Parshat Bechukotai

Last week I did not write a dvar Torah for parshat Behar because I was busy preparing a shiur on the subject of double-ring marriage ceremonies. In response to the dissatisfaction of some people with the traditional Halachic wedding service, various people have proposed a service where the bride also gives a ring to the groom.

This dvar Torah is not the forum for a discussion of these proposals or of the objections raised by Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l to these proposals. But Rashi on this week’s parsha is germane to the essential issue that motivated this call for change.

Many people find that the mitzvot do not fulfill their expectations for “spirituality.” These people come to rabbis with requests to alter traditional practice so that the performance of mitzvot should meet their expectations. The proposed double-ring ceremonies arose out of these requests.

Now I imagine that there are as many definitions of “spirituality” as there are people seeking it. All that should matter for us, as Jews, is what does the Torah expects of us in this world? And the answer to this question is in Rashi on this week’s parsha.

This week’s parsha opens with a promise from Hashem. If we, the Jewish nation, walk in the ways of His laws, then Hashem will provide us with prosperity and peace in this world. Rashi says that to ”walk in the ways of His laws” means that we must “toil at the Torah.”

I feel that the only honest presentation of the Torah that we can make is that the Torah tells people what G-d expects of them. The promise that G-d makes in this week’s parsha may not meet the expectations of people whose view of religion has been shaped by other cultures. “Toil” and “serenity” are not the same things. We must give honest answers to people ask us questions about the Torah, and not everyone may like the answers. But we must be honest.

Now what I will discuss what form this toil must take. One perspective is provided by Rav Dessler zt”l whose shiurim are collected in the five volume work titled Michtav Me’Eliyahu. Rav Dessler takes “toil” at its simple meaning. We must work hard. When we study Torah we must not settle for easy explanations. It’s worth noting that the English-language edition of Michtav Me’Eliyahu is titled Strive for Truth. Anyone who as ever studied Gemara can attest to the fact that it is only after hard work that the truth of the Gemara, the peshat , becomes clear. And this is what G-d seeks of us.

Another thing is worth noting as well. Nowhere in the Codes of Jewish law do we see a quantitative requirement for the mitzva of learning Torah. Some people are more gifted than others. It’s been said that Rav Kook zt”l studied fifty pages of Gemara each day as a student at the Yeshiva of Volozhin. For the rest of us, fifty pages a year is quite an achievement. But what is precious in the eyes of G-d is not the number of pages. It’s the effort that the person puts into his study. The new student of Talmud who spend hours shifting from the page of impossible Aramaic to his dictionary and then back again is fulfilling the mitzva of toiling at the Torah just as surely as Rav Kook did in Volozhin.

Toiling at the Torah sounds like something that belongs in the Yeshiva. Can a parent who gets up early to go to work and comes home at night “toil” at Torah? I would say, emphatically, “yes.” Toil is a qualitative term, not a quantitative one. The office worker who gives up from his precious free time to study Torah toils just as truly as the student in Yeshiva.

What sort of tranquility (if any) is promised to us? On the one hand there is a Mishna in Avot, “ an hour of the pleasure of the World to Come is greater than all the pleasure of this World.” This sounds fairly tranquil. On the other hand there is a statement at the end of Masechet Brachot, “Scholars have no rest, neither in this world nor in the next.”

I think that there is a profound truth that links these two statements. The ultimate good is not tranquility. Tranquility is free of the excitement that comes with intellectual creativity and this is the joy known by people who study Torah. Scholars are not promised tranquility because they don’t want it.