They quickly left the way that I commanded them; they made for themselves a molten calf. (Shemos 32:8)
This may be compared to a king who told his servants, “Guard these two goblets for me,” and they were very valuable objects. He said to them, “Be careful with them.” As the king entered his palace, there was a calf standing at the entrance to the palace. It gored the servant, and one goblet got broken. The servant was standing and shaking before the king. The king said to the servant, “Why are you shaking?” He answered, “Because the calf gored me and broke one of the two goblets.” The king replied, “If so, be aware and take care with the second one!”
So said Hakadosh Baruch Hu: You poured two goblets at Sinai, Naaseh v’Nishma. You broke Naaseh by making a calf before Me. Be careful about the Nishma. (Shemos Rabbah 27:9)
The Jewish people received two wondrous gifts from Hashem. They are Naaseh and Nishma. Naaseh means keeping the mitzvos, and Nishma means learning the Torah. When the Jewish people committed the sin of making the Golden Calf, they broke the Naaseh. The gift of keeping mitzvos broke, and mitzvah observance was no longer in a perfected state. Hashem came and told them to be careful about Nishma. As for the punishment for breaking Naaseh, that will be worked out later. But first of all, be careful about Nishma!
So says the Midrash quoted above.
I once heard a great person say that we can learn from this Midrash that after Cheit Ha’eigel, the main thing a Jew needs to do is Nishma, to learn the Torah. We need to put all our strength and energy into “taking care with the second one,” with ensuring that the wonderful gift of Nishma will not be broken.
Today we see this to be true when we do kiruv. If we take a Jew and explain to him the beauty of Torah and mitzvos, but we don’t set him up with a regular learning schedule of Gemara or Shulchan Aruch so he will be engaged in Torah study, in the end he is likely to leave it all and walk away. Only those who are drawn close to Judaism by Torah learning, although it might take longer, in the end they develop a taste for learning, and go on to build wonderful families with wonderful children.
Throughout the generations, every Jew knew this to be true and self-evident. The Rambam describes for us how a working man used to structure his day:
If he engaged in a trade, he would do his work for three hours a day, and engage in Torah learning for nine.
The Rambam lived hundreds of years ago, and nowadays we don’t have many working men like this. But we still remember the balebatim who would get up before daybreak to learn Torah before going to their jobs. There was no such thing for them as learning less than three hours a day. These working men would learn from four in the morning until seven, before davening, and then they came back from work at five in the afternoon, and learned again. They knew clearly that this is how they need to live their lives.
The biggest lie in the world is what we read in “history books.” There are a lot of books that describe the previous generations and tell of the lives of the shtetl Jews. There is a book that describes a Jew whose knowledge didn't extend much beyond snuff. Another description recounts how one person sneezed, and his friend said to him, “Gezunteit!” The goal of the whole book is to describe what a narrow, constricted life the previous generations lived, how they didn’t know anything about the world at large. This is a disgusting lie.
We need to understand that every Jew and Jewess, until a hundred years ago, lived with great valor. A biography about each one of them should have been written, but we did not merit this. There were “simple Jews” who finished Shas several times. We read and see the descriptions of the severe poverty that Jews suffered in the shtetl of yesteryear. But these descriptions say nothing of the beauty and the joy that each simple Jew experienced in this state of poverty.
In America, there is an expression, “The camera doesn’t lie.” But I ask whether there is any bigger lie than that of the camera? Let’s imagine a poor Jew who bought a lottery ticket with his last pennies, and won first prize, and didn’t have enough money to travel to the big city to cash in his ticket. What does he do? He walks.
Here he is, walking along in the blazing sun or heavy snow for hours and hours, without proper provisions, wearing tattered shoes.
And how does he feel?
Pay no attention to appearances. This Jew is overflowing with happiness. He doesn’t notice the hardships of the journey because he is focused on his goal. He is a millionaire on his way to pick up his riches.
Someone snaps a shot of this Jew trudging along his difficult way, hunched over and dripping with sweat. Does the picture depict him the way he really is? The picture shows a tattered, battered poor Jew. But in truth, he is a happy millionaire.
If someone would snap a shot of a Jewish shtetl, it’s the same thing. He can’t photograph how a Jew feels. Can someone describe how one feels after three hours of good, energetic learning with geshmak? The liveliness, the satisfaction, the intellectual stimulation? Can someone describe what it’s like to live in a shtetl without telephones, without the media, without newspapers, without anything, and to live every day, all day only with the Torah and with Hakadosh Baruch Hu? Can this be depicted?
It was obvious and self-evident to every Jew that the Torah is our life, and in it we find Hashem and eternity.
