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One of the blogs i follow posted about the following question. i firgured i’d ask it here to see a variety of opinion.
Are the scientific parts of the gemara (ignoring the controversy of their accuracy) or any other sefer still considered Talmud Torah? In regard to chiyuv talmud torah, or whether its assur to take sefer of the Rambam on medicine into the bathroom etc… things like that.
any ideas?
Yes it is(see Sefer Nefesh Hachaim Shar daled).
Shar 4 doesn’t address teh second question, which I believe is muttar.
are you doubting if a part of gemara is torah!!??!!
If it is in the Gemarah, it is Talmud Torah.
If it is in the Gemarah, it is Talmud Torah.
That’s what I told my 6th grade rebbe when he caught me with a Batman comic inside my Bava Metziah. He didn’t buy it.
yahud: shaar blatt?
I am inclined to paraphrase Saul Lieberman here.
My humble opinion is that what you call science is not so. In many things Chazal did not know the truth, yet the Torah was intended to be codified and fashioned into a practical Torah, halkacha lemeisa, which is impossible unless one takes a stand about the scientific truth of what is happening. Hence we have treifos that live just fine, and others, that die, yet are not considered treifos. This ought not to be considered an error; it is the effect of Hashem telling fallible humans to codify the Torah. Such is Hashem’s will. (Chazon Ish. He elaborates that there was even a certain period to do this codifying; the two thousand years of Torah, he calls them)
So I would say that there is no science in the gemara; it is instead “halachik science”, an auxiliary to Torah.
The Rambam on health, however, is not Torah.
yitayningwut: Please do.
Itche – Lol, do you know which quote I am referring to?
Yankel: We don’t hold like that Chazon Ish on “2000 years of Torah”. We hold using a microwave on Shabbos is Bishul D’Oraisa.
Sam2 – Who’s “we”?
Sam2: That’s because the criterion for bishul was formulated as anything that is standard bishul, derech bishul (although many achronim still feel that only fire is truly derech bishul, and microwaves are not d’oraisa…)
However about other things like bugs in fruits and treifos and killing lice on shabbos, chazal used contemporary knowledge and that is what is binding even today.
gubbish: if ravina/rav ashi decided to include something in the gemara, it is kadosh. period.
yitayningwut: Possibly.
longarekel: Define kadosh.
Itche – The one about mysticism.
Shu”t Tzafnas Paneach Chelek 1 S 14: “The remedies mentioned in the Gemara (though nowadays not applicable) are a part of the Torah Shebal peh.”
As opposed to his medical books (you could read them in the bathroom), the specific instructions in Hilchos Deios Ch. 4 come from the Gemara (migdal oz, malbim, hagahos bnei binyomin, tzaf”p).
(But thats besides the point because even if not it still is bigeder Torah that you can’t read in the bathroom. See Lechem Mishna Hilchos Talmud Torah 4:1 and the end of the Rambam’s hakdomo.)
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