Thursday, June 19, 2014
Ethics of our Fathers: Chapter 3 Mishna 12: Make the Torah Practical
9:40 PM | 
Posted by
Rabbi Chaim Coffman |
"He used to say: 'anyone whose deeds exceed his wisdom, his wisdom shall endure; anyone whose wisdom exceeds his deeds, his wisdom shall not endure'"
The beginning of the Mishna tells us anyone whose deeds exceed his wisdom will endure. Why should this be the case? When a person does what he is supposed to do in his relationship with G-d, he will acquire wisdom. The actions of a person speak loudly about who the person is. If they continually do good deeds, then they will go in the path and attain wisdom as well.
This will make their learning stronger with greater meaning because they will exemplify what they learn and continue in that path. Learning will be a main priority in their life that will lead to continued good deeds.
On the other hand, when a person is only driven for "knowledge" it will not succeed in the long run. The reason is that the "learning" they are doing is nothing more than mental gymnastics. While they have the desire to know and understand things, even if they enjoy doing it, they don't put what they learn into into practice.
This is dangerous because what essentially happens is that a person can learn and learn but it will not help perfect his character development. The reason is that when we learn Torah, we are supposed to understand the teachings to the best of our ability and then live them! If we just learn for the sake of learning but the Torah has no effect on us, then what is the learning all about?
Even if a person would say that there are aspects of Torah that we learn that don't have practical ramifications or the G-d forbid don't make sense to us, nonetheless we get merit for learning it anyways. We have to learn and train ourselves that the Torah is still the word of G-d and as much as we learn, there are things that we won't understand to the fullest or things like the red heifer that are impossible to understand.
At the same time, we believe with perfect faith that everything in the Torah is from G-d and we have to make the best effort to learn it and keep it. This is why when our actions exceed our wisdom it will succeed because the Jewish people when they accepted the Torah they said "we will do and then we will hear." They didn't care what would be written in the Torah, they were willing to keep it at all costs!
They committed themselves to Do before they heard what was written in it! If we don't have that and we claim I will learn everything before I will keep it, it will not endure. That is because our character traits have not been developed properly and the wisdom that we are acquiring has no practical application to our lives!
The beginning of the Mishna tells us anyone whose deeds exceed his wisdom will endure. Why should this be the case? When a person does what he is supposed to do in his relationship with G-d, he will acquire wisdom. The actions of a person speak loudly about who the person is. If they continually do good deeds, then they will go in the path and attain wisdom as well.
This will make their learning stronger with greater meaning because they will exemplify what they learn and continue in that path. Learning will be a main priority in their life that will lead to continued good deeds.
On the other hand, when a person is only driven for "knowledge" it will not succeed in the long run. The reason is that the "learning" they are doing is nothing more than mental gymnastics. While they have the desire to know and understand things, even if they enjoy doing it, they don't put what they learn into into practice.
This is dangerous because what essentially happens is that a person can learn and learn but it will not help perfect his character development. The reason is that when we learn Torah, we are supposed to understand the teachings to the best of our ability and then live them! If we just learn for the sake of learning but the Torah has no effect on us, then what is the learning all about?
Even if a person would say that there are aspects of Torah that we learn that don't have practical ramifications or the G-d forbid don't make sense to us, nonetheless we get merit for learning it anyways. We have to learn and train ourselves that the Torah is still the word of G-d and as much as we learn, there are things that we won't understand to the fullest or things like the red heifer that are impossible to understand.
At the same time, we believe with perfect faith that everything in the Torah is from G-d and we have to make the best effort to learn it and keep it. This is why when our actions exceed our wisdom it will succeed because the Jewish people when they accepted the Torah they said "we will do and then we will hear." They didn't care what would be written in the Torah, they were willing to keep it at all costs!
They committed themselves to Do before they heard what was written in it! If we don't have that and we claim I will learn everything before I will keep it, it will not endure. That is because our character traits have not been developed properly and the wisdom that we are acquiring has no practical application to our lives!
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