HaGaon HaRav Gershon Edelstein Shlita in a recent drasha told talmidim at Ponevezh that there is no room in the beis medrash for today’s newfound curiosity regarding worldly events and one’s curiosity must be focused entirely on matters of torah, nothing else.
The rosh yeshiva spoke of the enormous amount of time being wasted by those who feel they must keep up to date on news and events, mentioning he is aware of talmidim who have set aside a kavua time daily to discuss “דברים בטלים”.
The rosh yeshiva of course mentioned today’s cellular telephones, the smart phones, demanding they are to be removed from the beis medrash and the yeshiva complex. Rav Edelstein explained that “even the kosher phones” are an intrusion since they permit speaking at all times and this interrupts the seder limudim and therefore, the phones represent a yetzer hora of בטלה, wasting time, and therefore, one may not bring them into the yeshiva.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
The Beis Medrash has never been the place for such worldlyness, and it always has been a place where people worry about the real world. No hiddush here.
Like anything has changed since 1912
I understand the need to have less discussion about worldly events, but there should be an opportunity for the talmidim to know what is going on outside the Teiva. Perhaps if the Yeshiva knew how to analyze world events with a Torah outlook and transmitted this analysis and its method to the Talmidim, it would enable them to look at world events differently. I wonder though if the reason they do not is because they do not want to, or cannot.