It shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life. (Devarim 17:19)
The Rambam rules that a Jewish king must write two Torah scrolls:
He leaves one of them in his storehouses, for he is commanded to write it, just like every other Jew is, and the other one shall never leave his presence, except when he enters the toilet or the bath house or another place that is unfit for reading it. When he goes out to battle, it shall be with him, and when he comes back, it shall be with him. When he sits in judgment, it shall be with him, and when he reclines to eat, it shall be across from him, as it says יוּמִים כָּל יְמֵי חַיָּיו – “It shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life.”
Lest we think this halachah is for kings, not for us, we should keep in mind the following:
Rabbis are called kings.
And the Talmudic term רבנן, “Rabbis,” applies to all who dedicate themselves to Torah study. Accordingly, we should take our “Torah scroll” with us, or more exactly, the Gemara we are learning, the Masechta we are connected to, wherever we go. We should not part with it or take our minds off it. “It shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life.”
Wherever we go, our Gemara should be in our hand. If we need to go down to the health clinic, or to the grocery store, we should always, always hold the Gemara we are learning in our hand – even if we know we won’t be able to learn from it. Maybe we will actually have a chance to look inside the book, who knows? In no case should we leave the Gemara behind.
A Jew who just learns Daf Yomi, but learns the maseches to the end, will often take the maseches with him wherever he goes, and looks in the Gemara from time to time. This is the simple fulfillment of the mitzvah we recite several times a day: ואהבת את ה' אלקיך – “You shall love Hashem your G-d.”
If we try to do this, we will see our lives change completely. Our lives will be completely connected to the Torah and to He Who gave us the Torah.
This whole issue is very relevant today. In whatever way, for whatever reason, it is always asur to alter a halachah at all. Many people don’t stand up to the challenge. For example, let’s say a non-Jew asks whether it is allowed desecrate Shabbos to save the life of a non-Jew. If you say it is, you are altering a halachah, and that is not okay.
Or let’s say you are working in kiruv, and a Halachic question arises. The person posing the question is not yet on the path of Torah observance, and you are afraid that if you give him a straight answer to his question, it will turn him off from Torah. In such a case, you should try to avoid answering the question directly. But don’t say something that is the opposite of the halachah, because that would be denying the Torah.
In such situations, try to ask a Halachic authority how to act.
