She took the words right out of my mouth....

Renegade Rebbetzin: You say tomato....:

"I'm still sick, seething, and miserable. Not just about Kolko, but about the whole stack of - of - stuff. I can't stand it anymore. I can't stand stupidity and idiocy, I can't stand evil and depravity, and above all, I absolutely cannot, cannot tolerate people who think a person's immense Torah knowledge makes them an expert on everything else.

If you think a person who has studied and taught Torah their entire life, and has does so on a level that elevates their neshamah and the neshamot of those around them to a point that is palpable in its sheer kedusha; if you think such a person MUST THEREFORE BE an expert in education, psychology, and interpersonal relations, well, then, you're an idiot and a blind fool, and Hashem have mercy on the people you infect with this warped delusion. I have seen people's lives destroyed because of this fantasy, and plenty of people who have ended up abandoning Judaism because of it as well.

A person who is a gadol b'Torah MIGHT also be talented in other spheres, and he or she ALSO MIGHT NOT BE. I don't understand why this notion is met with such outraged hostility on the parts of so many otherwise intelligent and educated individuals.

Sing it sister. I agree with you 110 percent, Even if you would (correctly) defer to the gadol b'Torah's knowledge and experience on questions of Halacha and hashkofa, why would you also defer to him on question of, say math, or history, or education? Excellence at everything, doesn't nec. follow from excellence at Torah.

PS: Incidently, the silliest statement about science I ever heard in my whole life came from the great teacher of Talmud I mentioned this morning. We were discussing evolution, and as he attempted to discredit the theory, it became clear that he thought the long discredited ideas of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck still had currency. "It doesn't make sense," he said, "that a giraffe's offspring would inherit his long neck, just because the very first giraffe stretched his neck a little bit. I have big forearms [they were like Popeyes] from weight-lifting, but none of my kids do."

Also, he flirted with the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe, and cruelly mocked the "atheist scientists" at NASA who said different. Still, we all thought he was a great teacher of Talmud, and so long as he stayed silent on the subject of science, there was nothing even slightly upseting about him.