Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: There Is No Answer Except Torah

 [Note: much of this is taken from the shiur from R' Czimetn, The Paradox of the Yifas Toar]

R' Chezkal Abramsky used to give a Chumash shiur on Friday nights to largely unaffiliated/non-religious Jews. When parshas Ki Savo arrived he wasn't sure what to say; how do you explain that the Torah allows a "war bride"? The Torah allows -- albeit with a slew of conditions and procedures -- a soldier in the midst of a war to take a woman captive and compel her to become Jewish so he can marry her. Moreover, Rashi notes that the Torah allows this because, even if it were forbidden, the soldier would take her anyway, so better for it ot be permitted. How in the world do you explain that to anyone, let alone the marginally religious. R' Abramsky had an epiphany. He walked in and said, "Rabosai -- before you open your chumash tonight, I want to tell you the amazing principle we are going to learn: There is nothing in the Torah that is beyond your abilities, because anything that is out of your control, the Torah does not forbid. Now, please open your chumash."

It's a great vort/thought/fundamental principle. But the question remains -- What?! Why would HaShem create a situation that is beyond human abilities? But worse than that, Chazal tell us (Kiddushin 30b):

A person's evil inclination seeks to kill him and attacks with renewed vigor every day. If not for HaShem's intervention and help, the person would fall victim to his evil inclination.

But that means everything is beyond a person's abilities to control; it's just that HaShem helps him. That being the case, then why not help him here?

Here's another Chazal (Yoma 35b): No one will be able to claim that he was unable to learn Torah because of life circumstances. Why not? If he says he was so poor that he had to spend all his time finding a livelihood, HaShem will answer: Were you more poverty stricken than Hillel? If he says he was too rich and so busy with his investments. HaShem will answer: Were you wealthier than R' Elazar? And if he says that his evil inclination gave him no respite. HaShem will answer: Did you have a more powerful evil inclination than Yosef? (See the gemara there for how poor, rich, and pestered by his evil inclination each was.)

But let's take a step back: Certainly Hillel and R' Elazar learned Torah, but where do you see that Yosef HaTzadik learned? The answer is yet another Chazal (also Kiddushin 30b): 

HaShem says to Klal Yisrael -- I created the evil inclination and I created for it the Torah as an antidote/spice.

There is a tailor made (well, Tailor made), unique antidote to the evil inclination -- Torah. Since Yosef HaTzadik did overcome his evil inclination, then obviously he learned Torah -- as there is absolutely no other antidote.

When Chazal tells us that "If not for HaShem's intervention and help, the person would fall victim to his evil inclination", they mean that HaShem gave us the antidote -- He gave us the Torah. If a person decides to stop breathing, then he is going to suffocate and die; that's reality. If a person doesn't learn Torah, then he is going to fall prey to his evil inclination; that's reality. The soldier on the front line is in a position where he cannot -- and is not allowed to -- learn Torah. The soldier is going to fall prey to his evil inclination; that's reality.

It comes out that R' Abramsky's epiphany is much more than a cute way to explain the mitzvah of the beautiful war bride; it is a deep and fundamental lesson that the Torah itself is teaching us about reality. Torah is always and forever the only answer.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: Love in the Time of Corona Virus/Anxiously Awaiting the Mashiach

Two scenarios: Scenario I: A young boy awakened in the middle of the night, placed in the back of vehicle, told not to make any noise, and the vehicle speeds off down the highway. Scenario II: Young boy playing in park goes to see firetruck, turns around to see scary man in angry pursuit, poised to attack. I experienced and lived through both of those scenarios. Terrifying, no? Actually, no; and my picture was never on a milk carton. Here's the context: Scenario I: We addressed both set of our grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa". How did we distinguish? One set lived less than a half hour's drive; those were there "close grandma and grandpa". The other set lived five hour drive away; they were the "way far away grandma and grandpa". To make the trip the most pleasant for all of us, Dad would wake up my brother and I at 4:00AM, we'd groggily -- but with excitement! -- wander out and down to the garage where we'd crawl
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: What Category of Muktzeh are Our Candles?

As discussed in a recent TftD , a p'sak halacha quite surprising to many, that one may -- even לכתחילה -- decorate a birthday cake with (unlit, obviously) birthday candles on Shabbos. That p'sak is predicated on another p'sak halacha; namely, that our candles are muktzeh because they are a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור and not  מוקצה מחמת גופו/intrinsically set aside from any use on Shabbos. They point there was that using the candle as a decoration qualifies as a need that allows one to utilize a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור. Today we will discuss the issue of concluding that our candles are , in fact, a כלי שמלאכתו לאיסור and not מוקצה מחמת גופו. Along the way we'll also (again) how important it is to have personal relationship with your rav/posek, the importance of precision in vocabulary, and how to interpret the Mishna Brura.  Buckle up. After reviewing siman 308 and the Mishna Brura there, I concluded that it should be permissible to use birthday candles to decorate a cake on Shabbo
Post a Comment
Read more