The Righteous Man
In the first chapter in Tehillim, the righteous man is described, אַשְׁרֵי הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָלַךְ בַּעֲצַת רְשָׁעִים – How fortunate is a man who didn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked. Even if he doesn't do anything good, just not to go in the ways of the wicked he’s already a lucky man. וּבְדֶרֶךְ חַטָּאִים לֹא עָמָד – And he doesn’t stand on the path of the sinners, וּבְמוֹשַׁב לֵצִים לֹא יָשָׁב – he didn’t sit in the place where leitzim sit, kibitzers sit, empty people. No; he doesn't mix with them.
So what does he do? If he does nothing, that creates a vacuum. If you're not sitting in the gambling parlor, if you're not standing in OTB, if you’re not hanging around the tavern, if you're not in the salon, so where are you? כִּי אִם בְּתוֹרַת ה' חֶפְצוֹ – His desire is in the Toras Hashem. That's what this man does instead of what other people do. He’s ashrei! He’s the most fortunate one because his heart is in the Torah of Hashem.
But then, right after that, it continues describing that same person and it says וּבְתוֹרָתוֹ יֶהְגֶּה יוֹמָם וָלָיְלָה – and in his Torah, he thinks day and night. Whenever he gets a chance he opens a sefer and studies his Torah.
Whose Torah?
So the Gemara notices a change here. First it says ‘בְּתוֹרַת ה', he desires the Torah of Hashem. It’s called Hashem’s Torah. And then it says בְּתוֹרָתוֹ – in his Torah he meditates. His passion is in his own Torah. So what is it, Hashem’s Torah or is it this man’s Torah?
So the Gemara says – and pay attention because this will help us understand what Chanukah really is – that in the beginning it’s Toras Hashem, Hashem’s Torah. But after a while it becomes toraso, his own Torah.
Here a boy, a little boy, comes into yeshiva, and they show him seforim, books. They're all strange. They’re not his books. He’s accustomed to little coloring books. He’s accustomed to books about Mendy and Hendy and now he's being introduced to a strange world, a world of Abaye and Rava. He doesn't know these strange people.
But after a while it becomes his; Rava and Abaye and Rav Ashi become his. The Gemara becomes his book. It's not only that he feels that the chachmei haTalmud were a fine group, worthy of our admiration. He became identified with them – they're his ancestors, his heroes, his people – and whatever they said, whatever attitudes they held, became his.
At first when you learn, you hear what the Mishnah says, alright, the Mishnah is saying it; but after a while, you become so imbued, so saturated with the ideals, that it’s your Torah – you want to carry it out. It’s my Torah! It started out being Toras Hashem but when you keep on practicing it and studying it and thinking about it and talking about it, after a while it gets into your blood and becomes who you are. The Torah ideals are coursing through your veins and they become your ideals. The attitudes of the Torah become your attitudes. And therefore, it's called Toraso, his Torah.
Arguing For My Torah
I remember an episode from almost sixty years ago, when a boy came from out West to our yeshiva; he didn’t know anything and one of my chaveirim wanted to influence him so he started from the beginning. He started with proving that there’s Hashem, brias ha’olam, yesh meayin, all the yesodos ha’emunah.
I said, “That’s not the way to do it. If you’re going to start from the beginning with him, he’s been brought up the other way and so, he’ll challenge you at every step. You’ll start teaching him emunah? No. Start teaching him the Gemara right away. Get him involved in Gemara.”
You know why? Because once he gets into the spirit of the Gemara, he identifies with the Gemara. When he first came into the yeshiva the Torah was something else, someone else’s business. He was willing to look inside but it’s not his. But it becomes his! He’s arguing now for Abaye, he’s defending the sevaros of the Chachmei HaShas, and even without thinking he has already become a defender of the Torah. The ideas become his ideas, his Torah.
You know what happened to him? I’m not going to say his name – he probably doesn’t want to be identified – but he became a big fighter for his Torah. He’s building yeshivos now because it’s his business.
Identifying With The Torah
That’s what it means to be a Torah Jew, when the Torah becomes your business. Tznius, for instance, is not something we do because the Torah says so. No, tznius, that’s my business! That’s how it has to be! Anything else is disgusting to me; it’s nauseating how they dress in the street.
Chesed? I do chesed not because it’s an obligation. I do it because it’s my business. A man, he takes out his checkbook from his drawer and he's writing out a tzedaka check, he’s doing his own business. Supporting the poor kollel man with fifteen children, that's his business, no less than when he writes checks in the factory, making orders, paying his employees. To help his fellow Jew, to do mitzvos, to marry off orphans, to smile at his fellow Jew, that’s his business.
And therefore after a man becomes identified with the Torah, that man now is ashrei. How fortunate is a man that now it’s his business! You’re not fighting for Toras Hashem. You’re fighting for your own business; it’s your private business.
He's not fighting for the rabbis. He's not fighting for the yeshivos. He's fighting for himself.
The Torah’s Enemies Are My Enemies
And when he has to stand up against the wicked people, the wicked ideals, he’s not standing up only against enemies of the Torah. They’re his enemies! הֲלוֹא מְשַׂנְאֶיךָ ה' אֶשְׂנָא – Hashem don’t I hate Your enemies (Tehillim 139:21)? If they’re the enemies of the Torah, I hate them too; they’re enemies of mine. The reformers, the atheists, the reconstructionists, the evolutionists, they’re enemies of my ideals, of my attitudes.
You cannot be wishy-washy like the Modern Orthodox, “Oh, the mushchasim? We have compassion on them. Let them be members of the shul. Let them get married in the synagogue.”
What do the Orthodox Jews say? I’m talking about the real ones. “Nothing doing! It’s toeivah! We’ll demonstrate against it! We’ll fight against it! We’ll mobilize public opinion against it! Because you’re an enemy not only of Hashem’s Torah. And I won’t pass the buck, because it’s my Torah! It’s my business and I won’t let the ideals of my Torah be trampled underfoot.”
