Torah U'Madda - Rabbi Anthony Manning

5773 - dbhbn ovrct2sxcB] TORAH U’MADDA - A DEFINITIONkt ohudc vru, ah '(j t vhscug) uag rvn vbuc,u oustn ohnfj h,sctvu s"vv 'ihnt, ohudc vnfj ah ost lk rnth ot 6.(y:c vfht) vru, iht ohudc vhrau vfkn ch,fs 'ihnt,ohudc vhrau vfkn v"s c varp vcr vfhtChazal made a distinction between ‘Chochmah’ and ‘Torah’. Chochmah exists in the non-Jewish world; Torah does not7. the ideal on which the institution [YU] was based and which it exemplified - the “synthesis” of Torah learningand Western culture that goes by the name of Torah U’Madda, or the study of sacred Jewish texts along withthe secular wisdom of the world at large.Torah U’madda, Rabbi Dr Norman Lamm, Introduction - page xi8. [Tertulian] - “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem. What agreement is there between Academy andChurch?” For this Latin Church father, the gulf between them was unbridgeable. This assertion is of one piecewith his famous statement credo quia absurdum est, that he believed because it was absurd. Suchantirationalism never found a warm and hospitable reception among classical Jewish thinkers.ibid p59. Torah U’madda denotes the synergistic interrelation of religious study and secular or profane knowledge.ibid p610. Torah, faith, religious learning on one side and Madda, science, worldly knowledge on the other, together offerus a more over-arching and truer vision than either one set alone. Each set gives one view of the Creator as wellas of His creation, and the other a different perspective that may not agree at all with the first ... Each alone istrue, but only partially true; both together present the possibility of a larger truth, more in keeping with thenature of the subject of our concern. Yet, they are given from One Shepherd (Kohelet 12:11).ibid p23611. Torah U’madda is thus an effort, not at all unprecedented in the history of normative Judaism, to expand thearea of religious interest to include all of creation, and to bring ... humanity’s cultural creativity and cognitiveachievements within the parameters of Torah.ibid p12C] TORAH U’MADDA - HISTORICAL PRECEDENTSRabbi Lamm brings three precedents in Jewish history where Torah and secular ‘chochmah’ have been put together in asystematic way. None of these reflects precisely what he has in mind for TuM but each presents a different model foranalysis