[Avodah] Torah Study vs. other contributions to society

[Rich, Joel]

Now, how will one know that his Mada studies will enhance the quality of
his Torah study? One of three ways. 1) By accident. (I can't begin to
tell you how happy I was to understand a Rashi that referenced
niello-work just a few days after I happened to read about it in the
dormitory bathroom's
Britannica.) 2) By design - you already know that learning this will
help your learning, as others have already trodden this path. Learning
the Ayil Meshulash is a good example, or listening to the Kuzari about
music, or to your teachers who identify any specific field or topic as
beneficial. 3) By hit-or-miss. You study as much Mada of whatever
variety you can find or are interested in, and you hope that some of it
will be useful. This is different from the first method, because there
your intention was not even to study - some Mada that you picked up
happened to be useful. Here, you try to make that accident repeat itself
using the brute-force method - cram as much Mada into your head as
possible, so that there is a large likelihood that some of it will be
useful in enhancing the quality of your Torah knowledge. 
The problem with the first method is that there is much Torah that will
not be understood fully because of the fluky nature of this method. The
problem with the third method is that it's extremely inefficient and
still leaves the possibility of being unsuccessful - what if your
particular interests don't coincide with any Torah you learn?
If I had to stereotype, I would say that the most right wing of Torah
Jews favor the first method (or possibly even less than that). The most
left wing probably tend to favor the third method (or less than that -
where Mada becomes an end in itself). Personally, as should already be
obvious, I favor the second method.
Just for the record, I'm not positive that R'n CL disagrees with me -
but thank you either way, R'n CL, for the opportunity to share my
thoughts!

KT,
MYG  

==========================================
I've had this argument on a number of levels over the years.  Even
naniach that 80% of what you learn in school (or in this case in secular
studies) will be of "no value", IMHO it is near impossible to know which
20% will come into play and thus while one can "plan" certain areas of
study, the lack of other knowledge to serendipitously (or imho through
hashgacha) fall into place will lessen one's accomplishment in torah
(there was an excellent history channel show on the development of the
M-16, the genius of the design iirc was realizing something he had seen
in the aircraft world applied here)

KT
Joel Rich
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