Question

I saw, roughly, what you wrote regarding watching movies and the issue of an unintended act, and so on.
What about a company of scoffers in practice? Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the commandment of Torah study is as the Even HaEzel wrote in the Laws of Kings, that as long as I am occupied with something, I am exempt. And even if I saw that someone argued that when a person enjoys a storybook and the like, he is not violating neglect of Torah study, and he brought proof from that Even HaEzel—I did not understand their reasoning at all, since according to Maimonides that too is a company of scoffers—still, it does not make sense to say that one may violate the prohibition of a company of scoffers. In short, it would seem that whatever they permitted—and I also saw a bit of what you wrote regarding neglect of Torah study, namely that the neglect is in the quality of how one occupies his time—still, surely watching a movie is not something that elevates a person or perfects him. And the common claim that there is a moral message in a movie is a demagogic claim that has almost nothing to it, for the Sages and Maimonides himself, from whom they want to bring proof, listed among forbidden reading several books, such as the book of Ben Sira, even though they too contain moral messages. (I hope you will not bring proof from the fact that the Sages sometimes cite stories from this book in the Talmud.)