[Avodah] krumkeit

[Samuel Svarc]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Eli Turkel <eliturkel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> And here lies your mistake. Torah is not like math. There is 70 facets
>> to Torah, there are multiple ways to 'mitaher the sheretz', etc. To
>> train people in that there is only one type of "logical" sevara, like
>> math does, is to do them a disservice when it comes to Torah study.
>
> In fact the gemara and tosafot were not happy with R. Meir being able to
> mitaher the sheretz in 70 ways. I was brought up that learning gemara requires
> a clear analytical mind and not pilpul of 70 ways to learn the gemara.

Then WADR you were robbed.

> There is a famous story of Lewin (now a famous lawyer and frequent advocate
> of O causes). When he first started law school he was thrown out of class
> for using gemara logic which did not amuse the professor.
> So using your logic learning gemara is also a poor preparation for the
> hi tech world.

To me, Torah is the only reality, everything else is only a construct
that I need to navigate based on it's rules. So to change how we teach
Jews based on how some construct is constructed seems to me as "making
the tofel ikkar".

KT,
MSS