There is a famous story that in the Volozhin Yeshiva there were boys who sat and learned Torah for eighteen hours a day. One day, one of those studious boys was sitting in the dining room, and in the middle of his meal someone approached him and asked him a question about a certain Tosfos. He tried to remember the words of the Tosfos, but he could not, and he was very frightened, how is it possible that he could not remember an express Tosfos in Shas?! And because of his panic, he acted panicky and went and locked himself I his room, and he did not come out until he reviewed all of Shas, of course with Rashi and Tosfos, but because of his panic, he forgot to say Bircas Hamazon. Afterwards, when Rebbe Chaim Volozhin heard the story, he said, “Certainly, he should not have left his place without benching, but I have no doubt that if he had stayed to say Bircas Hamazon, he would not have done that thing, because his mind would have cooled from the panic that gripped him.
The Torah tells us (25:6) 'והנה איש מבני ישראל בא ויקרב אל אחיו את המדינית לעיני משה ולעיני כל ישראל והמה בוכים' – And behold! A man of the Children of Israel came and brought the Midianite woman near to his brothers before the eyes of Moshe and before the eyes of the entire assembly of the Children of Israel, and they were weeping’. Holy Rashi explains the meaning of that weeping, ‘And they were weeping – the law was concealed from Moshe, ‘One who has relations with an Aramean woman, avengers will harm him', so they all cried out in weeping’, that is, Moshe Rabeinu and all around him wept because the halacha was concealed from him, ‘that one who has relations with an Aramean woman, avengers will harm him’, and after they wept, Pinchas remembered the halacha, and he merited to be the one to put it into practice.’
How upset are we when we do not know some halacha? It is not for nothing that holy Rashi explains to us the real reason that caused Moshe Rabeinu to weep, and together with him, many of Bnei Yisroel wept with him. This is surely the terrible situation that a prince of Israel stood like this with a gentile woman opposite Moshe Rabeinu and wanted to ‘permit the sheretz to himself’, this was a terrible situation. But this was not the reason why Moshe Rabeinu wept, rather, ‘it was because the halacha was concealed from him’. This teaches us that if a person tries to learn and fails to understand the words of the Torah, and certainly if he forgot his learning, how upset he must be and should weep for this, until the One Who sits on high has mercy for him and enlightens his eyes.
-Tiv HaTorah - Balak
