Reply To: Why Would a Girl Even Want to Learn Talmud?

burnt steak – really like the guitar! As per everything else you said, read the entire thread…

Ben-Levi – grrrr….the viewpoint you are bringing up is one of those things that could have ended up being the reason I would decide not to suscribe to Judaism anymore – but I’m not one to make rash decisions, lest I throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Yes, there are some particular places in the gemara where we are told: “kack m’kublani m’bais avi”, meaning, there is a direct mesorah from har sinai regarding a particular fact – like the duration of a lunar month.

But NOT everything is a direct mesorah from har sinai. For every scientific fact you bring that chazal knew, I can probably bring you 10 or 20 intances where their scientific knowledge was off. Although you wouldn’t know that unless you studied science.

So now you want me to stop being frum, because chazal didn’t know every scietific fact? Is my emunah supposed to hinge on chazal’s super-human knowledge?

If they knew about electricity, why did they keep it a secret? And if they had knowledge of genetics, why did they not apply it and thereby save numerous lives?

This is a bit of a digression from what i originally intended, but you can let Rabbi Rietti know that people’s emunah should absolutely NOT be based on the fact that chazal had all-encompassing knowledge of science.

Not that this in any way mitigates chazal. They may have been more advanced than the world at large, but they did not have the scietific knowledge we have today. Period.