“If that vile wretch meets you, and if you are sound in spirit and soul, if your consciousness and character are still whole and intact, then occupy yourself with the Torah, drag him to the study house…..However, if you are spiritually sick, if a fit of madness has seized hold of you, if some psychic anomaly has put forth its diseased tendrils in your inner world, then you must use more powerful drugs, those that are designed for the very ill – the remembrance of the day of death.”
Is that really how he put it?
Because, like, wow.
Putting that aside, I really don’t understand it. Why would it be harmful to learn how to be a better person?
If his point was that learning Torah is BETTER for you, then you could make a comparison to taking penicillin when you have a cold or something like that. But what about mussar could be bad for someone?