Chazal ask: Why was the Torah given in the desert? One of the reasons given is because the desert is an uninhabited place. There is no civilization there – nothing is there. Chazal also state that the Torah is only acquired by “one who kills himself over it, as in the desert.” One who ‘kills himself ’ when learning Torah is one who disconnects from his surroundings.
This is not a rule that was only applicable to the time when we received the Torah. We are currently in This World, and we await the World To Come, the days of Mashiach, and the resurrection of the dead. Chazal say that the wise sages only desired the days of Mashiach so that they could learn Torah in peace. If we try to picture what the World To Come is like, what is it? There is a very clear picture of what the World To Come is. There is only HaKadosh Baruch Hu and His Torah there. That is what “eternity” is.
Let’s understand this clearly.
If Torah is not the main part of a person’s life, and he has many other desires in his life that are on his mind instead, he will not be able to live a “life of Torah.” He will be able to learn Torah, but he will not be able to live a life of Torah! He won’t become a “ben olam haba” (one who is destined for the World To Come) on This World. In the Next World, there is nothing except for Hashem and His Torah. That is all that goes on there, 24/7!
In This World, even if we learn Torah all day, we eventually go to sleep at night. But in the Next World, there is no sleep. It is for 24 consecutive hours in a day! Every day! (On a deeper note, the 24 hours of the day are only from the perspective of This World, but in the Next World, there are no 24-hour intervals). It keeps continuing. It is a “day of entirely light”, a “day of entirely Shabbos”, where the tzaddikim bask in the rays of the Shechinah.
If one tries to imagine this, he might think of it as a bright, sunny day which warms his body. That is very far from what the Next World is like; it is but a parable. What is life in the Next World? There is nothing there at all, other than Hashem and His Torah!
When considering how we are living our own life, this is not simply a question of what “level” we are on. There are certainly levels upon levels that a person can be on in the World To Come, for it is the “world of reward”, but our question is: Who is the kind of person that can live a life on This World that resembles the World To Come? Only someone who lives it and is found there.
An ignoramus, who does not learn Torah and who is sustained from the Torah others, certainly doesn’t live that kind of life. A Torah scholar, someone immersed in Torah, is one who can live a life that resembles the “Next World” already on This World. If someone cannot identify with such a place in his soul [in which there is nothing in the world other than Hashem and Torah], he is far removed from anything to do with the Next World.
Let us imagine the following simple example in our own lives. If we come to a person today and we tell him, “From Elul until Yom Kippur, for 40 days straight, when you are waiting to receive the second pair of Luchos, you will have absolutely nothing on This World. It will be just you and Hashem, Hashem and His Torah, and that’s it.” Can a person do that for 40 days straight, doing nothing else?
Let’s consider the three days preceding Shavuos (the y’mei hagbalah). Can a person just imagine three days in which there will be nothing in the world other than Hashem and Torah, and himself? (A person needs a chavrusa too, because “Either a chavrusa (friend) or death.”) But can a person be ready to live three days with nothing other than this, just him, Hashem, and the Torah? Would a person feel that these three days are a “resemblance of the World To Come”, or does he instead feel towards it like Hashem removing the sun from its sheath in the future, which will punish the wicked?
What does a person imagine towards it? If someone cannot fathom going for three days with nothing in his world other than Hashem and Torah, and it seems to him too far-fetched and not for our generation, and that we should just feel fine with learning Torah seriously for even five minutes – we must counter to this: “But Hashem has created a certain reality. He has created the situation of the Next World, and all people will need to reach it someday!”
This is not an issue of what personal madreigah (spiritual level) one is on. Rather, it is the general level of all of the madreigos which describe the Next World. Within it of course are many levels of madreigos, and there is no end to these levels, depending on how much Torah one has attained. But this is the picture of the life that we need to arrive at!
When we understand it, we can realize that This World is but a passageway to the Next World; it is like preparing on Friday afternoon for Shabbos, so that we will have what to eat on Shabbos. All that we do on This World is but a preparation stage for the Next World. What does it mean to prepare on this world for the next world? It means to reach a deep place in your soul where you are prepared to live such an existence, where there will be true spiritual pleasure, and not the opposite of pleasure, chas v’shalom. That is what it means to prepare for the Next World.
Of course, on This World, we also have the three pillars which the world stands on, which includes tefillah and chessed, and we have all the 613 mitzvos. These all give us holiness, but at the same time, they also obscure us from studying Torah on the perfected level, because we currently do not have the perfect level of Torah, for we live after the sin. But in the Next World, where all is rectified, where the perfected level of the End of Days is already realized, where “Hashem is One and His Name is one” – it is a realm where there is complete revelation of Shechinah – that is what life is like there! That is what our life will be like, because that’s the way it’s supposed to be!
If you want to visualize a perfect picture of what life should look like – what is the driving force in our life that will help us reach this perfect picture? It is to have a goal of reaching such a kind of life, in which there will be nothing in our life other than Hashem and His Torah. That is what a person should want, and that is what he should be enjoying. If one keeps reflecting on this point, he can eventually reach a point where he will want this to continue without pause. If he can envision such a thing, he is touching upon a “resemblance of the World To Come” in the soul. For how long will he be able to remain in such a space in himself? It will depend on how connected he is to this.
If he has a connection to this, he can already experience a “resemblance of the World To Come” here, in his own soul. (A higher level than this to become a “ben olam HaBa” (destined for the World To Come); here we are talking about the first step, which is to experience me’in olam haBa, a resemblance of the World To Come).
It is to imagine a life in which you are totally removed from everything on This World, and you are perfectly content with all that you remain with [nothing but Hashem and His Torah]. This is a truthful visualization to imagine, and one who has da’as (mature understanding) and who desires true life will visualize this many times. Slowly as a person gets used to this visualization, he will see what his current level is, and think of how to get to the next step. It will be a journey in his soul.
This imagination exercise is but one example of how you can personally connect yourself to the Torah (and it is in addition to what we said before about learning about the importance of Torah study). Anyone who desires to be a true ben Torah should try the above imagination exercise.
Advancing and Retreating
On the flip side, a person might counter to all of this, “But I have a wife and children, Baruch Hashem, and I also have physical needs.” That is all true, but a ben Torah needs to think about the following. The Torah says that in the three days preceding Shavuos, the men were told to separate from their wives. After they received the Torah, they then were told, “Return to your tents.” The meaning of “return” here is to return to your previous state, where you are not as elevated; but there is also a point in our soul in which we need to ascend to higher levels. This is also known as the concept of ratzu v’shav, “advancing and retreating”, in which we move back and forth between spiritual progression and regression. Our soul has a point of “shav”, where we return\retreat to our previous level, after we have become spiritually elevated. But our soul also has a point of “ratzu”, to advance – to reach for higher levels.
We must want to ascend to an existence in which there is nothing but Hashem and His Torah. After we reach higher levels we will certainly fall back onto our previous level, “return to your tents”, but we must also have a point in our soul in which we ascend to higher levels, where we want nothing other than Hashem and His Torah.
Practically Actualizing
If someone thinks that preparing for Shavuos means to close the doors to the Beis Midrash after the morning session starts so that anyone coming late won’t be able to enter, this is missing the whole point of preparing to receive the Torah. It is not incorrect to act this way, but it is simply an immature perspective, which misses the point. The point is to develop an attitude in our life in which we want to experience a “resemblance of the World To Come”.
Practically speaking, it is advisable for a person to set aside a few hours of the day of his Torah learning, where he views it as a blissful experience of experiencing a “resemblance of the World To Come”. If a person gets used to this, putting his heart into it and not simply as a habitual practice (which does not bring a person to the desired purpose, and it is just fleeting inspiration).
The point here is not to simply feel uplifted, or to become more immersed in one’s Torah learning, or to attain more clarity it; those are all wonderful qualities, but they are results of what we should want to achieve. What we should mainly want to achieve here is to feel how Torah learning is “a resemblance of the World To Come” on this world. For a little bit of time, a person can temporarily feel in his soul a resemblance of the World To Come, where he is disconnected completely from everything, and that has nothing in his life other than Hashem and His Torah.
When a person truly desires the World To Come, he seeks ways of how he can experience some of it already on This World. He can try learning Torah for several hours straight, consecutively and without interruption, in which he truly feels that has nothing in his life other than his Torah learning. He can try this twice a day as well. But in order to do this, one needs to expand both his mind and heart, as mentioned earlier. Every day, one should set aside time of the day in which he does not just learn Torah by rote, and to reflect before he begins to learn Torah: “Where do I want to go with this? What is the purpose?”
There are simpler reflections than this that one can make as well. But we are approaching the days preceding Shavuos, and it is worthy to contemplate this, even if one is not actually on the level of living like this all year round. Since it is the desired purpose of one’s life to reach this, it is worth it to have it at the forefront of our minds, even if a person can’t reach actually reach it yet.
When one gets used to the imagination exercise described here, his entire attitude towards his Torah learning will be overhauled. The point is not to enjoy the feeling of disconnecting from the world, which feels uplifting and which is certainly wonderful to experience. Rather, the point is to truly connect oneself to the purpose of life, to connect oneself to the World To Come as he is on This World.
In Conclusion
These words are but an opener that we should merit to enable ourselves to reach the inner, intended goal. May we merit, together, to truly live in a world which is entirely a world of Torah, a world which is entirely the world of Hashem. ■ Clip taken from the end of original hebrew audio shiur: ז”תשע תורה למתן הכנה – 031 שבועות
