Shlomo HaMelech urges a Yid: "Be utterly engrossed (tishgeh) with your love for Torah, constantly." Chazal explain that this all-consuming love of Torah should even cause a person to make mistakes (shogeg) and drop all his affairs in order to run and study Torah, and the Torah will look after him and cause him to find favor in the eyes of those around him.
To illustrate this, the Gemara describes how Rebbi Elazar ben Pedas would be so utterly engrossed in his learning that he would sit and study Torah in the lower market of Tzipori, without realizing that he had left his cloak in the upper market of Tzipori. It once happened that someone tried to steal his cloak from the upper market, but found it protected by a poisonous snake.
(עירובין נד,ב, רש"י ור"ח, ומהרש"א בחדא"ג שם)
Once while seated and deeply engrossed in his learning, Rava placed his hands under his feet, pressing his fingers so hard that they began to bleed. Yet, being completely absorbed in his learning, he did not feel a thing.
A nearby heretic ridiculed him, "You people are so rash! Just as you accepted the Torah hastily, without asking questions and without knowing its difficulty!"
Rava replied, "We follow HaShem in simple innocence, and He protects us."
From this exchange, the Rebbe derives that one's approach to Torah should not be logical and calculated, but unreserved, and with total dedication.
(שבת פח סע"א וברש"י שם)
There was once a chossid who lived in seclusion and spent his time serving HaShem. When he eventually returned to civilization, he became a shammes in a shul, where no one recognized his greatness. Once the local rov observed that as he filled the lamps with oil, some of it spilled over the side. The rov recognized that this was not out of clumsiness, but out of dveikus and kavana: the mind of the shammes was preoccupied with higher things. He was so overawed by what he saw that he informed the kehilla of the man's greatness, and told them, "This shammes should really be the rov, and I should serve under him."
(ס' חסידים כת"י, בראשית חכמה שער הקדושה פ"ג)
Engrossed in Chassidus
Reb Binyomin Kletzker was able to be so deeply engrossed in Chassidus that he would be utterly oblivious to whatever was going on around him. Once, while walking home from shul holding his tallis and tefillin, he got lost in thought. It was a market day and he put down his tallis bag on one of the merchant wagons of the goyim. He rested his foot on the axle of the wagon and carried on thinking. In the meantime, the goy finished his business, loaded his wagon and drove away. So engrossed in thought, Reb Binyomin stood with his foot that had been on the axle now up in the air, and after a while lowered his foot, though still lost in thought. Only the need to daven Mincha in time woke him up from his thoughts.
As the wagon driver was leaving town, he offered some of the produce that he was selling to a Yid who was passing by. The tallis and tefillin caught his eye, and he managed to return them to Reb Binyomin.
(רשימת היומן ע' רמד)
That winter in Lubavitch was particularly bitter, and Reb Yosef was on his way home in a horse-drawn sled on a dangerously slippery and bumpy path. The sled shook so violently from side to side, that the poor fellow fell overboard into the snow. Unfortunately, the driver didn't notice and continued on without him, and Reb Yosef, immersed in deep concentration, felt not a thing of the freezing snow in which he was sitting. A while later, a group of chassidim passed by and saw him sitting there in the snow. When they asked what on earth he was doing there, he looked surprised and replied, “I'm on my way to Lubavitch!”
(רשימות דברים ח"א עמ' רכז)
Reb Shlomeh der Geler, a chossid of the Rebbe Rashab, worked as a builder's assistant, and he and the builder would discuss Chassidus while working. Once, while building a wall, they were so raptly engrossed in their chassidic discussion that Reb Shlomeh found himself unintentionally enclosed behind the wall! When they realized this, they had to break it down to take him out.
(סיפורים חסידיים ח"א ע' 201)
On Acharon shel Pesach תשכ"ג (1963), the Rebbe challenged the constant rush and pressure that characterizes the American lifestyle. For example, instead of being totally absorbed in the midst of a shiur that they are learning, Yidden can find themselves already thinking about finishing.
"Such learning is only undertaken in order to be yoitzei – to get it over with. It lacks the chayus and the characteristic singsong with which Yidden have always learned. They could not imagine learning otherwise. Today, however, when the phone rings, even before knowing if the call is important, some people immediately shut the Gemara or the maamar and hurry to answer it.
"Why is that call so important to you right now? Right now you're speaking on the phone with HaShem!"
(תו"מ חל"ו ע' 332)
Consider
Why are these individuals being praised for their absentmindedness? Should they be mimicked? What is there to be gained by being so absorbed in learning? Can't one accomplish the same results without losing oneself?
