Now some people, when they hear all this, they become somewhat irritated: “That’s what you’re going to expect of us now? It’s not enough that we do everything accurately but now you want us to appreciate everything accurately too?”
“We have to be excited about mitzvos?! Excited about tefillin and tzitzis and kosher cereal? We have to be excited about aveiros? Even eggs we have to be excited about?! There are so many things to think about! What kind of life is that?”
And the answer is, that’s the life that we’re expected to live. That's the purpose of living – to value the things that are valuable; and not to undervalue them. Not just to do, not just lip-service. It’s a matter of degrees of understanding. Otherwise it’s leitzanus.
No Middle Class
And therefore the only way is to spend time thinking about the ideals and attitudes we see in the Torah and to train ourselves to appreciate them fully. That's why learning Torah and learning Torah ideology are of the utmost necessity. In order to appreciate what should be appreciated, the only way is to listen to the Torah and to learn what is worthwhile in this world, what's important in the world. We're all leitzim unless we learn not to be.
That’s what Dovid Hamelech says in the beginning of his Tehillim. He’s talking there about keeping away from leitzim, about how important it is to not sit with scoffers. So you might think that’s all; if you say good-bye to the leitzim, you’re good. “No!’ says Dovid. ה∆ּ‚¿ה∆י ֹו ָ̇רֹו ̇¿בּו ֹוˆ¿פ∆ח 'ה ַ̇רֹו ̇¿ּב םƒ‡ יƒּכ הָל¿יָלָו םָמֹיו – Only in the Torah of Hashem should be his desire and in His Torah he should meditate by day and by night. You hear that adjunct? Here we're talking about avoiding leitzim and he suddenly jumps to something else – to studying Torah.
So you see it’s a straight jump from leitzim to a man whose only desire is Toras Hashem. What about in between? What about the nice middle class? The answer is there is no middle class. If it's not Toras Hashem, it’s leitzanus.
Keep Gluing Yourself
And so, it’s not as simple as people think. You need a great deal of training of the mind to not be a leitz. Without Torah understanding, it’s impossible because everything important becomes trivialized, minimized. You must sharpen your chush, your sense of da’as, in order to realize the tremendous value of Torah attitudes.
And therefore the only way not to be a leitz who downplays this and downplays that, the only solution is to keep glued to the Torah. Otherwise he’s thinking, “Yes, I understand. Yes, you must do this and that but why do you need to talk about it so much? Why do you have to make a big deal about it? It's self-understood.”
No, it’s not self-understood at all. Maybe you’ll know something, you’ll be able to say it over, but you’ll never appreciate it enough. To a certain extent you’ll always be a scoffer. It's only by learning and concentrating on these subjects that a person becomes excited about these things.
You Think You Know
That’s why I recommend coming to these lectures not once. Some people come once, they come a few times, and they think that it’s enough. “I got the schnitt,” he says. “I know Rabbi Miller’s Torah, his message. I know all about it.” No, that’s nothing yet. Just because you imagine you know something doesn’t mean you value it.
The truth is that if you walked in here and heard just a few lectures your mind is not going to change so quickly anyhow because in your head is all the stupidity of the street. All the foolishness, all the crazy ideals that you’ve gathered from the magazines and from the television and from what other women at the Mizrachi Ladies' Society will tell you – all the leitzanus. If you go to Mizrachi women’s teas, you’re going to pick up all the ‘good’ ideas; not to have babies and to have expensive furniture and so on and all the other ideals that empty-headed people cherish and think that’s what you should live for.
Come Again
But when you'll come frequently to good places – I don't say only here; there are other good places but here I take the liberty to lambast you sometimes and so maybe here you'll get it more forcefully than elsewhere. And maybe you'll learn that there are better things in life, there are greater things in life. You’ll learn what it is that’s valuable in this world.
That’s why I think we should prize these Thursday night talks. Idealists come here and therefore I try to raise myself up to the quality of my guests and I talk to you on the subject of Torah idealism. And so it’s a good idea to come here again and again. It seems to be repetitive? Good. Repetition is very good. It’s the way to build up a skyscraper of a Torah mind.
But even that is not enough. Because leitzanus is always lurking. And that’s the biggest danger to idealism – the leitzanus that says, ‘Nah, it’s not so important.’ And the power of leitzanus is that it can upend a skyscraper of idealism that took a lot of effort and a long time to build up.
The Mesillas Yesharim puts it this way: ּ̇נוָˆי≈ל ֹ̇חוָכֹוּ ̇ הָ‡≈מ הָחֹוּ„ ַ̇חַ‡ – One leitzanus can set aside one hundred lessons of tochacha. A tochacha means if a Sage is talking to the public – let’s say, Yeshaya HaNavi is addressing a number of people; you understand if Yeshaya HaNavi is talking so he has something good to say. So imagine now after Yeshaya got through talking once and the people absorbed the lesson and they were mightily impressed, tremendously impressed. And this happened a hundred times. These people came one hundred times to listen to the navi to his tochachos, his hartzaos.
Demolishing Skyscrapers
After the hundredth time – the listeners are riding high now. They look at the world with different eyes; the important things are now important in their eyes. But as they’re walking out from the hall where Yeshaya was talking or away from the field where he’s giving his nevuah, a leitz was standing there and he makes some kind of a wisecrack: “Ho, ho, ho, you heard some good stuff from Yeshaya in there? Now you can be an even bigger frummak.”
It doesn’t mean he’s an apikoris. It doesn’t mean he mocks you about keeping Shabbos or learning Torah. But he ridicules your idealism. “You have to think about Hashem all the time? You have to think about the eggshell when you’re eating breakfast? That’s a good one!”
The entire skyscraper comes crashing down! Whatever was erected in your mind – idealism, understanding, attitudes of intending to accomplish in your life, wanting to make something out of yourself, attitudes of appreciating what’s important in this world – it all comes crumbling down. That’s the power of leitzanus. A leitz will say just one word to you, one wisecrack, and he knocks down the skyscraper of idealism. The whole thing explodes into smoke. Nothing remains.
