Rav Nahman was not the first one to point out the trouble with Torah scholars that are demons.
I only brought this from Rav Nahman's LeM because it was one of the most striking features of his teaching that I saw when I first started looking at his books. [LeM vol I: 8 I:12, I:28 I:61 II:1 II:8 and many other places I have forgotten off hand.]
The statements of the Gemara itself I forget the page numbers. One is from tractate Shabat.
"All the troubles that come into the world come only because of the religious leaders of Israel as it says in the verse in Isaiah, 'Your judges judge for the sake of getting bribes...'"
So already there was this connection from the start. It was not a new phenomenon in the time of Rav Nahman.
The question is why Rav Nahman would have picked out this particular point among thousands of possible great ideas from the sages he might have chosen to emphasize?
In any case, from the emphasis itself of Rav Nahman it seems these kinds of Torah scholars are not uncommon. Rather if anyone has trouble finding them they probably could not find a snowflake in a blizzard.
Clearly he saw this issue as sine qua non--[without which nothing good can even begin.]
I only brought this from Rav Nahman's LeM because it was one of the most striking features of his teaching that I saw when I first started looking at his books. [LeM vol I: 8 I:12, I:28 I:61 II:1 II:8 and many other places I have forgotten off hand.]
The statements of the Gemara itself I forget the page numbers. One is from tractate Shabat.
"All the troubles that come into the world come only because of the religious leaders of Israel as it says in the verse in Isaiah, 'Your judges judge for the sake of getting bribes...'"
So already there was this connection from the start. It was not a new phenomenon in the time of Rav Nahman.
The question is why Rav Nahman would have picked out this particular point among thousands of possible great ideas from the sages he might have chosen to emphasize?
In any case, from the emphasis itself of Rav Nahman it seems these kinds of Torah scholars are not uncommon. Rather if anyone has trouble finding them they probably could not find a snowflake in a blizzard.
Clearly he saw this issue as sine qua non--[without which nothing good can even begin.]
