Rav Aryeh Bina was a major rabbinic figure in Israeli history, a founder of Yeshivat Netiv Meir and of the בני עקיבא movement. Born in Belarus in 1913, at a very young age, he studied with some of the greatest leading Torah scholars of the early 20th century. But in 1933, to escape the Russian draft, he made עליה and became a construction worker. He eventually moved to a religious Zionist קיבוץ and was able to study תורה while also training to defend the ישוב with the הגנה.
Those trained to defend the Jewish community in Israel were also useful in fighting the Nazis during WWII. In 1941, as part of the British army he was sent to fight against the Nazi invasion of Greece, which unfortunately fell into German hands. Rav Bina was taken by the Nazis as a prisoner of war and forced to work in the mines in the Czech Republic.
While he was imprisoned and forced into hard labor, he nonetheless received some rations from the International Red Cross. Despite the fact that he was undernourished and suffering, he found a Polish worker who was willing to make a deal. He would give the man his chocolate and cigarettes, and in return, the man would find the local synagogue and bring back a book for him. The man brought Rav Bina a copy of מסכת יבמות, a tractate of תלמוד about levirate marriage, considered among the longest and most difficult to study.
Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon recounts that when he was a student in Rav Bina’s yeshiva many years later, the rumor was that the ראש ישיבה, Rav Bina, had finished יבמות while in Nazi captivity 60 times. Rav Rimon, then a young man, stirred up the courage to ask Rav Bina how this could be true. Rav Bina smiled and responded, “No, I did not finish יבמות 60 times. It was actually 80 times.”
This story of מסירות נפש, of self-sacrifice for תורה study, reminds me of a story in the תלמוד itself in מסכת יומא. The תלמוד says that הלל immigrated from Babylonia to Israel as a young man, in part, so that he could study with the greatest Torah scholars of his generation, which were שמעיה and אבטליון. The גמרא says that the בית מדרש charged those who would study there so much that it cost הלל half his daily wages to get in. One Friday, he did not have enough money to pay his way in. Instead, he climbed onto the roof of the בית מדרש so that he could listen to the תורה discussions going on inside. That night, there was a heavy blizzard and הלל, stuck on the roof, was buried in the snow. On שבת morning, שמעיה and אבטליון, the heads of the ישיבה, noticed a shadow coming from the skylight above in the shape of man. Students went to check and found הלל freezing atop the בית מדרש. They violated שבת to save his life and help him recover and reasoned aloud, “This man deserves to have שבת violated on his behalf.”
This notion of self-sacrifice to study תורה, or to educate one’s children in תורה, is not in any way limited to these examples. In the תלמוד, it is taught that both רבי עקיבא and רבי חנניה בן תרדיון continued publicly teaching תורה even after Roman decrees against doing so and paid for it with their lives. תורה students went to extreme lengths to support themselves while studying and to access the highest levels of learning they could. For thousands of years, Jewish parents have forfeited much of their income and time to ensure their children, especially boys, but now both boys and girls, would get a serious תורה education. The willingness to do anything to get access to ישיבה education is perhaps most vividly expressed in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s 1962 short story “Yentl” about a young woman who disguises herself as a man in order to be admitted into a ישיבה, leading to a series of painful events.
The question is, why? Why is תורה study worth so much sacrifice? Obviously, given the extremely detailed nature of Jewish practice, it is necessary for some people to be trained in making halachic rulings, in reading not only תנ״ך but halachic legal literature, as well. But why do we insist on teaching תלמוד to the masses? One might argue that this is necessary for people to do the מצוות properly, that the מצוות require a lot of detailed prior knowledge. Rav Eliezer Melamed points out that that the גמרא in קידושין explains that תלמוד גדול שמביא לידי מעשה, that one reason to give precedence to study over performing other מצוות is that תורה knowledge motivates us to do the מצוות and informs us how to execute them correctly. But that does not explain everything.
Why are we willing to give up so much of our time and money and effort to study material in ways that are much more than is necessary for practical purposes? Moreover, it does not explain the emotional investment attached to תורה study by so many generations of Jews. When I learn תורה, I feel something that I do not experience while studying any other subject or reading any other book. There is a thirst for תורה that doesn’t exist for most people in other subjects, whether fiction or non-fiction, in math, literature, or history.
One approach is to assume that there is something about the content of תורה that is unique and that draws us to it unlike any other text. For example, Rabbi Norman Lamm noted that many of the values that we consider core to our sense of ethics in the West derive from the תורה, including equality under the law, opposition to slavery, and the value of learning and debate. Rav Melamed, in פניני הלכה, points out that תורה, as understood by the Rabbis, is unlike any source of knowledge or body of law. Usually, you can understand why laws are on the books by looking at the social context in which they arose. But חז״ל says that תורה קדמה לעולם, that rather than the תורה serving as a response to the problems in our society, our society arose, our world was created, after the תורה already “existed” and perhaps even serves as its blueprint. The תורה is therefore a way to access an understanding of the world unavailable anywhere else.
The בעל התניא similarly says that תורה study is unique in that it is the only way to access the Will of G-d. Rav Shagar explains that תורה study helps give meaning not only to the מצוות but to everything we do in life. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book A Letter in the Scroll, writes that the תורה, including תנ״ך, the תלמוד, and everything since, can be compared to a book you find in a library. As you flip through the pages, you see that the book is about your extended family, the history of how you came to be where you are. And on the final blank pages, there is nothing written but your own name, waiting for you to write the next chapter. Our interest is thus not only in the uniqueness of the information but in its relationship to us, our history, and our future contributions to it. It preserves our society, its history and values, and it stays alive through all of us engaging with it.
A second approach is to see value not only in the content of the תורה but in what studying the תורה does to us. Rav Kook, in אורות התורה, writes that תלמוד תורה accomplishes two goals summarized as סור מרע ועשה טוב, avoid bad and do good. The סור מרע is that, absent תורה study, our minds will instead be occupied with politics, gossip, or other harmful things to be pondering all the time. On the other hand, says Rav Kook, תורה study also nourishes the soul in the same way that food and drink and air nourish the body. Rav Nachum Rabinovitch, the late Rosh Yeshiva of ישיבת ברכת משה in מעלי אדומים, writes that learning תורה shapes our character, not just through the knowledge it imparts, but through the investigative process, through the wrestling with its ideas. Rav Yitzchak Hutner, in his פחד יצחק, explains that learning תורה in depth, when done with proper sense of urgency, awe, and authenticity, is a way of reenacting the experience of הר סיני on a daily, even constant basis, of infusing our lives with the feeling of being truly commanded.
But there is a third sense that I think more accurately describes the emotional attachment that I feel and that many people much greater than I feel to the experience of learning תורה. There is a story called the מעשה מסכת חגיגה, which has been told and retold in many ספרים published over the past 800 years. The story is that a certain man, who lived alone, spent the vast majority of his time doing nothing but studying a specific, short tractate of תלמוד called מסכת חגיגה, which is about a sacrifice brought on יום טוב. He likely completed it dozens or hundreds of times, like Rav Bina.
At some point, the man died and no one was there to notice, to mourn him, to arrange for him a burial. Suddenly, a woman comes in, sees him having passed, and shouts to the neighbors that this great man has died. As people come to see what happened, she insists that he was a wonderful man who always gave her proper attention, took care of her, and that they must give him a proper funeral with eulogies and burial. Most assumed that this woman must have been his wife. But when the funeral was over, she suddenly disappeared. The townspeople realized what must have happened when they remembered what she had answered when they asked her name, “חגיגה שמי,” “My name is חגיגה.”
Rav Soloveitchik writes that תורה study is not just as an act of education; is an act of love, as if the תורה itself were a personality. Rav Yehuda Amital similarly cites a מדרש in which the a king marries off his daughter to a king from another land. The older king tells his new son-in-law that wherever he brings his daughter, he must always set aside a room for him to visit. That is why, says the מדרש, we must always have a בית מדרש. The תורה is G-d’s “daughter” and when we learn in the בית מדרש, it is like a reunion of the family, unification of humanity with G-d.
Rav Chaim Volozhiner, in his נפש החיים, goes a step further. He says that the תלמוד says the ideal תורה study is לשמה, or its sake. But what does it mean to study תורה for its own sake? It can’t mean for דביקות, in order to be inspired to feel close to G-d, as not every detail of תורה feels inspirational, per se. Rather, says the נפש החיים, learning Torah, כביכול, is a direct engagement with G-d, not just with His ideas. It is as if the תורה is itself G-d in some way and thus has intrinsic value in and of itself, regardless of the subject.
It’s not just that it shapes our character and informs our behavior. It is not just a source of inspiration or a way to connect with our ancestors and with our people. It is, in a way, pure communing with G-d, like sitting with Him בחברותא, with your father or best friend or spouse or sibling, and spending time reading your shared story together. It’s like looking at old photo albums together, like talking about old times, like making plans for the future together. Who would ever give that up, take that for granted?
During מעריב every night, we say about תורה study: “כי הם חיינו ואורך ימינו ובהם נהגה יומם ולילה”, that תורה is our life upon which we will meditate day and night. It’s not just that there’s a lot of ground to cover or that it is a good way to train our moral thinking. It is constitutes our very relationship with G-d and our people.
We are going to say יזכור now for our loved ones. I’m sure many of us have loved ones we wish we had spent more time talking to, with whom we wish we could have discussed our lives and our experiences יומם ולילה, who we would have talked with more if we understood that our time with them on limited. That is why we learn תורה with such intensity – because it is the closest we can get to our relatives, to our history, and to G-d all at once.
We must not take our time for granted. During this difficult time in our history, we have so much we need to learn, so much we need to share and that הקב״ה needs to share with us, to help us meditate the miraculous events of שבת and tragic events of the past eight months. May our learning today and in the future give us the knowledge, the moral training, and the contact with קודשא בריך הוא that we need to respond to the challenges ahead.
דורש לנפשי 