The Gra considers |"Bitul Torah" to be one of the most serious sins in the Tora. [That is the sin of having time to be able to learn Torah and not doing so. [כי דבר השם בזה הכרת תכרת הנפש ההיא] (This is the gemara in tractate Sanhedrin. It brings the verse "For he despised the word of God. He will be cut off from his people. This is who is able to learn Torah and does not do so.]]What is in this category?
The subject interests me from several angles. One is that I have in fact found it hard to find a place to sit and learn Torah. The best places are clearly the Lithuanian type of yeshivas based on the Gra but even in these places there is plenty of Sitra Achra and gets in the door.
That makes it perhaps better to stay home and learn. Be that as it may then the question comes up anyway what is considered bitul Torah?
Clearly man made wisdoms come under this category. But not Natural Science.[STEM].
In the Mir in NY and Shar Yashuv[both NY yeshivas] almost anything was considered bitul Torah. Anything except simply sitting and learning Torah. They did not hold from the idea of looking for mitzvot to do. Rav Haim of Voloshin wrote It is better to sit in a room alone and twiddle one's thumbs rather than go around looking for mitzvot.
[Rav Nahman of Breslov said in the LeM I.1 that the evil inclination is dressed in mitzvot. [היצר הרע מתלבש במצוות]. That is explained by R. Natan his disciple that the evil inclination never comes and says to a person come and do a sin. Rather its opening strategy is to try to tell a person to do some good deed which is really not a good deed. It just seems like one.]
Natural Sciences would probably be an argument between the Rishonim. [Whether learning natural science is either bitul Torah or perhaps just permitted for the sake of making a living or perhaps even part of the mitzvah of learning Torah.]
The subject interests me from several angles. One is that I have in fact found it hard to find a place to sit and learn Torah. The best places are clearly the Lithuanian type of yeshivas based on the Gra but even in these places there is plenty of Sitra Achra and gets in the door.
That makes it perhaps better to stay home and learn. Be that as it may then the question comes up anyway what is considered bitul Torah?
Clearly man made wisdoms come under this category. But not Natural Science.[STEM].
In the Mir in NY and Shar Yashuv[both NY yeshivas] almost anything was considered bitul Torah. Anything except simply sitting and learning Torah. They did not hold from the idea of looking for mitzvot to do. Rav Haim of Voloshin wrote It is better to sit in a room alone and twiddle one's thumbs rather than go around looking for mitzvot.
[Rav Nahman of Breslov said in the LeM I.1 that the evil inclination is dressed in mitzvot. [היצר הרע מתלבש במצוות]. That is explained by R. Natan his disciple that the evil inclination never comes and says to a person come and do a sin. Rather its opening strategy is to try to tell a person to do some good deed which is really not a good deed. It just seems like one.]
Natural Sciences would probably be an argument between the Rishonim. [Whether learning natural science is either bitul Torah or perhaps just permitted for the sake of making a living or perhaps even part of the mitzvah of learning Torah.]
