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.]
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.]
