The Stroller and the Troller

Here is my chat in the myspace PHILOSOPHY/RELIGION forum


Rebecca: I enjoy this chatroom, but the groups feature is very cumbersome, no way to track conversations you're following in high volume groups.


Sitaram: I have taken quite an interest over the years in writers such as Maimonides "Guide for the perplexed". Maimonides died 20 years before Thomas Aquinas was born. There are people who see Aquinas "Summa" as an attempt to do for Christianity what Maimonides did for Judaism

Rebecca: What I found most interesting is that *every* generation has had those who desire to understand and express their faiths more fully, but do not have the education to do so.

Sitaram: Maimonides, in his introduction, addresses "that one person who desires to know/understand".... Maimonides did not write to convince everyone

Rebecca: It is one place that I feel Judaism can do better, at least in the non-Orthodox movements, is opportunities for adult education. There's too much emphasis on 'waiting for enough people' to do a class or lecture, and the "one person" tends to get frustrated and give up in the meantime.

Sitaram: perhaps the Internet can make possible virtual classrooms

Rebecca: perhaps, and there are a lot of opportunities online, but it isn't the same
experience. I don't know if you have ever attended a Jewish lecture/study session, but it is a very different environment from traditional classes

Sitaram: yes, on line is not the same as in person


Sitaram: Rebecca, I read your blog, about the pain involved in artistic creation

I think it is Kierkegaard who likens the artist to the bronze bull, created by
Phaleres, mentioned by Dante... A king had the engineer, Phalares, construct the bronze bull as an oven with intricate pipes....
The groans of the victims were transmuted by the pipes into a haunting music but, the king cast the engineer, Phalares, into the bronze bull....
Anyway, Kierkegaard says that the artist is like that bronze bull....
transforming the inner suffering into something beautiful

Rebecca: please don't take this badly, but something I've been musing on lately is the human desire to validate their own thoughts and ideas by finding others who have thought the same. It seems that many don't like to share original thoughts (whether or not someone else has had the same original thought)

Sitaram: But, consider Newton who said "If I have seen farther than others, it is
because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants"/ What you describe is a problem of ego. Stop and think how impoverished our own ideas would be, if we did not have the foundation of a good education...

Rebecca: Oh I agree, wholeheartedly, but there is a difference between having an idea. . . let me give an example. As you may know, in Jewish tradition a portion of the Torah is read every week, so that the entire Torah is read in the course of a year.


We are very lucky in that we have thousands of years of commentary and insight on the Torah, from everyone from sages and Rabbonim, to the guy at the butcher shop. However, there is such a focus on studying *others* ideas, that you rarely hear people share ideas they have from the reading.

Sitaram: Consider what rabbi Kook, first Ashkanazie rabbi of Jerusalem, around
1920's, said regarding chapter 3 of Malachi in the TANAK
which reads "Those who fear Hashem converse, and it is written in a book."

Rebecca: If a discussion of alternate interpretations is found, it is usually one
luminaries opinion rather than another. Perhaps I'm just too opinionated. I have no problem saying that the idea that the. .

Sitaram: rabbi Kook comments, "We may converse with someone distant from us in history, by reading what they have written, and asking a question"
So Kook finds the entire Talmudic dialectical process in that one verse


As a young student, we begin as a slave, surrender our will, and do our
assignments,... but some of us become MASTERS of the subject
Mastery involves initial servitude.... but,.... we study what others have said,
but then make it our OWN...

Rebecca: My point is that one does not have to be a master of a subject to have valid insights. Study is important, even critical.

Sitaram: It might happen that, as you (the stroller) walk along the shore, a fish may jump out of the water and land at your feet... and so, you have caught a fish
But, who will catch more fish...
you on your casual walk...
or the person (the troller) who equips a boat, and spends every day and night on the
water?

Rebecca: Absolutely, but do you pass the fish by just because it wasn't caught by
unconventional methods?