Monday, January 10, 2011

Chasam Sofer on Torah u'Mada

Link to the original (Toras Moshe, Parshas Beshalach). Well worth seeing the whole thing inside.

3 comments:

  1. There's a science fiction story I once read where scientists manage to communicate with an alien, but the scientist who enters the room goes insane becuase everything the alient tells him contradicts everything he knows so he has massive information overload.

    They figure out that had they let the gardener into the room instead he would have been able to assimilate the information.

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  2. Interesting that he pins himself down to a specific age (25) at which one may begin to learn other chachmos. That is a more mekil view than the hard line that says one must find a time that is neither day nor night. I looked at the larger context of this. It goes beyond a stricture against secular studies and even warns that TaNaCh should only be studied in light of Torah sheba'al peh and not as a straight reading of pshat. He also refers to the many who lost their faith in hador hara haze.

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  3. >>>That is a more mekil view than the hard line that says one must find a time that is neither day nor night.

    Secular studies "lishma" are for when it's neither day not night. The C.S. is referring to secular studies used as a means to greater understanding of Torah, e.g. learning animal anatomy to understand hil. treifos.
    I knew you would like the Tanach part : ) Obviously this is a reactionary piece of derush, but that doesn't mean it is entirely false.

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