An Experience that Stays with Us Forever
In this sichah, this is why Rebbe Nachman compares learning many sefarim hakedoshim to wealthy people who brag about their fancy vacation trips to all parts of the world. In essence, the wealthy people are saying, “I saw something that you never saw.” For us, of course, we don’t care at all about what we see in the material world. However, it is important for us to come to the Next World with many unique feelings of G-dliness that we receive by learning the sefarim hakedoshim. It is essential for us to reach the World to Come and to be able to say that we experienced something that no one else experienced. We studied a particular sefer that awoke within us a spectacular awe of Hashem. We learned another sefer that brought us to tears from the powerful love of Hashem that it ignited in our hearts.
This is what Rebbe Nachman hints to in this sichah: ”It is good for a person to be in all the holy places of the Torah so that he can boast in the Next World that he was in every place.” In other words, regarding the sefarim hakedoshim, it is important for us to invest more time and actually go to “visit” them. With other sefarim, it is enough for us to “look over” and “go through'' them when we can. However, when it comes to the sefarim that speak about yiras Shamayim and returning to Hashem – especially those that speak to us individually – we should actually “be” in those places and experience the sweetness of their teachings. We should take the time to have a real “vacation” in these sefarim, which renews our souls and gives us true yishuv hadaas. We should enjoy the amazing seichel of these sefarim that awakens us to serve Hashem and changes our perspective on life.
And even if we don’t remember all the details of what we learned, the light of these sefarim stays in our neshamah. This is what truly sticks with us. It gives us clarity in This World and helps us to serve Hashem to the best of our abilities, and all the more so it benefits our souls in the Next World for all eternity. In addition, when we reach the World to Come, we will regain all of the specific teachings that we forgot, as Rebbe Nachman says: ” And in the future – in the Next World – they remind a person everything that he learned in This World.”
