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noonehomer comments on Open thread, 21-27 April 2014 - Less Wrong
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In case anyone else is curious, it appears that:
"apikorsus" has a range of meanings including "heretic", "damned person", "unbeliever"; the term may or may not be derived from the name of Epicurus.
[EDITED to add: As pointed out by kind respondents below, I was sloppy and mixed up "apikores" (which has the meanings above) and "apikorsus" (which means something more like "the sort of thing an apikores says"). My apologies.]
"l'havin ul'horos" means "to understand and to teach", as opposed to "to agree" or "to practice" or whatever. In the Bible, when the Israelites invade Canaan they are told not to learn to do as the natives do, and there's some famous commentary that says "but you are allowed to learn in order to understand and to teach".
[EDITED to add: I am not myself Jewish, nor do I know more than a handful of Hebrew words; if I have got the above wrong then I will be glad to learn.]
The hardest part of reading things l'havin ul'horos is that I can't recommend them to anyone else because it's assur for non-learned people to read them (possibly even non-Jews, in this case). And yes, iarwain1 is correct that apikorsus is a thing and an apikores is a person. But thank you for translating.
Can you recommend such things to other people considered learned? (And: is there an important distinction between "assur" and "forbidden"? A little googling suggests that "assur" is less emphatic somehow; is that right?)
Yup, inexcusably sloppy of me. Thanks.
Almost certainly I can. But right now I'm in high school, so I don't know that many people who qualify.
Um... assur means you can't do it. It's not less severe than "forbidden", I don't think. It literally means "bound". It's important to note that it doesn't mean something's morally wrong, but in this case, independent of the prohibition (non-literal translation of the noun form, issur) the act of reading foreign philosophy without knowledge of the corresponding arguments in one's own can cause stupid questions, not smart ones, and is considered to be wrong, not just forbidden (in my father's circles, anyhow).
I commend you for your self-control in not telling other people about these issues. I'd also add that for many people who aren't the intellectual type, you'd be doing them a major disservice by exposing them to arguments that can easily cause them massive psychological stress issues. As I know from personal experience with people who that happened to.
It might be worth thinking about switching to a different high school where there are more intellectual-type people around. Also, if you go to Yeshiva University for college you'll find plenty of smart people, both staff and students, who are quite educated in foreign philosophies.