48 Ways - 025 Patience In Learning

Erech Apayim – Slow To Anger

One of the 48 kinyanim is called “erech apayim”, to be slow to anger.

Why is this necessary to acquire the Torah? We understand that it’s a good middah not to get angry, but why must we need it to acquire the Torah?

After all, the Mishnah does not list any of the other bad middos such as gaavah (conceit) and taavah (lust). So why is it that we need this specific middah of “erech apayim”, as one of the ways that we need to acquire the Torah?

Chazal state, “Whoever gets angry, the Shechinah leaves him.” We learn from this Moshe Rabbeinu, who one time got angry – and because of this, he forgot a halachah. The Tiferes Yisrael says that Moshe Rabbeinu was born with a nature to get angry, but he merited to fix it. How did he fix his anger? Besides for the fact that he worked to overcome it, he attained it as a gift from Hashem.

Thus, we see that overcoming anger is a way to acquire the Torah.

Erech Apayim – To Be Patient In Our Learning

But there is a deeper way as well to understand “erech apayim” and why it is necessary to acquire the Torah with.

The word “erech” comes from the word maarich, to “lengthen.” This is an ability in our soul to be maarich, to continue and to lengthen something. What does this mean? It is written, “The Torah is “longer than the earth and wider than the sea”. A person needs to attain the quality of “length” – he needs erech apayim – in order to acquire the Torah.

It is well-known that the Maharil Diskin would learn one page of Gemara for 40 days. This doesn’t mean that it took him 40 days to finish the sugya. It meant that he always continued to learn the same thing he was learning, constantly probing his understanding so he could understand it better and better. Instead of continuing onto the next page of Gemara, he continued to understand what he was currently learning, more and more.

When we learn a sugya and then we continue to the next sugya, why do we continue? Is it because the Rosh Kolel said we should…? Is it because we simply grow impatient? Is it because we want to gather more Torah knowledge?

The truth is that every sugya we learn in Gemara can take a lifetime to understand! Every sugya of Torah is eternal. (Practically speaking, we should not spend our whole life on one sugya of Gemara, but in concept, it is definitely possible).

The Torah is “longer than the sea” – this is not just because there is so much quantity in the Torah, but because there is no end to how much quality which the Torah can be learned with. The Sages themselves didn’t reach the perfect understanding of Torah, as much as they understood.

When we learn Gemara, there is no end to how much we can understand the words of the Sages – we should never think that we have reached the pinnacle of understanding.

The understanding we can have in Torah is unlimited. There can always be more and more levels to how good we understand it. The Torah is “longer than the earth” – this is the concept of erech apayim. It is for us to be maarich, to “lengthen” – to keep continuing to further our current understanding of something in Torah, as opposed to thinking that we have reached the perfect understanding of anything in Torah.

When we learn Torah, we must be aware that we are involving ourselves with an endless wisdom. If we perceive it as endless, then we connect with the endlessness of Hashem (the “Ein Sof”). If a person thinks he truly understands what he learns, his Torah learning is lacking a connection with Hashem, and it is incomplete.

Rav Chaim Vital says that one must have good middos as a prerequisite to learn Torah. “Erech apayim” is the middah which can help us understand that Torah is endless, so it is the main tool we can use for this.

But if a person doesn’t identify with the concept of erech apayim, he probably thinks that he understands perfectly what he learns – and then he won’t have the tool to truly understand the Torah. “Erech apayim” is the tool we can use to truly understand the Torah.

“Erech Apayim”: Patience

What is “erech apayim”? One meaning of it is simple: Don’t get angry at someone who wrongs you.

But the deeper meaning is that we have a power in our soul, “erech apayim”, which can help us understand that we must patiently accept others’ views when it comes to Torah. For example, when a person accepts that his chavrusa can be right, even though he sharply disagrees with him, this utilizes the quality of “erech apayim”.

We know that the 49 days of Sefiras HaOmer are a way for us to rectify the sin of the students of Rabbi Akiva, who did not properly honor each other in Torah learning; the 24,000 students were killed out as a punishment for this. Although we have no comprehension of these great students who were killed, Chazal revealed to us that there was some infraction on their part when it came to respecting others’ opinions with regards to Torah, and because of this, they were severely judged and punished.

We can rectify the sin of Rabbi Akiva’s students through using the trait of erech apayim. Simply, it means we shouldn’t get angry – which is hard to do of course, and it merits a discussion for itself. But we aren’t addressing that aspect of “erech apayim” right now. We are discussing a different aspect of erech apayim: to be patient and willing to accept the truth when others disagree with us in Torah.

It is to be able to continue in our understanding of Torah, and to never remain complacent with what we understand, because there always more ways to understand the Torah.

Practically Applying This

To make this practical: erech apayim is a power in our soul to accept the words of those who are wiser than us, even when their words don’t make sense to us. To accept the words of a posek even when I don’t understand what he’s saying, even when he doesn’t make sense.

It is not just to fix our middos; it is a way to prepare for the Torah.

Beis Shamai and Beis Hilel always had arguments. Moshe Rabbeinu heard it all by Har Sinai; he heard every chiddush by Sinai. How could Har Sinai, a place of peace, be the very place where Moshe Rabbeinu heard every last argument in Torah that will ever take place? This was due to the power of erech apayim, which Moshe Rabbeinu possessed.

Therefore, one can accept the words of his chavrusa through using his power of erech apayim. It is to understand that all views in Torah were said at Sinai, and therefore, what others say can also be true, even if I disagree with it. When someone learns Torah like this all the time, he is connected to the level we were at when we stood at Har Sinai – on a constant basis.

But when someone constantly disagrees with his chavrusa and he never prepares to accept that maybe he can be wrong, maybe he has a lot of Torah in his hands, but it’s not the real and perfected kind of Torah he can be having – it’s not the Torah we received at Har Sinai. It is rather the Torah of the broken Luchos – a Torah that doesn’t last.

May we be zoche with the help of Hashem to connect to the level we were at Har Sinai and to continue that level to the rest of the year – to learn Torah in a peaceful manner, a Torah in which “truth and peace meet”.