Only someone who is truly dedicated to doing what Hashem wants will be able to really grasp the ultimate Will of Hashem, as it exists in the Torah laws.
This is the meaning of the statement of our Sages, (Yevamos 109b) Whoever says that he only has Torah knowledge without true fear of Hashem, then even Torah knowledge he does not have,” and he remains in spiritual darkness despite his learning.
Since he lacks fear of Hashem, his knowledge of the Torah’s laws is only superficial and not their true intention, since only one who actually really cares about doing what Hashem wants will understand what Hashem wants.
But the truth is that in the seeming darkness of the Beraisos and in the Talmud Bavli, he reaches a deeper connection to Hashem, as it is written, (Tehillim 18:12) “He [Hashem] makes ‘darkness’ His hiding place,” meaning that even though this type of Torah study is ‘dark,’ nonetheless it is “His hiding place.”
Even though it requires more effort to see Hashem in this type of Torah study, since one has to deal with finding the halacha in situations involving unholiness, and in resolving many questions and contradictions in the Gemara, until he arrives at the correct conclusion, it is specifically in discovering the halacha in this ‘darkness’ that one connects to Hashem more deeply than if the halacha were obvious and dealt only with holy things. This is why it is called “Hashem’s hiding place.”
This is the meaning of ‘לִּפְנוֹת עָּרֶ ב-before night:’ ‘לְפ נ ו תַׁהָּע ר ב-to clear out the night’ and darkness, so that “at the time of night there should be light.”
For this reason, this type of learning is referred to as “ןו ביִל-whitening [clarifying] the halacha,” since the intention is to take the spiritual ‘darkness’ and make it ‘white,’ representing light and revelation.
Through a person attaining a true fear of Hashem, he will come to care about what Hashem wants, and he will be able to reveal Hashem in the seemingly ‘dark’ learning of Gemara, which discusses physical matters and unholy situations.
This is also the meaning of “making a bracha (blessing) on the Torah before learning.”
It says in the verse, (Yirmiya 9:11-12) “[Hashem says:] ‘Why was the Land [of Israel] lost? Because they [the Jewish People] abandoned my Torah.’”
Our Sages comment, (Nedarim 81b) “What is the meaning of this verse, that the Land was lost because they abandoned the Torah? We find that they learned Torah diligently and did not abandon it? The answer is that they didn’t make a bracha on the Torah before they learned it.”
Chassidus explains that making a bracha on the Torah doesn’t just mean saying the words of the bracha printed in the siddur. It really means that prior to learning Torah, one must come to appreciate the holiness of the Torah and how it connects us to Hashem. This comes from the morning prayers prior to Torah study, when a Jew awakens a love and fear for Hashem and recognizes that the yearning to connect to Hashem (that he awakens during prayer) can only be fulfilled by learning Torah.
The phrase “בֵּּ רְ כוּ בַתּוֹרָּה-they made a blessing on the Torah” can also be translated as “בֵּּ רְ כוּ בַתּוֹרָּה-they drew down into the Torah,” since ברוך can mean ‘to bless’ or ‘to draw down (bend down)’. This means that through the prayer before Torah study, we draw down Hashem’s Light into the Torah that we learn, revealing how Hashem is really “hiding Himself” in the Torah, and we connect to Him specifically there.
This completes the idea mentioned in the maamar, that when a Jew fears Hashem-the aspect of Yitzchok, then he ‘bends down’ into the ‘field,’ meaning he reveals how Hashem is ‘hiding’ in the darkness of the Gemara and Beraisa, which causes that the ‘night’ should be ‘cleared out’ and replaced with Light.
