Droshos - Torah is Our Very Life

I hope these words aren’t Bittul Torah (a waste of Torah study) to youbut instead as a way to strengthen our learning.

The Nefesh HaChaim says that Hashem is constantly looking into the Torah and creating the world from it, and if there would be one second without learning, the would not exist. The Nefesh HaChaim also says that Torah is the person himself! The Torah is part of the design of a person.

It is thus not possible to live without Torah, because Torah is a part of the human design.

People that don’t learn Torah are alive, of course, but only physically. Without learning Torah, their existence resembles that of a chair or table, which has no life to it.

There are people who are living, but they aren’t alive! There is also such a thing as a Talmid Chochom (Torah scholar) who doesn’t have any daas (mature thinking), and Chazal say that he is worse than a dead animal. This is because it is not enough for a person to just learn the Torah and even know it very well; it has to feel like a life-giving energy to him.

Why do we learn Torah? It is not simply because we have a mitzvah to constantly learn Torah. It is true that we have a mitzvah to learn, and that this is mitzvah is greater than all the mitzvos, but that is still not the inner reason. The inner reason why we need to learn Torah is because we really have nothing else in our life other than Torah.

Although it looks to us like there are other things than Torah, it’s only the imagination.

What is the meaning of a Gadol (a Torah leader)? Does it mean that he learns Torah all day? This cannot be the meaning of a Gadol, because we can find people who learn all day, yet their minds are still very small and undeveloped. Learning a lot of Torah all the time doesn’t mean that a person is a Gadol. A Gadol is rather someone who realizes what the reality is – he realizes that there is nothing else that can be considered true reality other than the Torah.

Once a person said to a certain Talmid Chochom, “I get up in the morning to learn because I have nothing else to do other than learn Torah”. The Talmid Chochom told him sharply, “You learn because you have nothing else to do?! That is the only reason you learn? You shouldn’t be learning because you have “nothing else to do.”

This is not “chizuk” (inspiration). It is rather a description of reality! If a person is sitting on a chair or breathing, is it chizuk? No, it’s a lot more that; it’s reality. So why do the words of Torah need chizuk (and the Sages indeed say that words of Torah need chizuk)? It is only because people don’t realize that Torah is reality. If a person would realize that Torah is reality, he wouldn’t need to hear any chizuk when it comes to how he must learn Torah. If a person knows that Torah learning is all there is to reality, he won’t need chizuk.

If a person learns Torah all day, Baruch Hashem, he is away from the bad influence of the world. But it’s not enough.  A person has to forge a deep connection with the Torah – to make a bris (a covenant) with the Torah.

One day, you might have to leave this Beis Midrash when your children get older. What will be then? Do you have the slightest thought of leaving the world of Torah, even if you have to go out to work and make a living? If you do, then you don’t know that Torah is your very life. It doesn’t matter that you are worried about parnassah (livelihood). Just because you are worried about what will be with parnassah does not mean that you should one day leave the world of Torah you currently find yourself in.

There were great tzaddikim in the times of the Gemara who were able to leave the Beis Midrash and go make a parnassah, but that was because they didn’t lose their Yiras Shomayim (fear of Heaven) in the process. But for someone today who leaves the beis midrash and goes out to work, who knows what will be his end? It’s endangering his very Yiddishkeit (religious Judaism).

If we forge a deep connection to the Torah, we will have a life. But if we have even the slightest thought to leave the beis midrash for even one day, then that means that even today we aren’t really learning! If we know, for sure, that only Torah is life to us – that there is no other option – then we have a life.

It is written in Eichah, “Merciful women cooked their children.” How could such a thing be? A mother ate her own children?!

The answer to this is that when a person slowly becomes further from the Torah here and there, he loses so much of his spiritual sensitivity. The women who killed their own children in the era before the destruction of Jerusalem could only come to such barbaric behavior because they were so distanced from the way of Torah. It began as a slow descent from the Torah, then more and more, until they were totally callous to any spirituality.

If a person makes sure he is connected, in an inner place in his soul, to the Torah – if he makes sure to always protect his connection to Torah – then he understands that Torah is his life, and he knows what life is all about.

This is what one of the Sages said, “I will not live except in a place of Torah.” Why did he have to live in a specific place to learn Torah – aren’t there many places that one can learn Torah? It is because he wanted to protect his connection to the Torah, and therefore, and that is what he meant by saying that he could only live in a place of Torah.

Hashem gave life to all of us, and eventually, our life will end at some point. All of us have the power of free will. We all have difficulties, and not all of us feel it easy to “stay in learning” forever. But you should know that the alternative is much worse. It is much worse to leave the world of learning and go to work.

Do you think those who left learning to go to work have it better? They don’t. Do you think it will be easier when you go to work for ten hours a day? It’s easier to work on one’s Bitachon (trust in Hashem) than to work so hard!

We must make a bris – inwardly, deep within our soul -- with the Torah, and decide that we will never leave learning, forever! There is no other alternative we have!

In Gan Eden, what else goes on besides learning Torah? One who understands this is living in Gan Eden already on this world. One who doesn’t is living in Gehinnom on this world.

There is nothing else we have on this world other than learning Torah. If a person thinks that there is something important other than learning, it’s in all his imagination.

It is only when a person thinks that there is something else other than Torah that he starts to have nisyonos (difficulties) and, then he feels like he has go out to work. He has many valid excuses: “My father-in-law wants me to go to work…my family needs more support…my father wants me to go to work…” and all kinds of other excuses. But when a person truly realizes that his life is Torah, nothing will stop him, not even his father. He will look at is as if his father is telling him to commit suicide. He will find in Shulchan Aruch that if his father tells him not to learn Torah, he doesn’t have to listen to him.

Of course, he should try to do this in a peaceful way, but one thing is for sure: when a person really understands that Torah is his life, nothing will get in his way.

Baruch Hashem, we are all zoche to sit and learn. But do we realize that Torah is our very life? Are we prepared, now, to want to continue learning forever – from day until night?

There is a story about a certain important family in Europe who had many prominent sons who all learned in the finest yeshivos; one of the children wasn’t like his other brothers, and he wasn’t interested in yeshivah. One day his mother took him next to the river and said to him, “If you don’t learn Torah, I will throw you into the river.” His mother’s words made such an impact on him that he decided from then on to dedicate himself to the Torah.

Did a person come to this world only to cut himself off from life, and then on top of that, to have to endure punishment for all his sins? If a person leaves the world of Torah learning, he will have to endure a lot of suffering, because he will end up with a lot of sins. First he cut himself off from real life, which is Torah, and then he ended up leading a life of sin, as a resulting of leaving learning and going out to work.  

Chazal say that a person who is not considered “free” unless he studies Torah. Why? It is because he understands that there is no other kind of life other than learning Torah. If a person understands that, he is truly free.

During Yamim Noraim, there are kinds of resolutions that people make. But we must know that first we need to have a basis to all these resolutions. If we have a basis, we can build upon it. The basis we need to have is this: We must firmly decide that we never plan on leaving this beis midrash to go to work - not even once.

If we build our inner look on reality, and we realize that we have nothing else other than learning Torah, we will be strong inside, and then we can start to really serve Hashem in other areas. But if we have any doubts about this – if we think maybe there’s something out there in the world that we need to have, and that maybe one day go we should go to work, then we have no firm basis in our life to build anything upon, and then we will not be able to serve Hashem in other areas that we wish we could improve in.

If we go like this into Rosh HaShanah – knowing in the depth of our soul that we will never leave learning the Torah -- we can avoid many decrees of this year.

I hope that you understand that these words here are not Bittul Torah, but rather as a way to strengthen your Torah learning. These are not meant to be mere words of inspiration. If these words here are “inspiration” to you, then it’s a waste of time; inspiration goes away after some time. The Chazon Ish said that the best mussar sefer is one’s Gemara. Some argued on this, and of course each person is different when it comes to this. But the point is that inspiration alone cannot build us.

We need to realize that this is the true freedom a person can have – to realize that we have nothing in our life except learning Torah.

What are we judged on Rosh HaShanah? We are mainly judged for how connected we are to the Torah. If we aren’t, what is the point of living….?

Decide to yourself that you will never leave this Beis Midrash, not for anything – no matter what difficulty will come your way. If you do this, you will feel truly free.