48 Ways - 009 Happiness of Learning Torah

The Happiness Of Learning

One of the 48 qualities of the Torah is “simchah” – happiness.

It is clear that Chazal were referring to happiness over the Torah and not any other happiness. What is the happiness we must have in the Torah?

We celebrate our joy over the Torah in the festival of Simchas Torah, in which we are happy over completing the Torah. But this is not what the quality of simchah which Chazal are referring to; Chazal were speaking about a quality we need to get to the Torah. This is a happiness in every detail and aspect in learning Torah, even before we have gotten to its completion.

What is this happiness?

“There Is No Happiness Like The Clarification Of Doubts”

The Rema (in sefer Toras HaOlah) writes that “There is no happiness like the clarification of doubts.” Why indeed is this the greatest happiness that exists? Why is getting rid of our doubts considered the epitome of happiness?

There is happiness between a husband and wife, as well as a mitzvah of simchas Yom Tov; is this not as great as when a person clarifies a doubt? What is so joyous about getting rid of one’s doubts?

When it comes to shidduchim (finding a spouse), we can understand why this is such a great simchah, because it is a very happy feeling to finally find your life partner. Here we can understand why being clear of a doubt brings a person happiness; it feels like a relief. But in the regular case, why is getting rid of one’s doubts considered the greatest happiness? By simchas Yom Tov, is there a clarification of doubt?!

It is written, “The laws of Hashem gladden the heart.” The Torah only gladdens a person’s heart when he is in doubt about something as he is learning, and when he finally gains clarity, the learning is very enjoyable to him. But if someone doesn’t think enough into what he is learning about, his questions don’t bother him so much, so he doesn’t experience this great happiness of getting rid of his doubts.

This great happiness is only possible for one who thinks and reflects and encounters difficulties in his learning.

We can see many people who learn Torah, yet they don’t look happy. Why don’t they look happy? Doesn’t the Torah gladden a person’s heart? The answer to this is because they aren’t thinking enough as they learn, so they don’t experience the happiness of a doubt that goes away. Therefore, they never get to the happiness in learning the Torah.

Many times a person learning Torah for a long time feels that he isn’t succeeding at learning. He thinks he is one of the people whom Chazal say “do not see blessing in their learning.” Really the reason why a person doesn’t see success in his learning is because he isn’t deeply connected to learning, thus he is not learning Torah in the right way.

He knows of Torah, but his heart isn’t in it. The Torah isn’t a life giving connection to him; it’s just knowledge to him.  When the Torah is just “knowledge” to a person, and he isn’t connected to it with his heart, he is apt to disconnect from the Torah.

But when a person is connected to the Torah with his heart – besides for with his mind – he won’t be able to pull away from it, ever.

The Heart Sees The Wisdom of The Torah

It is written, “My heart has seen much wisdom.” The wisest person of all, Shlomo HaMelech, states that it is only his “heart” which was able to connect to the wisdom he saw. Our brain can know a lot and it can perceive a lot of information, processing it intellectually, but it is only our heart which really understands the wisdom we come across in life and connects us to the facts we know.

It is the heart within us which “sees” wisdom. What is the different between when our eyes sees something, to when our heart sees something?

To illustrate the difference, the Gemara says that “anyone who did not see the building of Hordes never saw beauty his whole life.” When someone reads this Gemara, does he really see this beauty? He can imagine it, but he will never see it. But someone who saw it saw such beauty that when the Temple was destroyed, it bothered him, because he really knew how beautiful it was.

At the giving of the Torah, there was a great happiness.  Chazal say that “The words of Torah should be to you as happy as they were at Har Sinai.” What was this happiness? At Har Sinai, they were able to “see” the voice of Hashem. ‘Seeing’ the voice is not the same as ‘hearing’ a voice. Hearing a voice is a mental ability, whereas seeing a voice means to connect to it, with our heart.

The Balance Between Responsibility And Happiness

We were forced to accept the Torah, yet we also said “We will do” and “We will hear”. Tosafos[1] asks: Why did Hashem have to force us to accept the Torah, if we said that we will do and we will hear?

There are many answers to this, but along the lines of our discussion, it is because we need two kinds of connection to the Torah. We need a responsibility toward the Torah – to accept the yoke of Torah. For this reason we were forced to accept the Torah. But we also need happiness in the Torah, and that is why we had to accept in our own; to show this.

Without responsibility, our happiness would be frivolity. But without happiness, it would be impossible to survive. Without happiness, it is impossible to learn Torah. This is not just another detail in our learning; it is not another nice quality to have. Without happiness in learning, a person won’t be able to learn.

A Life Without A Heart

In order to reach this happiness, we need to live the right kind of life.

When a person is brain-dead, G-d forbid, he can still be considered alive, according to the Torah. But when a person’s heart ceases to function, it’s all over. The Torah defines the cessation of the heart as death. That is true with the physical, but this idea also has similar ramifications in the spiritual realm. In our own life, if a person lives without a “heart connection” to the Torah and to his ruchniyus (spirituality), his life is not considered to be a real “life”.

To further illustrate, the feelings of love and happiness are in our heart; we must have those feelings, and without them, it’s a deathlike kind of existence.

What Chinuch Looks Like Without The Heart

Since the first day a person enters yeshiva – all through the way through high school and beis midrash, and then to kolel – a person is taught more and more knowledge by his teachers. He is taught more and more – all the many shittos (opinions) of Rishonim and Acharonim that exist; his mind matures with the more knowledge he receives. But what about his [spiritual] heart? Does his heart mature as well….?

The mind of a person matures as he gets older, but the heart often remains the same since a person was a child! When a child is taught all the knowledge about the Torah, his heart often remains immature. Very often, in order to get a child to learn, he is offered more and more physical gratification in order to get him to want to learn. His heart is being more and more attached to materialism, and he is expected to grow in his mind through this way….

In fact, often this is the intention of the teachers in the yeshiva: that he should just focus on developing his mind, not his heart. The heart is sacrificed so that the mind can grow!

What results from this? A person gets older and he gets to ‘know’ more and more Torah, but his heart is still the same immature as when he was a child, and many times it can be even more immature than when he was a child.

The person at some point will feel a contradiction in his life, and deep down he will start thinking: “Everyone tells me that the main thing in life is Torah and mitzvos.  I know this, and that is what I was always taught. But my heart feels differently. I know that the main thing is learning Torah and doing mitzvos. I know it very well. But I don’t feel this way!”

And he is not to blame. He was taught by a system of education in which they were well aware that his heart would be sacrificed in favor of developing his intellectual abilities. He was taught to just focus on his learning, and that the heart isn’t important….

A person in this way grows up feeling a contradiction in himself; at a certain point, he will feel the gnawing contradiction between his mind and his heart. He knows in his mind what’s important, but his heart feels differently. He knows a lot of Gemara with Rishonim and Acharonim and all the various opinions out there, but meanwhile, his heart continues to want many desires of This World. He doesn’t actually feel in his actual life the ruchniyus that he knows from what he has learned about in yeshivah.

Simple Feelings of the Heart

We are not implying, of course, that a person has to cut himself off totally from physical desires and to just eat bread and water. We are not speaking of high levels. We are speaking about simple feelings that a person needs to have – to feel that the Torah is our life, to feel a vitality from Shabbos and Yom Tov when it comes.

Many people don’t even have these simple feelings, and it is because they don’t consider these matters to be what gives them life. It is all because people are raised with a contradiction between the heart and the mind.

When people lose interest in learning Torah and in doing the mitzvos when they get older, the problem is not that people don’t feel a cheishek (enthusiasm) for ruchniyus (spirituality), nor does this problem begin with the fact that a person doesn’t feel like getting up on time in the morning to daven. Those are just the results of a larger problem inside himself that was never addressed beforehand.

The root of the problem is that people still have a heart of an infant, and they were never taught about how to connect their hearts to what they learn. The heart is still immature and hasn’t grown since the person was a child.

When The Heart Is More Dominant Than The Mind

Others have the opposite problem. Their hearts are very strong, but their intellect is not. It can get to the point that a person only listens to what his heart feels, so if one day he just feels like going off the derech, he will choose to listen to his feelings, over what he knows in his mind.

We can compare this to the following scenario. Imagine a person becomes a Baal Teshuvah and he wants to start learning. He comes to the beis midrash and he is told, “Figure out the difference between what Rav Chaim Brisker is saying to what Rav Shimon Shkop is saying.” He has no idea what to do. Why not? Isn’t he a smart and intelligent person? He is, but when it comes to Torah, his mind is the same as a child’s mind.

Anyone who has learned with Baalei Teshuvah knows what this is. Many Baalei Teshuvah indeed fall back to their old ways because of this; their heart is strong, but their minds are lacking. There is a contradiction between the mind and the heart.

The first kind of contradiction we mentioned – a strong mind with a weak heart – is a problem that most people have. Only few individuals who have worked very hard on themselves don’t have this problem.

Build Your Heart’s Connection To The Torah

If we build our heart, we will have a connection to the Torah through our heart, not just through our minds, and this will truly connect us the Torah.

Of course, no one is perfect. No one has a heart that is perfectly in line with what he knows in his mind. (If someone’s heart and mind is totally equal in strength, then he is probably one of the thirty six hidden tzaddikim). Our point here is that we just need to build our heart’s connection with the Torah.

May we merit that these words should change our heart, to grow higher and higher in our ruchniyus, and to connect to the Torah with our hearts. Through that, we can arrive at the great happiness that can be felt in learning the Torah.