Thought That Reaches the Heart

Rav Hutner asked what machshovoh, Jewish thought, is meant to do. If it is only a system of ideas, it becomes dry and lifeless, and it can even do harm, like any knowledge that is cut off from commitment. Yet in our age even sincere people can be left cold by the cold rationalism of the world around us, which is the power of Amalek. Our minds must be reached together with our hearts. Over the past hundred and thirty years the yeshivos tried different ways to join them. Rav Hutner’s way was to explain and define ideas in the language of the mind, so that each point also stirred the heart to love and fear Hashem. He wrote that the awakening of the duties of the heart comes directly out of the toil to understand the divrei Torah that define them.