some support to the idea that learning Physics and Meta-Physics is an actual obligation.
And it is important to know whether this is an obligation or not because of the concept of Bitul Torah.
And the idea of Bitul Torah is that it is not just a mitzvah to learn Torah but it is a sin not to learn Torah. ביטול תורה כנגד כולם. That is we have a statement from that sages talking about the worst types of sin (גילוי עריות שפיכות דמים עבודה זרה) a person can do and then they and on the end of this discussion that not learning Torah during a time period when one could be learning Torah is the worst of all sins.

In the Rambam's  Laws of Talmud Torah about how one should divide his day, the Rambam says  הענינים הנקראים פרדס הם בכלל הגמרא "The things called Pardes are in the category of learning Talmud"
And that obviously refers to what he said at the beginning of Mishna Torah the the subject matter discussed there is called "Pardes." [Orchard]  That means the Rambam understood "Pardes" to means Physics and Metaphysics and he considered learning these two subjects as a part of the mitzvah of learning Torah. [There is no surprise here. The Rambam in the Guide says what the sages means by the work of Creation and the work of the Divine Chariot the Greeks called Physics and Metaphysics. And if you put his ideas about this in Guide together you get the same conclusion]

I looked into the history of Pultusk, Poland.[http://yizkor.nypl.org/index.php?id=2548] And I can see that the idea of public school [secular studies] was frowned on by the some religious people.  But  regular Jews did not share that attitude. For example when my grandparents came to the USA they sent my Dad to public school and later he majored in Mechanical Engineering at Cal Tech worked on almost every top secret project that was around, the U-2, the Orion, SDI, etc.
Clearly there were and still are plenty of Jews that think Science and Math are an important part of Torah study like the Rambam.

But as far as things are today  both ultra orthodox religious schools and also public schools in the USA are extremely bad. If I had the choice I would home school my children in Torah and natural sciences. And if that was not an option I would send my children to some kind of Religious Zionist school like Bnei Akiva [or whatever they are called in the USA]

At the Mir in NY the books of Breslov were in the Musar section.
And that was during the era right after they got to the USA from the Mir in Europe.
That means the books were considered a regular part of the cannon of Musar books by Reb Avraham Kalmonovicth, and the Mashgiach Reb Feldman.
And it goes without saying that Breslov was an important part of the world view of the Mashgiach that came after Reb Feldman that is Don Segal, the Mashgiach of Ponovicth.
And I specifically asked both Don Segal and Leibel Berenbaum about this subject. And this was definitely in the context of the\ issue of the excommunication that was signed by the Gra.

The excommunication is as valid today as it was when the Gra signed it.

Certainly no one thought that is has expired. And in a large degree this seems also to have been the opinion of Rav Shach of Ponovitch was was the Gadol Hador at that time.

But the books of Breslov are kosher