Q&A: Balancing the Study of Faith and Torah Study
Balancing the Study of Faith and Torah Study
Question
I am a “Lithuanian Haredi.” Thirty years old. Learning in a kollel. Thank God, the study partners are good, the atmosphere is serious, and the learning is productive.
A few months ago, the head of the kollel [almost our age — 35, I think], as part of his weekly talk, began speaking and dealing a lot with the issue of “love of God.” There was a somewhat sharp talk [that’s his style] in which he wondered how we neglect a large part of the commandments. First and foremost: faith, love of God, awe of Him, and so on.
Naively, we assumed this was just “another talk,” and that the next week the topic would be something “normal” — the weekly Torah portion, and things like that.
But… from then until now, the head of the kollel has begun dealing intensively with matters of “cleaving to God,” faith, “living with the Holy One, blessed be He,” and he has not let up on the subject.
The central “motto” is that it cannot be that a Jewish avrekh, a Torah scholar, who learns 8–10 or more hours a day, is actually living “disconnected” from the Holy One, blessed be He: not thinking about Him, not really “knowing” Him, not really “talking” with Him [except only in prayer, and even that not always]. Mumbling blessings without intention. And more and more.
And here is where we became confused —
The head of the kollel suggests and believes that each person should devote about an hour a day to this. “To talk with the Holy One, blessed be He.” [Afterward we saw that the direction is taken from the series of books In My Heart I Will Build a Sanctuary. Maybe the Rabbi knows it.]
On the one hand, his arguments sound logical.
On the other hand, the feeling is that this is not the approach we received in the yeshivot. No one ever spoke this way. They said that the learning itself is the greatest cleaving, and that the Torah is the names of the Holy One, blessed be He, and so on.
What should we do?
Answer
Hello.
R. Chaim of Volozhin’s view is indeed well known: that cleaving to God is the learning itself, and not that learning is a means to cleaving (which is the religious experience, as in the Hasidic approach). But he too speaks about “a kav of preservative” of fear of Heaven that preserves all the wheat (= the learning), see his words there. Therefore, in my understanding, there is nothing wrong with such a demand; on the contrary. Whether to do this by speaking with the Holy One, blessed be He, or in some other way — here I think there are no fixed formulas, but perhaps it is worth trying and seeing.
In the end, if your feeling is that this kind of involvement does not increase love of God and awe of Him, but only bothers and interferes, then of course there is no point in it. In such a situation, I think it would be worthwhile to speak with the head of the kollel and tell him this openly. A story by way of illustration: my late father became the principal of a religious high school. He told me that one of the problems he saw there was a lack of fear of Heaven and love of Torah. I asked him what he planned to do, and he said: reduce the number of Gemara hours by half. I was of course shocked, but he explained that if you increase Gemara hours for people who don’t love it, that is a proven recipe for making the situation worse. In my opinion he was very, very right, and that is a lesson for all of us. Not always, when we have a problem (even if we agree that it exists), does increasing direct involvement with it improve the situation. Think about that carefully.
Good luck,
Michi