פרשת בחקתי
In this week’s parsha we are promised blessing if we keep the Torah, and threatened with frightening consequences if we don’t. There’s a famous Rashi that explains that the opening verse of the parsha, “If you will walk in my laws,” refers to toil in Torah. Seemingly, according to Rashi, toil in Torah is one of the great pillars of Jewish life. It’s one of the main things that give us the merit to receive G-d’s blessings. However, later in the parsha, Rashi adds that if the Jewish people do not toil in Torah, it can lead to the nation’s destruction. It seems a little extreme. Why is toil so critical in G-d’s relationship with us? One can understand the absolute necessity and importance of learning Torah, but to toil? What’s so important about that?
Rav Yerucham Levovitz, the illustrious Mashgiach of Mir, says that without toil, learning isn’t learning. To actually acquire Torah requires a tremendous investment of one’s self. The Yalkut Shimoni in Parshas Yisro says that the only person capable of holding on to the Torah he learns is a person who exerts himself as much as necessary. The gemara in Gittin 57 even says that the only way one is able to embody his Torah learning is if he kills himself over it. The Torah is so deep and spiritual that one can’t merely learn its contents as if it were a simple body of information. Unlike any other field, one must exert himself to break through to the essence of the matter, and discovering the beauty of the Torah is never as easy as one thinks.
The gemara in Megilla 15 says that only if one exerts himself will he “find” the Torah. The Mashgiach asserts that it’s obvious that without exertion one can’t get the Torah! However, the gemara’s reference to learning as “a find” shows us that there actually is no relationship between “working” and “getting.” Just as finding a lost object has no relationship to any specific action done beforehand, so too, toil in Torah does not naturally produce an acquisition of Torah. In truth, Torah is a gift from G-d and we need Hashem to reveal the Torah’s truth to us. Being mere human beings, we cannot grasp the Torah’s brilliance, but certainly Hashem won’t help us out if we don’t exert ourselves. For this reason toil is essential. So if we don’t toil in our learning we won’t get the point. Therefore one who learns without toil is not really learning at all.
However, even though toil is the means to the goal of acquiring Torah, Hazal teach us that toil means much more than that. The Sifri on this pasook says Hashem actually has a “taava” to see us toiling in Torah. Rav Yisrael Salanter emphasizes (Or Yisrael 8) that unlike other activities in which we participate to achieve a result, the result that Hashem desires in our Torah learning is the learning itself! In other words, Hashem loves to see Jews who are learning more than Jews who are learned! Somebody who is very clever and can get the point quickly is no greater than someone who works very hard to understand even the simplest point due to his limited comprehension. In fact, Hashem loves the one who has to work hard to understand even more because he has to exert himself so much. So even though he might know far less and be deemed inferior to one who is clever and may even know the whole Shas, in Hashem’s eyes he is superior. He is learning the Torah the way it should be learned, and through this he brings great joy to his Creator.
The gemara in Brachos 5 recounts the story of Rav Yochanan visiting Rav Elazar, who was deathly ill. Rav Yochanan saw that Rav Elazar was crying. “Why are you crying?” asked Rav Yochanan, “Is it because you didn’t learn a lot? (That doesn’t matter) because the Mishnah says that one who does a lot and one who does a little are equal, as long as they are acting l’shem shamayim!” Rav Yochanan’s comforting of Rav Elazar is amusing. Did he really think Rav Elazar was crying because he didn’t spend enough time learning? Rav Elazar was an Amora, for goodness sake! The Or Zarua in Hilchos Krias Shma explains that Rav Yochanan meant to comfort Rav Elazar by telling him, “It’s okay if you don’t remember everything you learned, and much of the time you spent exerting yourself didn’t result in your retaining Torah knowledge. You should know that the only thing that matters is that you put in all you have for Hashem.” Again we see that it is the toil, not the result, that Hashem really cares about.
Rav Baruch Ber, also known as the Bircas Shmuel, was once learning in a chabura. The group posed a difficult question on the gemara, which was discovered to be the same question asked by Rebbi Akiva Eiger. Immediately, with his superhuman intellectual abilities, Rav Baruch proposed an ingenious solution. Then he paused and said, “No, I can’t remove a difficulty of Rebbi Akiva Eiger’s this casually.” Rav Baruch walked around the beis midrash, pondering a solution, for another 3 hours. When he came back to the group, he proposed his initial solution. The others asked him if they had understood him correctly. It sounded like he had said the exact same answer 3 hours previously. “The first solution wasn’t real Torah,” answered the Bircas Shmuel, “After 3 hours of work I can finally say that this is Torah.”
So why does Hashem love our toil so much? The Nefesh HaChaim Gate 4 chapter 6 says that when one learns Torah, he is clinging to Hashem in the truest sense. A way to understand this is to understand that one’s will and one’s self are one and the same. A person’s beliefs, values, and aspirations make him who he is. So too when Hashem gives us His Torah, which reveals to us every single thought He has on the entirety of creation, Hashem is actually revealing a deep part of who He is, so to speak. As the Zohar says, “G-d and Torah are one.” So the more one delves into the Torah and works to learn Hashem’s will, the stronger he clings to Hashem Himself. This is what Hashem loves so much. Through our toil, we are getting closer and closer to Him.
To conclude, it’s extremely important for a person to know that every second he learns is incredibly dear to Hashem. Often people get discouraged, thinking that they are not succeeding in their learning. The frailty of the human mind and the fact that we forget things so easily can constantly make a person wonder if the Torah is really for him. However, the Torah itself encourages us and tells us that our efforts are not pointless at all. Every moment we push ourselves to learn, we are already succeeding! This is all that G-d wants of us! There’s a story of a talmid who once asked Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz how a person can reach such a level that he really knows the Shas. “Who said we’re supposed to know the Shas?” asked Rav Chaim, “We’re supposed to make ourselves sick over learning it.”
May we all be zoche to toil in Torah all the days of our lives!!!