Reply To: Daas Torah in gemora

provaxx, thanks for bringing up this story. Seems to be R Salanter’s explanation. It is, of course, to assign benefit to such sincere people, as common also says, not proposing an educational system where information gets corrupted.

Papuniya seems to be a somewhat shady place – if you teach there about benefits of having Satan in the world, he comes and kisses your feet; mikva is allowed during the day because of bandits at night; Great R Aha b’ Yaakov who taught there would shecht a mazik in the abandoned yeshiva building ….

What else can we learn from this R Masna’s lecture? Maybe “know your audience”? If Papunians are not versatile in Hebrew, teach them in Aramaic? Note that it was not one naive student, but all of them.