Boundary Posts

This article originated in a conversation that Rabbi Wein ztz”l held in 2023 with the editors of Kolmus, Mishpacha’s Hebrew-language Torah supplement.

Ancient Greece dazzled the world with its culture — but it was a way of life shorn of the boundaries that the Torah sets forth. With the passage of time, we clearly see how destructive wisdom becomes when not fenced in by moral constraints

Greece is not just a historical period. It is a worldview — an outlook on life that still dominates the world today.

The genius of Greece was something unique. If you compare it to the paganism that Avraham Avinu saw, or the idol worship that Moshe Rabbeinu encountered in Egypt, those were primitive and foolish cults. In contrast, Greece was home to what Chazal refer to as chochmah Yevanis, Greek wisdom, which brought literature, theater, music, and art to the world. And in a certain sense that wisdom has a place — even in the tents of Shem.

There were really two Greeces. There was the popular Greece of the masses, and the Greece of thinkers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. The masses celebrated with gods; the philosophers understood that these were myths. Plato even reached the idea of a First Cause, a prime source that moves all things.