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'His house — it does not stand; he grasps it — it does not hold.' What does this world offer but falsehood, injustice, and perjury throughout a lifetime?
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As it says: 'Their span is toil and trouble' (Ps. 90:10).
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How many mighty ones has it crushed and shattered — as it says: 'The stouthearted were stripped of their spoil; they slept their sleep' (Ps. 76:6).
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How many powerful ones has it humiliated and degraded — as it says: 'To desecrate the pride of all glory, to dishonor all the honored of the earth' (Isa. 23:9).
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How many hoped for its good and it gave them evil instead; who opened his eye to see its light and it grew dark before his face.
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As it says: 'When I hoped for good, evil came; when I waited for light, darkness came' (Job 30:26).
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It cast its heat upon a person and set its intensity against his weakness — as it says: 'Your wrath has weighed upon me' (Ps. 88:8).
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And what of sins and transgressions — what of accounting and punishment? What of the alienation between him and his Creator, until He becomes to him like a predator in anger?
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As it says: 'He hunts me like a lion and again works wonders against me' (Job 10:16), and also: 'Behold the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger' (Isa. 13:9).
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So they said: one must reject this world — no wise person should build in it, nor plant, nor marry, nor beget offspring.
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Nor should he dwell among those who chose these pursuits, lest they contaminate him and he be infected by their character — but instead let him separate himself in the mountains.
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Eating whatever vegetation he finds until he dies in lamentation and grief.
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I reflected on what they said and found most of it correct. But they went too far in abandoning civilized life.
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For they abandoned what is truly indispensable: food, covering, and shelter — indeed they neglected even their own well-being.
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For their abandonment of marriage cuts off procreation. If this were correct, all people should practice it; but if all people did, the rational species would cease — and with its cessation
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— wisdom, Torah, resurrection, heaven, and earth would all cease.
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And what of the mortal risks one faces from wild animals, beasts, serpents, heat, cold, and catastrophes?
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And what of nature's disruption, mental roughness, obsessive thoughts, and delirium — caused by lack of fine food and cool water, corruption of the blood, and the stirring of melancholy?
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Until they must turn to the physicians of civilized society for treatment — which sometimes helps them and sometimes does not.
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They may grow so wild that they fear people will kill them, and come to hate them — seeing them as wicked rebels — to the point of considering it permissible to shed their blood.
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And they come to adopt the character of beasts, departing from humanity — as it says: 'The daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness' (Lam. 4:3).
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And it says: 'They brayed in the ravines, they dwelt in the holes of the earth and in the rocks; among the shrubs they howled; under the nettles they huddled' (Job 30:6–7).
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So they have utterly destroyed themselves.
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The trait of worldly renunciation is beautiful in a person only when used in its proper place.
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That is: when forbidden food, forbidden intercourse, or forbidden wealth presents itself to him — then let him deploy this trait so that it restrains him from those things.
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As it says: 'For what does a person gain from all his toil and the striving of his heart with which he toils under the sun?' (Eccl. 2:22).
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Section V. Chapter Two: On Eating and Drinking.
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Certain people held that a person must fully embrace eating and drinking. They said: nourishment is the sustainer of bodies and souls; and beyond that it affords extraordinary pleasure, and is the cause of bodily growth, nurture, and the continuance of offspring.
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We see this directly: a person who fasts one day — his hearing weakens, his sight weakens, his thinking, memory, and mind all weaken; but when he eats, they return.