Living Each Day as a Gift: Torah Through Self-Sacrifice

1“This is the Torah: when a man dies in a tent.”¹ Chazal said, “The Torah endures only in one who kills himself over it.”² The holy sefer Tiferes Shlomo raises a difficulty.³ Is it not written, “and live by them,” which Chazal expounded, “and not that he should die by them”?⁴ How, then, can the Torah ask a person to kill himself over it?

2aHe explains it in a wonderful way, with a great lesson for life. It is a known principle that “today is for doing them, and tomorrow is for receiving their reward,”⁵ for only in this world can a person engage in Torah and good deeds. So every day and every hour that he is in this world must be precious to him. While he is here, it is still in his power to repair everything and to learn Torah. But afterward, even if he were to give all the treasures of the world in order to return to this world for a single day and set right what he made crooked, they would not let him. As Chazal relate,⁶ on the day Reish Lakish left this world, his former companions died too: the wicked robbers he had left behind when he repented. They saw the honor shown to Reish Lakish on high and asked, “How is he different from us? Was he not with us, and did he not do what we did?” The answer was that he had left them to engage in Torah and good deeds. Then they begged, “Let us go back too, and we will repent and engage in Torah from now on!” They were told, “Now it is impossible. You should have repented while you were alive.”

2bThis is what the verse means by “This is the chok of the Torah,”⁷ a chok being a decree without a reason: you are to engage in Torah with complete teshuvah and longing, picturing to yourself that “a man dies in a tent.” Imagine that after his death he pleaded for his soul to be sent back to this world for one more day. How hard he would work at Torah, mitzvos and good deeds on the day they let him return! That is what Chazal meant by “Repent one day before your death.”⁸ Picture to yourself that this very day is the one Heaven has granted you, to repent before you die. Think of it as if Heaven were letting you come down to this world for one more day. Then the time would surely be as precious to you “as one who finds great spoil,”⁹ and you would engage only in Torah and mitzvos, so as not to lose even a moment.

3This is what Chazal meant: “The Torah endures only in one who kills himself over it.” Each day such a person imagines that he has already died, and he thinks of his death, Heaven forbid, as coming tomorrow. If he is still alive the next day too, it is a gift to him from Heaven: one more day to repent before the death he expects the day after. So all his life in this world is only for the sake of the Torah, day after day, as we saw with the one more day that Heaven grants. If a person would weigh this in his heart every single day, how precious every moment would be to him! He would occupy himself with Torah every hour and every moment. This is the true meaning of the verse “and live by them”: he has no life except in them, in the Torah and the mitzvos, as explained above. Those are the holy words of the Tiferes Shlomo.

4We may also explain “The Torah endures only …” in another way, along the lines of a teaching of Chazal: “Every mitzvah for which Israel gave itself over to death at a time of a government decree, such as the ban on idolatry and the mitzvah of circumcision, is still held firmly in its hands.”¹⁰ This shows that the foundation of any success, and of anything that lasts, is the power of mesirus nefesh, the readiness to give one's life. So too with the Torah: how can a person be privileged to acquire it, if not through mesirus nefesh alone? Every person needs it, if the Torah is to endure with him. And through it he will be privileged to fulfill “and live by them.” His Torah and mitzvos will be in the spirit of “and live,” and not “that he should die.” That is, he will remember the Torah and keep it, and the Torah will be alive in him, not, Heaven forbid, like a dead thing with no life in it.

5We find this at the giving of the Torah, when the Holy One, blessed be He, held the mountain over Bnei Yisrael like an upturned barrel.¹¹ Tosafos, the classic commentators on the Gemara, ask a well-known question: why did He hold it over them after they had already said, “We will do and we will hear”?¹² But as we have said, mesirus nefesh is the special power for acquiring the Torah: the Torah is acquired and endures with a person when he gives himself over to it. So right at the receiving of the Torah, Hashem planted this power in them. By this He also showed the way to the generations to come, that they too must have the power of mesirus nefesh, the power needed by everyone who wants the Torah to endure with him. That is why Hashem held the mountain over them: it hints that in every form of avodas Hashem, the service of Hashem, one must serve with mesirus nefesh.

6We can learn from what happened with Rava how much everyone who wants to receive the Torah needs this foundation.¹³ He was so absorbed in his learning that he was crushing his fingers under his feet without noticing, and his fingers spurted blood. A certain Sadducee said to him, “Rash people, who put your mouths before your ears! You still persist in your rashness. You should first have listened: if you were able, you would accept it, and if not, you would not accept it.” Rava answered him, “We, who walk in wholeheartedness, of us it is written, ‘The integrity of the upright will guide them …’”¹⁴ That is, everyone who wants to receive the Torah needs this foundation of mesirus nefesh, for without it no one can acquire the Torah. So Rava saw fit to answer him that it is right even now to hold fast to mesirus nefesh as a middah, a character trait. Then “one who comes to purify himself is helped from Heaven,” as the Maharsha writes there,¹⁵ and he is given the power of Torah according to the measure of his mesirus nefesh.

7This also explains R' Yochanan's words to Reish Lakish, “Your strength for Torah!” Rashi explains: “How fine your strength is for bearing the yoke of Torah.”¹⁶ Reish Lakish had been the head of a band of robbers, and that demands great strength and mesirus nefesh, for they might catch him and kill him. So at the start, when R' Yochanan was drawing him close to the Torah, he told him that the power of mesirus nefesh he had was the very power suited to receiving the Torah, the key to it. Through it the Torah would be acquired by him and endure with him, and through it he would surely be privileged to win the crown of Torah.

8May Hashem grant that we be privileged to serve Him with mesirus nefesh and bring the redemption near. Amen, may it be His will.