Learning That Acts: Torah That Shapes the Soul

1“You shall not defile the land in which you dwell, in whose midst I dwell, for I am Hashem, Who dwells among Bnei Yisrael.”¹ At first glance the words “in which you dwell” are puzzling. Of course they dwell in the land; that is exactly why He warns them not to defile it. The double wording also needs explaining: “in whose midst I dwell,” and then “for I am Hashem, Who dwells among Bnei Yisrael.”

2We must also ask why the cities of the Levites, of all cities, were chosen as the cities of refuge. In fact, the Gemara explains that all the Levites' cities give refuge, except that they do so only ledaas, when the killer comes there knowingly, intending to take refuge; and the Rambam rules the same.²

3Let us first cite the Gemara: “Why did the land perish …? Because they did not recite the blessing over the Torah first.”³ The Rishonim, the early authorities, among them the Ran in the name of Rabbeinu Yonah, raise a well-known question here.⁴ The Gemara implies that they did learn the Torah and keep its mitzvos, and only failed to recite the blessing over the Torah. Why, then, were they punished so severely for so light a sin?

4aThis will become clear from words I heard from my holy father and teacher, zt"l, explaining a teaching of the early Midrash Tanna Devei Eliyahu: “As soon as Israel said, ‘We will do and we will hear,’ the Holy One, blessed be He, at once said, ‘Let them take for Me an offering.’”⁵ He explained its intent this way. We know that “the goal of Torah is teshuvah and good deeds”:⁶ to learn and to fulfill. That is what Bnei Yisrael meant when they said naaseh, “We will do,” at Mount Sinai. To do, one must of course first “hear” what to do; yet they put “We will do” first. They meant that they would learn our holy Torah in the way of “We will do”: the words of the Torah would do something to us, making and setting an imprint of holiness in the body.

4bOnly afterward did they say “and we will hear,” meaning that hearing and learning the Torah by themselves are not the main thing. The main thing is “We will do”: that the words of the Torah become fixed in our souls, to repair them and to guide them only by Hashem's will. Once they had reached such a level, they could be privileged to receive Hashem's command, “Let them take for Me an offering.” For the purpose of building the Mishkan was not merely a structure of wood and stones. The main thing was that they prepare their souls for Hashem to dwell within them. That is “We will do,” as we explained: everything a person hears and learns should act upon his soul, to repair it and to make it yield entirely to Hashem. That is why the Tanna Devei Eliyahu set the two side by side. Those are his holy words.

5aIn this way we can explain all the points we raised. The blessing over the Torah begins, “to engage in the words of Torah.” The poskim, the halachic authorities, the Bach [cited in the Eliyah Rabbah] and the Taz, discuss why we say “to engage” and not “to learn,”⁷ and their answer is well known. But in light of what we have said, we may add another explanation. One must learn Torah as “one who learns in order to do and to fulfill,”⁸ so that the Torah he learns leads him, as a matter of course, to do only the will of Hashem stated in the Torah. In other words, his Torah learning should be a kind of esek, an active engagement: the learning should be at work, engaged in repairing and binding his soul, so that his soul inclines of itself to do only mitzvos and good deeds.

5bSo, too, my holy ancestor cites in his holy sefer Toldos Adam,⁹ in the name of R' Menachem Mendel of Rimanov, zt"l, that from the time R' Menachem Mendel learned the Mishnah “A person is always mu'ad, fully liable for damage, whether awake or asleep,”¹⁰ he never again caused damage to anyone. For this is how the tzaddikim learned the Torah of God: they let it work on their souls, so that the Torah would bring them to keep it, and they subjected themselves to the Torah's will. In the same way, every person must see to it that the learning itself is “in order to do and to fulfill”: his Torah learning should work on his soul so strongly that he inclines and yields only to fulfilling Hashem's will, as he learned it in His holy Torah. This makes clear the wording of the blessing, “to engage in the words of Torah.” The goal is not only to learn; the learning must engage and act upon his soul, so that his soul, of itself, inclines and yields only to the mitzvos and good deeds stated in the Torah.

6Since Hashem's will in giving His holy Torah was not learning alone but also keeping and guarding its mitzvos, the land perished because they did not first recite the blessing over the Torah, “to engage in the words of Torah.” That is, before they came to learn, they did not declare that their aim was “to engage”: that all their learning was for the sake of teshuvah and good deeds. So the main thing was missing from a person's wholeness, for in this way one makes the wisdom of the Torah, Heaven forbid, like all the other wisdoms of the world. This is a grave sin, and so they were punished for it with the destruction of the land.

7Now we can understand why the unintentional killer goes into exile to the place where the Levites live. If, even after he has learned Torah, he could, Heaven forbid, come to kill a Jewish soul, even unintentionally, this proves that he did not learn the Torah properly, “in order to do and to fulfill.” Torah learned as it should be would have worked on his soul so that he could not transgress Hashem's will. So his tikkun, his repair, is to join the Levites and learn this way from them. The Rambam describes at the end of Hilchos Shemittah VeYovel how the Levites learned Torah and how devoted they were to it: they are “the army of Hashem,” and Hashem is their portion and their inheritance.¹¹ When the killer lives among them and sees what the Levites' Torah learning looks like, this will bring him to his repair. So it is easy to understand why he was sentenced to exile in the portion of the Levites, of all places.

8a[This explains the Gemara's statement that the killer was given two Torah scholars to escort him, so that the go'el hadam, the victim's avenging relative, would not kill him on the way; they would speak words of warning to the avenger.¹² But why did Torah scholars have to leave their learning to go with the killer? It would have been enough to send ordinary educated people who knew how to speak to the avenger's heart, so that he would not take the man's life, since the deed was done unintentionally. A little knowledge of halachah would suffice for this; there was no need for scholars engaged in Torah in particular.]

8b[But according to what we have explained, the killer's sin begins with bittul Torah, neglect of Torah study. That is why he is given two Torah scholars: so that they can begin learning with him at once, as he goes to the city of refuge. This is also the reason for Chazal's saying, “A student who goes into exile, his teacher is exiled with him.”¹³ The guilt rests on his teacher, who did not properly instill daas Torah, the understanding that comes from Torah, in his student, and that is how such a deed came about. So his teacher goes into exile with him, to teach him Torah in the city of refuge. From then on the teacher will instill in him the daas Torah to walk in good and upright ways, and through this his soul will be repaired.]

9aWith this we can understand the verse with which we began: “You shall not defile the land in which you dwell, in whose midst I dwell.” You dwell in the land for the reason Dovid HaMelech gave: “He gave them the lands of the nations … so that they might keep His statutes and guard His teachings.”¹⁴ This is the meaning of “in which you dwell, in whose midst I dwell”: your dwelling in the land depends on your keeping the Torah and mitzvos, since it is the Holy Land, in whose midst Hashem dwells.

9bThat is why He said, “You shall not defile,” because “I am Hashem, Who dwells among Bnei Yisrael.” You keep the Torah, and that is why you dwell in the land; but the goal of keeping it is that I, Hashem, should dwell within each one of you. We should feel that the Shechinah is within us and that everything is full of holiness and purity, and the land must not be defiled. Then, as a matter of course, Bnei Yisrael will not harm one another, even unintentionally. We can learn this from the cities of refuge, as we have explained. That is why this verse closes the passage of the cities of refuge: to teach us that the main thing in keeping and learning the Torah and mitzvos is to fix in our souls that “I, Hashem, dwell” within us. This is the opposite of what caused the exile: [learning that does not act upon the soul].

10This is what Chazal meant on the verse “Who strikes … bivli daas, without knowledge”: “‘Knowledge’ means nothing other than Torah.”¹⁵ For a person can have Torah in the way of putting “We will do” first, where the main thing is the doing: the effect that Torah learning has on his soul, so that of himself he does only Hashem's will. If he has Torah of this kind, he will certainly not kill, even unintentionally.

11May Hashem grant that we be privileged to truly learn and teach in this way, with learning in the spirit of “We will do” and of “to engage in the words of Torah.” May our aim in the learning itself be to work on our souls, so that we keep the whole Torah and its mitzvos. Through this may the verse be fulfilled in us: “A redeemer shall come to Zion, and to those in Yaakov who turn back from transgression.”¹⁶ Amen, may it be His will.