[Avodah] Need For Secular Knowledge

[Jay F. Shachter]

There have been many many posting recently about the desirability of
secular education, but no one has, so far, mentioned an exceedingly
important point.  Bammaqom sh'eyn anashim hishtaddel lihyoth ish, so I
have to step in and point it out.

We need to have a secular education in order to come to a correct
judgement about the credibility of the sages who preceded us.

Two examples will suffice.  Rambam in his commentary to `Eruvin 1:5
says that pi is irrational (I am not able to read his commentary in
the original Arabic, I am saying this based on my reading of a Hebrew
translation).  This is the Mishna that says that pi is 3.  Rambam
defends the Mishna by saying that pi is of course, not 3, but any
value we give would have to be an approximation, because pi is
irrational (he does not use that word, or more precisely the Hebrew
translator does not, but from his circumlocutions that is clearly what
he means), so the only question is how accurate an approximation we
need, and 3 is good enough for the halakha, since the exact value
cannot be calculated anyway.

A reader without a secular education would think that Rambam knew what
he was talking about.  He did not; he was guessing (as it happens,
correctly).  Rambam did not know that pi was irrational.  The
irrationality of pi was not proved until 1761, and the proof (and all
subsequent proofs) required mathematics that Rambam did not have.

`Ovadia MiBertinoro comments on the word "epitropos" on Bikkurim 1:5.
He says that it is someone who acts as someone else's father although
he is not the real father, and he derives it from "pater".  This is
preposterous; someone who knows xokhma yvanith knows that "epi" means
"above" and "tropos" means to move, or to act.  An epitropos is
someone who acts above someone else, i.e., a guardian, who acts above,
and on behalf of, his ward.  `Ovadia MiBertinoro got it wrong.

Posqim, especially, need to have a correct judgement of the
credibility of our sages.  Any poseq who is not willing to be `oqer a
din in the Shulxan `Arukh is no poseq (you may attribute this quote to
me).  But ordinary Jews also need to know this.  It is always
dangerous to believe things that are untrue.


                Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
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