Those inside the palace are the physicists.

 I have not been blogging in part because my mental energy I have been trying to direct towards Physics and Mathematics which I find needs a lot more energy and effort than I originally thought. The major emphasis in this direction comes from the Guide for the Perplexed. It is mentioned off hand there and in other places in the Rishonim [mediaeval authorities.], but the one place that makes it clearer is the parable of the King in his palace [end of vol III] There is a king who rules of a vast country. And there are many levels of closeness with the King. Those outside the country are barbarians. Those inside are ruled by Divine Law. Those around the Palace are those that learn and keep the Talmud. Those inside the palace are the physicists. Those with the king himself are the prophets and philosophers.

Though this message is in many other places in the medieval authorities, here  it is without ambiguity.

However there are also many Rishonim that do not hold from this at all. To them learning Torah means Gemara and the other books of the sages of the Talmud-not science. 

However I was forced out of the yeshiva world, and found that I had no choice but to learn to make a living with no help from anyone. So I decided to take up Physics at NYU. Since then, I am not longer at NYU and do not even do Physics for the sake of making a living. But I wanted to make clear that if I had not found this opinion in the Rishonim, I probably would have chosen a different path. The fact that Ibn Pakuda and the Rambam hold from this path, made it make more sense to do the Physics thing rather than hang out where I was not wanted.

 

 

 

 

 Rav Nahman of Breslov makes a distinction between learning halacha and reading ["שונה" {Shone}] halacha.

Learning means you go to the source in the Gemara and see how the law is derived. "Reading" means to read it and go on. 

And this later category he says is what makes Torah Scholars the are demons in the Lekutai Moharan [LeM] vol. I chapter 54. [Learning halacha means learning it with its sources in depth. That is in Lekutai Moharan vol I chapter 62 paragraph 6 and chapter 286]

There he says that the "כוח המדמה" power of delusion is always looking for a place to settle upon. And when that power of delusion finds someone who reads halacha, it settles there. And so it is important to never hear words of Torah from these demonic Torah scholars since their ideas in Torahh contain more evil than good. That is to say that even though their words are about Torah so they contain some good, still that good is less than 50% so the evil is the majority and cancels the good.

 Or one can become conservative by learning the Bible. Reason and Faith was the approach of the Middle Ages. To come to objective morality by Reason alone does not work. You need faith also. [Even though some moral principles might be reasonable, but can not be derived by reason. You need to start with some moral principle that is a beginning, not derived from any where. You can not get an "ought" from an "is". And you can not get a tuna fish  sandwich without tuna. You need to start somewhere. []Though Hegel would disagree, I am mainly saying what I understand by the Kant-Fries Approach.

 In Israel the minister of finance wants that there should be in schools regular studies [Mathematics English, Citizenship. Or such similar things.] And to me this makes sense. After in in the Mir in N.Y.  the high school has secular studies. Besides that I think that there is some hidden dynamics going on that is unstated. After all in the Sefardi world, you do not get the sort of division between Frum from birth and baal teshuva. It is only in the Ashkenazi world that this comes up. The Patricians against the Plebeians. This class difference is reinforced by the firm exclusion of secular studies.

This division I think is sad and in truth while I was at the Mir I did not see any of it. I was accepted as part of the regular Kollel-lite. But this division is sad. And serious. For each group looses out on something.  Especially because it is important for  everyone to learn Torah all the time. It is not a practice that is exclusive to the ruling class of the Patricians while us plebeians are supposed to support them. 

 But in fact many of us are not able to be sitting and learning Torah all day and night. So for that reason I see Musar as being of great importance since it gives over the essence of what Torah is all about--good character traits and fear of God.