[1] What is bothering me about religious education is the fact that a bad education can damage one's soul permanently.
[2] Few people are aware of the dangers of a Jewish education. Learning Torah is not the same as being an apprentice under the local blacksmith. Torah is very different. And since it is usually taught by people that are not worth anything, the results are obviously not far off.
I would perhaps go into this if I was not so weak and sick. But in short the main idea is that bad teachers produce bad results and Torah is not like learning a profession. It goes down into the very essence of one' soul.
Obviously the Na Nach people are acutely aware of this more than any group I have seen. In any case, the issue really began in my mind this morning when I thought about the basic idea of the Rambam that the commandments of the Torah have a purpose and that is to bring to several things which could be called objective morality.
The people that are there even in the best of yeshivas to teach Musar/ Ethics to me seem to be far from normative objective morality. So perhaps how to become a decent person is possible to teach and to learn but they do not seem to be the people capable of doing so.
Just to be fair there are still around a few good places like Ponovitch or the great NY Litvak yeshivas. But my point is that the idea that just getting an education is a good thing is completely wrong. In fact unless you are actually going to the Mir or some clearly decent place then the best thing is to avoid the whole bunch of frauds and jerks.
To teach Torah for money is forbidden. מה אני (לימדתי תורה) בחינם אף אתם (תלמדו תורה) בחינם. So in any case the whole scam does not have anything to stand on. And that is an open Gemara in Bava Batra.
[2] Few people are aware of the dangers of a Jewish education. Learning Torah is not the same as being an apprentice under the local blacksmith. Torah is very different. And since it is usually taught by people that are not worth anything, the results are obviously not far off.
I would perhaps go into this if I was not so weak and sick. But in short the main idea is that bad teachers produce bad results and Torah is not like learning a profession. It goes down into the very essence of one' soul.
Obviously the Na Nach people are acutely aware of this more than any group I have seen. In any case, the issue really began in my mind this morning when I thought about the basic idea of the Rambam that the commandments of the Torah have a purpose and that is to bring to several things which could be called objective morality.
The people that are there even in the best of yeshivas to teach Musar/ Ethics to me seem to be far from normative objective morality. So perhaps how to become a decent person is possible to teach and to learn but they do not seem to be the people capable of doing so.
Just to be fair there are still around a few good places like Ponovitch or the great NY Litvak yeshivas. But my point is that the idea that just getting an education is a good thing is completely wrong. In fact unless you are actually going to the Mir or some clearly decent place then the best thing is to avoid the whole bunch of frauds and jerks.
To teach Torah for money is forbidden. מה אני (לימדתי תורה) בחינם אף אתם (תלמדו תורה) בחינם. So in any case the whole scam does not have anything to stand on. And that is an open Gemara in Bava Batra.
