The unique talent of the Jewish nation is our ability to communicate with and find Hashem. Our joint relationship manifests in Hashem demanding His people follow a specific way of life. Rabbi Joseph Caro called part of the Shulchan Aruch the Orach Chayim, path of life. The daily life of the Jew, in his prayer and business interactions, must be different from the non-Jewish world. Our success as a people lies in our ability to appreciate our closeness to Hashem and develop our talent to observe Torah and mitzvos. If we develop our unique skills, we set the stage for other skills to shine as well.
Torah never forbade Jews from learning from their surroundings. Betzalel presumably acquired artisan skills in Egypt that he used to build the Tabernacle. The Jews must have acquired agricultural techniques in Egypt, the most advanced technical and artistic society of the time. Jews have never been prohibited from studying math, medicine, or science from the non-Jewish world. Maimonides (Hilchos Kiddush Hachodesh) writes that truth is acceptable and should be sought after no matter where it comes from, even the secular world.
However, when it comes to kedusha, sanctity, Jews must be very vigilant and circumspect to guard against allowing the growth of klayim, grafting any secular ideas onto our Torah and sanctity. Y’nika, drawing sustenance from ground containing a confluence of ideas in proximity, is acceptable as long as they are sufficiently separated from that which we sanctify. We must maintain our distance so that we do not also imbibe the poisons that are part of that world and become klayim. There is no shortage of vulgarity, egotism or impurity in our environment. The Jew must discriminate, mavdil, to draw from the good and reject the filth and corruption from our environment.
When with the help of Hashem we are victorious in war, something in the culture of the people we conquered will entice us, a yefas toar, a beautiful woman. The Torah says that before you bring her into your house, you must distinguish between two cardinal situations. Sometimes the beautiful woman, the yafyuso shel Yefes (beauty of Yefes, son of Noah), represents some positive aspect that behooves us to emulate. However, you must also be able to discern if beneath her pretty hair and painted nails lurks great corruption and moral perversion, and reject it. Before you bring her into your house, remove her enticing exterior. You must be careful to discriminate and draw boundaries around her customs. You may benefit from her scholarship but you should be careful to quarantine and destroy her corruption and moral decadence. Remember that beneath the exterior of the beautiful captive woman lies an extremely vulgar person. Judaism never prevented us from learning positive things from the nations of the world. However the Torah demands we be vigilant and distinguish between the pure and the defiled.
Chazal say that one who accepts a beautiful woman captive will ultimately have a ben sorer u’moreh (rebellious son). King David married a beautiful captive and had a rebellious son, Absalom. Had David thought clearly, he would have seen her vulgarity and realized that a yefas toar cannot be the mother of a Jewish king. Yefes has a place in the tent of Shem. A Torah can be written in Greek as long as it is studied by those capable of distinguishing between the good and the vulgar, like Rambam and Rav Saadia Gaon. Others, who were not capable, attempted to rewrite the Torah in Greek and perverted the Torah by adopting their ways, resulting in Grafting that corrupts everything. Secular knowledge alone is good and Torah alone is good. Mixing them produces an abominable hybrid.
