You Can’t Learn?

רַב לָכֶם סֹב אֶת הָהָר הַזֶּה פְּנוּ לָכֶם צָפֹנָה

 “You have circled this mountain long enough; turn yourselves northward.” (Devarim 2:3) 

The Mitzvot We Give Up On 

Sometimes a person picks and chooses which mitzvot he does, or at least which ones he does properly. 

The rest he opts out of, because he feels they are just too difficult or beyond his abilities. Or a particular mitzvah would take too long, or is inconvenient, and would force him to neglect his business. 

Obviously, a Yid should not be selective about which mitzvot he keeps. So how does he fight back against this mindset? He needs to change his perspective. And all he has to do is look at the world around him. What he sees there, should change the way he thinks about the word “ability.” 

When Life Is on the Line 

In a moment of danger, a person discovers strength he never imagined he had. 

There are stories from wartime, when people ran for their lives, of weak men lifting crushing loads on their own and running at tremendous speed for miles — things it would never occur to them to try on an ordinary day. 

We see the same thing when it comes to a person’s health. A doctor tells his patient that to save his life he will have to go through a brutal surgery and a grueling stretch of intensive care. The patient finds the strength to endure it. He behaves with mesirat nefesh, self-sacrifice, following the doctor’s orders down to the letter. 

People find the strength when their lives are on the line. 

The Price of Gold 

It isn’t only in extreme circumstances that a person finds the strength to persevere. We see it in everyday life too. 

A person will push himself beyond his limits for a goal he is passionate about. Take a financial goal. He will push himself past what he thought his limits were. He will work harder, longer, and with more vigor to achieve his ambitions. 

Why? What drives this raw ambition? Money! 

And when money is on the line, he starts his day at the earliest hour and finishes at the latest, and makes sure every moment in between goes toward that goal. He is willing to swallow humiliation. He gives up his own needs, even his time to eat. 

This is what Dovid HaMelech meant (Tehillim 119:72): Tov li Toras picha  me’alfei zahav vachesef, “The Torah of Your mouth is better to me than thousands in gold and silver.” Meaning: I will give up everything in order to acquire the Torah. 

Like One Who Finds a Treasure 

The mussar seforim (books of ethics) teach, that a person can shift his perspective by working through an analogy: 

Imagine you are walking down the street and you see, up the road, a huge bundle of money. Nobody is around. You have to act fast. And the job is not only to grab it — you have to get it out of sight, somewhere nobody will lay eyes on it and carry it off. 

  

Now, do you take your time? Of course not. You move with zeal and speed, because somebody else may get there first. Every sense and every strength you have goes into finding the hiding place and getting the money into it. Until the job is done, you don’t stop to eat, drink, or rest. 

Dovid HaMelech said (Tehillim 119:162): Sas anochi al imrasecha kemotzei shalal rav, “I rejoice over Your word like one who finds great spoil.” You need to feel that same exhilaration, that same urgency and excitement for the Torah that you would feel finding a treasure in the street. And so you need to commit every strength you have, all your time and all your resources, to the pursuit of Torah — exactly as you would to gather up that treasure. 

A Lesson for the Neshamah 

Dovid HaMelech is teaching us something here. From the way a person drives himself for his body, every Yid has to  take a mussar haskel, a lesson, for the life of his neshamah. 

A person’s eternal life hangs on keeping Hashem’s mitzvot. They also draw down every kind of blessing and yeshuah (salvation) into his life. So how much more should he push himself here. How much more should he use every strength he has to carry out what Hashem, the Healer of all flesh, commanded us to do. 

The Wrapping and the Treasure 

Imagine a person is handed a treasure of gold, silver, and pearls. It sits in a box wrapped in beautiful paper. But he gets distracted by the wrapping paper and the ribbons, forgets completely about the treasure inside, and lets it go. What is he? A fool. 

A person who busies himself with his physical needs, and ignores the needs of his soul, is a complete fool — like that simpleton who threw away the gold and the pearls and amused himself with the wrapping paper. 

A Yid has to know that his body serves only as the “wrapping paper” for the neshamah inside him. The neshamah and its needs come first, and everything else is arranged around it. The needs of his physical life are secondary — they are there solely to serve the neshamah. 

Too Busy to Daven 

There are those who race through davening and walk out of shul before the minyan has even finished. They may even come late and leave early. 

They never set fixed times for Torah study either. And the excuse is always the same: they don’t have enough time. 

But watch them closely, and you will see how much of that “precious” time they waste during the day. They fool around, they talk politics, they get caught up in whatever frivolous distraction pulls at them. And they don’t have time to daven properly? 

You Can’t Learn? 

The same goes for those who claim they don’t study Torah because they simply are unable to. They lack the skills, the patience, or the ability to focus. 

The Tanna d’Bei Eliyahu (Zuta ch. 14) tells of a fisherman who offered this excuse to Eliyahu HaNavi: Heaven never gave him the understanding and the mind to learn Torah. Eliyahu answered him,

“For sowing flax and spinning it, for weaving it into nets and catching fish and birds, Heaven gave you understanding and knowledge. For learning Torah, about which it is written, ki karov eilecha hadavar me’od, “the matter is very close to you” (Devarim 30:14), they gave you no understanding and no knowledge?!” 

R’ Menachem Mendel of Kotzk zt”l explained what Eliyahu was proving to him. The pressure of parnasah (income) is what drove this man to master the fisherman’s trade. Had he felt that same need, that same necessity, to learn Torah — he would certainly have known how to learn. 

Turn Yourselves Northward 

All of this is hinted in the pasuk: Rav lachem — if this looks to you like a labor too great, too hard for you to take on; sov es hahar hazeh, “circle this mountain” — to go around the yetzer hara and slip past it, that yetzer hara that looms in front of you like a great mountain (Sukkah 52a). 

Then pnu lachem tzafonah, “turn yourselves northward.” – Turn, and take a hard look at how you drive yourself for money — for gold, which comes from the north, as the pasuk says (Iyov 37:22), mitzafon zahav ye’eseh, “out of the north comes gold.” 

Just as you would go to extremes for wealth, pour out every strength you have for the service of Hashem – for the sake of your own neshamah. 

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The Kalever Rebbe is the seventh Rebbe of the Kaalov Chasidic dynasty, begun by his ancestor who was born to his previously childless parents after receiving a blessing from the Baal Shem Tov zy”a, and later learned under the Maggid of Mezeritch zt”l. The Rebbe has been involved in outreach for more than 30 years, and writes weekly emails on understanding current issues through the Torah. You can sign up at  www.kaalov.org.