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Thought for the Day: Separating from the Torah is Separating from Life

In a recent TftD, I wrote:

The Ramban doesn't explain what it means that "he caused death to himself". I have some thoughts about that, but I need to do some research before saying more.

 Well... I did more research and I found something really interesting. I learn mishnayos daily (a practice I started some years ago when I aked my rebbi, R' Dovid Siegel, shlita, for some counsel in what I should be learning. He started with, "Well... hmm... of course you are already learning mishnayos every day, so you are asking what else you should be learning." Yeah, well... I started that day to make his words true.) This year I decided to add the perush of the Bartenura. (No, that name is not Italian for "blue bottle".)  I just go in order, with an eye to making a siyum on the yahrtzeits of my father and my father-in-law. (They are far enough apart that it is doable with some juggling.) I am currently coming to the end of Seder Nezikin, and learning Pirkei Avos.

In the first mishna of the 5th chapter, we are informed that our reality was created with ten utterances. The mishna asks/states: But wouldn't one utterance have been enough? The mishna replies: This was to extract appropriate payment from evil doers who destroy the world that was created with ten utterances, and to properly reward the righteous who uphold/sustain the world that was created by ten utterances.

Says the Bartenura (in his first pshat): since anyone who destroys a single Jewish life is held accountable as if he destroyed a full world, and evil doers destroy themselves with their sins and it is therefore as if they have destroyed the entire world.

Wow. Not subtle at all. (Right up my alley....) Let's analyze. The way the Bartenura is explaining the mishna, it comes out that the entire creation is for this one Jewish soul. That means there is a nothing in the creation that is unnecessary for his life. (To paraphrase another mishna in pirkei avos.) Moreover, from the way the Bartenura explains what is happening, the term "evil doer" is not so much a description of that Jew, as it is description of a spiritual sickness. His "sinning" is cutting himself off from the very source of his life. We have 613 essential elements of our lives, and the mitzos connect us to the one and only source of nourishment for each and every one.

 

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