"They Shall Take Me"
STUDENT SUMMARIES OF SICHOT OF THE ROSHEI YESHIVA
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PARASHAT TERUMA
SICHA OF HARAV
"They Shall Take Me"
Translated by
The Midrash (Shemot
Rabba 33:1) relates:
"They shall take for Me a contribution" (Shemot 25:2) this is as it is
written, "For I have given you a good portion; do not abandon My Torah" (Mishlei
4:2) [meaning,] do not abandon the merchandise that I have given you
There is a type of asset (mekach) whose owner is sold together with it.
The Holy One said to
This may be compared to a king who had an only daughter. A king from elsewhere
came and married her. He wanted to go back to his country and to take his wife
with him. The [first] king said to him: "The daughter whom I have given you is
my only one. I cannot part with her, nor can I tell you not to take her after
all, she is your wife. But do me this favor: wherever you may go, make me a
little chamber that I may live close to you, for I am unable to be separated
from my daughter."
Likewise, the Holy One says to
Torah study
strengthens the bond between man and God; this we learn from the above midrash.
In conversations with young people who have difficulty understanding the value
of technical halakhic study, such as "an ox that gored a cow," instead of
studying spiritual matters, I usually cite this midrash. In this way I tell them
that we have no rational explanation for this connection, but we remain faithful
to the words of Chazal: "The Holy One said to Israel: I have given you My
Torah; I have given Myself together with it, as it were."
Recently I have begun encountering a reaction to this that differs from the one
to which I had become accustomed. This new reaction that stems from the spirit
of hitchabrut, "identification" or "connection," that many of the youth
have adopted. The essence of this reaction can be formulated as a question, or
an expression of bewilderment: "If the Holy One really gave Himself over, as it
were, together with the Torah, then why is it that when we learn Gemara
we feel no sense of holiness, of something that is beyond mundane reality?"
Since this reaction has become prevalent, I shall attempt to elaborate on this
matter.
The reaction may be interpreted in a positive or a negative fashion. Ultimately
I tend to interpret it in a positive light, but first I wish to speak a bit
about the possibility of its negative interpretation. We detect here a note of
skepticism as to the veracity of Chazal's description. It is not that
they deny Chazal's notion, but rather they may believe that it is
irrelevant for people like us. These young people say, "All that may be true
when we speak of the Vilna Gaon's Torah study, but it is not true of our Torah
study, of the Torah study of our generation, of our friends who are just now
entering the Beit Midrash."
To my mind, this view is mistaken. I shall mention only the words of the Ba'al
Shem Tov. The Gemara (Shabbat
88a) teaches:
"And they stood at the foot of the mountain" (Shemot 19:17) Rav Avdimi
bar
The famous question is: Why was there a need to threaten them with the mountain?
After all, they had already declared, "We shall do and we shall hear!" The Ba'al
Shem Tov answers: "This teaches that even when one is not feeling personally
inspired by Torah and love of God, he is not free to desist from Torah study,
and resembles one who is forced to engage in it, against his will." The Ba'al
Shem Tov adds: "And this is a good path for a Jew for times of [spiritual]
smallness."
In other words, at times when a person feels no spiritual elevation, no
enthusiasm, no inner motivation, it is good to know that the Torah remains the
same Torah, and the Holy One is given over with it, as it were, in every manner
of acquisition.
As I mentioned, the view of these young people is mistaken, but a mistake is not
always to be judged as blameworthy. What is blameworthy is when a person thinks
that the sole measure in matters of holiness is his own subjective feeling,
i.e., whatever I do not feel does not exist. This is a very dangerous approach. It recalls the following midrash (Tanchuma,
Yitro 3):
"And Amalek came and fought against
Let me add something. I originally read the previous quote from the Ba'al Shem
Tov in a sermon on parashat Yitro by
I stated at the outset that the reaction I have been encountering recently could
also be interpreted in a positive, praiseworthy manner, and that I am inclined
in that direction. As I said, we are not speaking here of any doubt, heaven
forbid, as to the truth of Chazal's teachings; it is unquestionably
accepted that study of Torah, at all levels, strengthens the bond with the Holy
One: "The Holy One said to Israel, I have given my Torah over to you; I was
given over with it." And in the reaction "But we want to feel it, too
(in addition to knowing it intellectually)" the emphasis is on the
"too," not on the exclusivity of feeling. Subjective feeling certainly cannot be
the measure of the true reality as to our bond with the Holy One. We are
encountering in the questioning of these young people an innocent and beautiful
wish, that is worthy of appreciation. This wish expresses real pain in the
absence of that desired psychological feeling. The fact that this request comes
specifically when the emphasis is placed on identification rather than
obligation in no way disqualifies the wish itself. The demand to feel something
admittedly pertains to Gemara study, but it points to a sense of
something lacking in our Divine service.
The demand for even the slightest feeling of holiness, or at least of
religiosity, is therefore authentic. It proves that something is lacking in
one's religious, spiritual world. Each generation faces its own questions,
trials and problems, and it is only natural to expect that each expects answers
that address its specific needs.
The Chiddushei ha-Rim writes, on the verse "Understand the years of each
generation" (Devarim 32:7):
In
every generation and in every period there comes from the heavens a new
understanding of the Torah, one which is appropriate for the generation. The tzaddikim in each
generation understand the Torah according to what is needed to teach the people
of that generation.
It seems that the "new understanding" suited to our generation has not yet been
discovered, and therefore we encounter the demand for feeling, for experience,
arising out of the sense that something is lacking. The demand is actually very
modest, and the expectations likewise. All in all, the expectation is that in
the wake of involvement in Torah study there will also be some kind of awakening
of religious feeling, of a feeling that is difficult to define a sort of
"religious feeling that is the precursor of feelings of holiness," in the words
of Rav Kook's early writings. In Yiddish it is called "frumkeit." There
were trends in Chassidism and in the Mussar movement that opposed the
development of this feeling, but it seems that when it comes to the youth, all
would agree that it is good and useful, and brings a person to fear of sin. The
Ramchal, R. Moshe Chaim Luzzato, says that, "Fear of sin should exist at all
times and at every hour, for at every moment one should fear lest he stumble" (Mesillat
Yesharim, chapter 24). This contrasts with yirat shamayim,
called "awe of God's loftiness" by Ramchal, which comes during Divine service or
during prayer.
But we must know that this feeling is still not yirat shamayim and we
dare not let it serve as an alternative to it. Something that is just emotion,
with no foundation of intellectual profundity, cannot be yirat shamayim.
Indeed, in the introduction to Mesillat Yesharim, Ramchal writes:
Scripture writes (Iyov 28:28), "Indeed ('hen'), fear of God is
wisdom," and our Sages explain (Shabbat 31b): "'Hen' means 'one,'
for in Greek, one is called hen." For fear (awe) is wisdom and it alone
is wisdom, and certainly nothing can be called wisdom if it contains no
intellectual depth.
The Ramchal distinguishes between fear of sin, which is "very easy to attain"
and is worthy only of ignoramuses, and awe of God's loftiness, "which is less
easy to attain, for it is born only of knowledge and the wisdom to meditate on
the loftiness of God and on the lowliness of man. All of this is the result of
the intellect, which understands and knows" (chapter 24). But as a prelude to
fear of heaven, that emotion is certainly important and effective.
With all the importance
of that emotion in our times, honesty demands that I say that for someone who
seeks a guide in this area I am not the right person for him. The batei
midrash in which I grew up and was educated, my Rabbis of blessed memory
from whom I learned Torah and fear of heaven they had no need for this
emotion, this "enthusiasm" and spiritual uplift. I am unworthy to guide
youngsters who seek God and are thirsty for an emotion that I have difficulty
defining.
I am full of admiration and appreciation of the student who wrote in one of our
yeshiva's journals about his need to rise in the morning with a desire to become
closer to God and to achieve an experience of closeness to Him. I am unable to
use this style of speech. I have heard no small number of sichot on the
verse, "And for me the nearness of God is good for me" (Tehillim
73:28), but in the spirit of Mesillat Yesharim (chapter 1):
And upon further examination one sees that true completeness lies only in
cleaving to God, and this is what King David said: "And as for me the nearness
of God is good for me" (Tehillim 73:28), and he also says, "One thing I
ask of God, that is what I request: that I may dwell in the house of God all the
days of my life, to see the pleasantness of God
" (ibid. 27:4). For only
this is good, and everything else that people consider to be good is all vanity
and worthless leading astray. And for a person to achieve this good, it is
necessary for him to toil first and exert himself in order to acquire it. In
other words, he should attempt to cleave to God by virtue of deeds that lead to
this, and they are the mitzvot.
I do not deny that there is also a possibility of closeness to God as an
experience, but I find no hint of it in the words of the Ramchal. The Ramchal
speaks of the obligation of exerting oneself to cleave to God through the
performance of mitzvot. We
should keep in mind that excessive emphasis on experience as a path to closeness
to God can take a person to very distant quarters.
(This sicha was
delivered on Shabbat Zakhor 5761 [2001].)