"When they offer strange fire" (Leviticus 10:1): "When a person engages in Torah study, when a person engages in holy matters, but not for the sake of Heaven, not according to his level, not according to the simplicity and innocence that belong to him, he learns Torah improperly. This is called offering strange fire! Nadav and Avihu were lofty saints whom we cannot comprehend; they merited and departed from the world, remaining true righteous individuals. When a person merits, he departs from the world but remains a righteous individual, and if he does not merit and continues in his mistake without doing teshuvah, he becomes a Jewish demon.
And Lavan was a Torah scholar, a Jewish demon whose Torah was for self-aggrandizement and thievery... And such a Torah scholar is a good-for-nothing corpse... And Jacob kissed Rachel, and he raised his voice and wept" - Our Rabbi teaches in Torat Yavneh that all the encounters that our patriarch Jacob had with Rachel were only to establish the Jewish people as a treasured nation. And at the moment he met her, he received such a holy spirit that he saw that his entire plan, all his aspiration, all his mission, would fail due to the students who were not proper, who would pervert the Talmud and Torah to serve their arrogance. "And he raised his voice and wept" - our patriarch Jacob wept! He saw through the holy spirit how much the Jewish people would still suffer and go through exile, all because of students who were not proper, who could not withstand the trial and would fail due to their arrogance and haughtiness.
The conditions that connected the Gemara did not connect the Gemara in order to tell us more wisdom. They could have written Halachic rulings like the Shulchan Aruch and finished! Why all the back and forth in the Gemara? Why all the articles in the Gemara? Every Amora, every Tanna, could have issued several Halachic rulings of his own based on what he received from his teachers, and that would be it! But the holy Gemara has the power to inspire the Shechinah. Through studying and toiling in Torah, we give strength to return the Shechinah to the people of Israel. Through the toil of learning, we return the Divinity to the people of Israel. The Rebbe revealed how the Redemption will come: it will come only through proper Gemara study. The Ba'al Shem Tov knows that everything will be in the merit of learning Gemara! The Ba'al Shem Tov knows full well what the voice of holy Gemara learning accomplishes! He knows that every word in the holy Gemara is a combination of holy names! The Ba'al Shem Tov knows that through studying Gemara, through studying Torah for its own sake, a person receives the strength to serve God, to pray with intention, to engage in self-seclusion. Therefore, the most difficult challenge is in learning Gemara.
"And the Yetzer Hara (evil inclination) becomes even stronger to cause the person to stumble when he learns with pride."
When a person learns, he naturally receives a sense of pride from the learning, and this pride has two aspects: he has pride in what he has learned, that he is wise and a genius, and he also receives pride in mocking and deriding others. This is what our sages explain in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 2:14, that there are some who learn and constantly mock the righteous, even though those righteous individuals are greater than them in learning! Nonetheless, they mock them. When we learn Torah, our goal is not just to become geniuses, but rather our goal is that through our learning we will become closer to Hashem (God), feel His presence, pray with more intention, and feel the love of Hashem, as King David said, "As for me, the nearness of God is my good."
When a person sees that they have been learning Torah for many years and still haven't made any progress, they develop a resentment in their heart towards the Torah. They wonder why the Torah hasn't advanced them, after all, they decided to learn Torah! They didn't just randomly decide to do it! They wanted to become a new person! In the end, they see that they haven't changed at all, they remain the same with the same bad qualities, and those bad qualities have even become worse! They don't understand what is happening here, it seems as if the Holy One, blessed be He, is too weak to help them. Our Rabbi teaches in Pirkei Avot that the mistake lies in the fact that the person needs a true tzaddik, a suitable Torah scholar to guide and teach them how to learn Torah for its sake, how to break their pride during study time, how to learn Gemara and still remain humble and modest. Because in order for the Torah to move something within a person's inner system, for their qualities, nature, and inclinations to change, they need to find such a tzaddik, who is called an angel of the Lord of Hosts - as it is written, "For the priest's lips should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth" (Malachi 2:7). And when they don't have such a tzaddik, it is difficult for them to find the right path. They learn Torah, they have a lot of knowledge, they can become great geniuses, they can become the greatest advisers in the world! But it is like Ahithophel who rose to the rank of Urims and Thummims, and yet he has no share in the world to come.
The Zohar says: "The Holy One, blessed be He, gazed into the Torah and created the world." This means that those who study Torah hold the keys to the world. Torah scholars hold the keys to the existence and continuity of the world, and when they hold the keys properly, with humility and diligence, the world thrives through proper Torah study - nations live, nations create, nations build, and nations continue to exist. However, when they hold the keys improperly, nations are destroyed, nations conquer each other, nations destroy each other, and the earth trembles. All the disasters that are heard every day all over the world are caused by improper Torah study. This is due to the words "Lo K'dacha Yaut," which means "not as it should be." These words destroy the world! Because the world only stands on the words of Torah, the world only stands on the letters and words of the Torah that are constantly studied by those who learn it. When Torah is studied as it should be, the world is sustained. But if Torah is not studied properly, the world is destroyed.
"To study Torah with humility and meekness."
A person who decides to study Torah becomes the master of the world! And when he studies Torah with humility and meekness, and knows that he is less than everyone else, he does not speak against anyone, he does not mock anyone, he studies Torah with half, with prayers with intention, and then he is worthy that his Torah sustains the world. But if he does not follow this path, it is the reason for all the destruction and devastation in the world.
Every day a voice comes out and cries, "Woe to the creatures for the insult of Torah" - if you study Torah, you will know! You have received a device to control the whole world! You rule the world! You give life to the world! You are responsible for the world! When a spacecraft is sent into space, thousands of experts stand below in the control room, watching all the lights, all the bulbs, to make sure everything works properly, and if there are humans in the spacecraft, they are even more concerned and monitor that everything works and functions properly! So that there is no harm to humans. And the analogy is that a person who studies Torah receives a spacecraft! He receives control! He receives the whole earth with billions of people, he rules over the whole earth, and all the lights and all the bulbs and all the communication devices on this spacecraft, on the earth, are operated only by these holy letters, only by the holy Torah, which we say these letters, we give life and control over that giant spacecraft called the earth.
"The one on high" says, woe to the creatures for their disrespect of Torah! They give such a person a great instrument, giving him control over the entire world and a giant spacecraft with billions of people, yet the person belittles this instrument, does not properly study Torah, and uses it in an inappropriate way. Therefore, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai said to his companions "Let's go to the cave," please don't utter any words or teachings of Torah that are not necessary, lest you cause disasters, killings, and earthquakes in the world. The companions said, "May the Merciful One save us from causing harm." If Torah has such power, if there is such power in Torah that with one word, it can destroy countries and cause disasters, we pray that God will save us.
Courtesy of "Tzama Nafshi."
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