It says about Hashem: “I, Hashem, have not changed.”
Hashem doesn’t change. The environment doesn’t touch Him and doesn’t affect him.
There are expressions from the Zohar that appear again and again in Sefer Nefesh Hachayim, such as ישראל ואורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא חד – “The Jewish people and the Torah and Hakadosh Baruch Hu are one,” and תורה דא קוב’’ה – “The Torah is Hakadosh Baruch Hu.”
Unlike other mitzvos, in which the mitzvah draws a person closer to Hashem, when a person learns Torah, it is as if he is learning Hashem Himself.
There are many types of spiritual greatness. We have tzaddikim, chassidim, yerei Shamayim, ohavei Hashem. But do we have tzaddikim today? Chazal say:
Tzaddikim are guided by the Yetzer Tov.
Everything a tzaddik does is directed by the Yetzer Tov. A tzaddik doesn’t just grab a cup of something to drink unless he actually needs to drink at that moment. And even then, only if the drink will really achieve its intended purpose. And if it has extraneous ingredients, such as flavors, a tzaddik will stay away from it.
Let’s say we want to buy a food product and we look at the list of ingredients and we have no idea what some of them are. We might comfort ourselves, saying that it is probably okay, it doesn’t look like anything is treif. But a tzaddik relates to a non-kosher food product as if it is poison. Until he knows for a hundred percent that it is genuinely kosher, he is afraid to touch it. Similarly, a word of lashon hara is to a tzaddik like being cut with a sharp knife.
Although we don’t have so many tzaddikim in our generation, and this is surely because we live in such corrupt times, but we do have a lot of talmidei chachamim. Why is this? Isn’t the state of our generation unconducive to learning Torah and gadlus in Torah, as well?
The answer is the only thing the surrounding environment cannot mar and damage is the Torah, and this is for the reason that the Torah is Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Learning Torah has such great kedushah that impurity has no connection to it at all. Tumah cannot touch it or affect it.
Words of Torah do not contract impurity.
Everything can become impure, except for words of Torah.
Since we live in an environment soaked with tumah, the only way we can guard ourselves is by learning the Torah Hakedoshah. This is the only wall that can protect us from the nefarious influence of the surrounding environment.
In the past, when Jews lived in shtetls, there were those who were ignorant and bereft of Torah learning. Some didn’t even know how to read and write. But due to the atmosphere of kedushah that prevailed in the shtetl, they were able to be mitzvah-observant even without Torah learning. This won’t work nowadays because an atmosphere of impurity has taken over. For people who don’t learn Torah, who don’t learn Torah with devotion and are not in a Torah framework, it is practically impossible for them to protect themselves from being affected by the environment.
Torah learning is the only defense we have. It is the only guarantee for protecting our Jewishness and that of our children. Only learning the holy Torah with devotion and self-sacrifice can do it.
