Getting to Know Your Torah - 09 The Torah Acquired Through Suffering | 2

Summary of the Five Kinds of Suffering In Our Learning

In the previous chapter, we mentioned that there are several forms of suffering which we go through in order to acquire Torah. So far, we mentioned three forms of suffering that we go through in order to acquire our learning: physical suffering, emotional suffering, and verbal suffering. We have to exert ourselves over Torah physically. We also feel that the Torah goes against our middos and emotions. We also have to speak words of Torah often, which is another aspect that is hard for us to do.

There are two more kinds of suffering that we also encounter in our learning. This is the suffering that we feel in our mind, as well as the suffering we feel in our very desires, as we learn Torah.

Mental Suffering In Our Learning

The Maharal says that the intellect of the Torah is a G-dly intellect, and thus it is totally in a class of its own than regular human intellect. This is because the Torah is called ohr (light), which comes from the word he’arah, Heavenly illumination; this shows us that Torah is all Hashem’s will, revealed through the intellect of the Torah.

Therefore, our natural human intellect struggles when we try to understand the Torah. The Torah is a G-dly wisdom, entirely spiritual in its nature, and it defies our own intellect, which is rooted in our physical body.

When a person merits to reveal his soul a bit more, then he is able to access the wisdom of the Torah, and he sees how the Torah cannot be understood by regular intellect. But before a person merits to reveal his soul, when he’s in the initial stage and at the beginning of his way – it’s hard for him to try to understand the Torah. He has mental suffering from this as he tries to understand it, because he is straining his mind to understand it. He isn’t clear in his understanding of Torah, and he feels like he’s groping in the dark.

This is the mental kind of suffering a person has when he learns Torah: he doesn’t see the wisdom of the Torah. He doesn’t see what his individual potential in Torah is (and everyone has their own unique part in the Torah), and even when he finally discovers which area of Torah is meant for him to spend more time on, he still encounters more and more confusion; he doesn’t see which part of the Torah is exactly the part he is meant to learn. He also suffers when he has to hear others’ opinions about what he is learning, because others’ thinking contradicts his own thinking.

The very longing that a person has in order to know the Torah is itself a form of suffering. Once Rav Chaim Volozhiner told his rebbi, the Vilna Gaon, that he is jealous of his rebbi’s high level of learning. The Vilna Gaon told him: “You have no idea how big my yetzer hora (Evil inclination) is.” What he meant was that because he had such an enormous yearning to know the Torah, he had suffering from this.

This is part of the suffering needed in order to acquire Torah – the fact that we aren’t understanding it when we really want to understand it. This is the mental suffering we must go through in order to have Torah.

There can be several reasons why a person isn’t understanding Torah. One reason could be due to his sins – either his own private sins, or even the sins of the Jewish people as a whole.

There is another aspect to the mental suffering in acquiring Torah, and that is when a person wants to have an understanding in Torah that is above his current level. This can happen either because he is jealous of others who are succeeding in their learning (which is using the power of kinas sofrim (jealousy of scholars) for evil); or it can be because he is trying to understand more than what his current level allows him to understand.

Suffering Of Our Ratzon In Order To Acquire Torah

Besides for mental suffering, there is another kind of suffering as well that a person goes through in order to acquire Torah. This is the suffering that our ratzon (will) feels when we learn Torah.

How does our ratzon suffer when we learn Torah? It is because we all have many various retzonos, but there is only true will we need to have – to do what Hashem wants. “Retzoinenu laasos retzoncha” – “It is our will to do your will.”

How do we come to know what Hashem wants? The way is through learning “the four cubits of halachah.” Ever since the first sin of Adam, the only way to know what Hashem wants is to learn the halachah. Because a person does not initially know what Hashem wants, he has to “kill himself in the tents of Torah.”

When a person merits to reveal his power of retzoneinu laasos retzoncha, then all his other various retzonos fall away. In the future, this power will be revealed by all people, as Hashem will slaughter the evil inclination (Sukkah 52a).

However, even though we are not yet in the future right now, any of us can still merit to have a partial slaughtering of our evil inclination – by weakening our various desires. Only the Avos merited to have an entire slaughtering of their evil inclination; on our current level, we cannot totally slaughter our evil inclination, but we can merit to at least do it partially.

It’s possible that a person is learning Torah the entire day, yet he doesn’t feel how the Torah is contradicting his ratzon. What results from this? His true ratzon never becomes revealed. Only someone who sees how learning Torah contradicts his retzonos is someone who can realize that he has to nullify those retzonos, which will in turn reveal his true ratzon – the ratzon of Hashem.

Therefore, you should clarify to yourself and see how your current retzonos are contradicting the ratzon of Hashem. This is part of your suffering in Torah – the suffering you face from your will. Figure out why you are learning – you will discover various ulterior motivations, such as the need for honor, etc.

If someone claims that he learns Torah because it is the ratzon Hashem, he is really lying to himself. A person has to uncover what his ulterior motivations are and see how his retzonos contradict the Torah – and after that, he should learn how to remove them and nullify them.[1] But the first stage that a person has to go through is to at least be aware of how his retzonos are contradicting the Torah.