Q&A: The Difference Between the Purity of Torah and the Other Wisdoms!
The Difference Between the Purity of Torah and the Other Wisdoms!
Question
In honor of Rabbi Michi: regarding what is brought in Maimonides in several places, that thoughts of sexual immorality dwell only in a heart empty of wisdom, and likewise regarding someone who has already become defiled, that he should cleanse himself with the waters of knowledge—does this mean specifically the wisdom of Torah, or also the other wisdoms?
Answer
I think Maimonides does not really distinguish between the different wisdoms. The first chapters of the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah—are they Torah or wisdom? (Or just irrelevant Aristotelian physics?) And what about the philosophical chapters in the Guide for the Perplexed?
In any case, even if he thinks there is a difference, it is pretty clear that he means wisdom in general and not דווקא Torah specifically. Even someone occupied with ordinary wisdom does not have an empty heart.
Discussion on Answer
And so too from the words of the Sages: "Torah study is beautiful together with a worldly occupation, for the toil of both makes one forget sin"—it implies that involvement in worldly matters alongside involvement in Torah has added value in taking a person out of a state of idle matters.
Best regards, S.Tz.
By the way, regarding duplicate submissions (repeatedly clicking the submit button when it is unclear whether it has already been sent), the editor-programmer here made a nice mechanism where a duplicate comment submission gets the message, "It seems you've already said that." It has saved me several times from spamming the comments (my own comments). Maybe the same thing could be done for questions as well. Obviously, scanning all the questions on the site every time in order to look for hash matches is slow, because there are many questions, but the phenomenon is relevant only to nearby questions, so you could check, say, only the last 5 questions. Anyone who intentionally wants to spam duplicate questions could still change a comma and only then send it again.
It seems to me that in the future it would be better to ask once and not five times (I deleted the others).