Praying With Passion

Torah: Sweet Essence Of Life

Translation: Blessed are You, HaShem our God, King of the Universe, who has made us holy through His commandments, and has commanded us to engage in the words of Torah. Please, HaShem our God, make the words of Your Torah sweet in our mouths and in the mouths of Your people, the house of Israel, so that we, our descendants, and the descendants of Your people, the house of Israel, may all know Your name and study Your Torah for its own sake. Blessed are You, HaShem, who teaches Torah to His people Israel.

Theme:  An essential concept of the prayer
Torah study is the core mitzva, as well as the wellspring of all goodness and sweetness in a Jew’s life in both the physical and spiritual worlds.

Word to the Wise:  Meaning within the meaning

With the words V’HAAREV NA, we ask Hashem to “sweeten the words of Torah in our mouth.” As we speak words of Torah, we should feel the taste of a delicious dessert. The spiritual pleasure that we have from Torah study should permeate into our physical beings as well. This can more readily come when we recognize that our Torah study is not only an obligation and requirement, but a privilege and honor as well.

Insight: Deeper meanings of the theme The first blessing on Torah study is expressed in words typical for a blessing on a mitzva: “He Who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us… The last blessing employs the wording used for birchat hanehenin - a blessing on partaking in a pleasure: “He Who selected us from all the nations and gave us His Torah.”

G-d’s mandate that we study Torah, thereby imbuing our lives with spirituality and knowledge of the mitzvot, is a mitzva of which every observant Jew is aware. The blessing attached to that mitzva is therefore understandable. What is not as clear, however, is why we recite a birchat hanehenin. What pleasure does the Torah give us?

From a variety of sources, we learn that Torah, like the manna given to our ancestors in the desert, is tailor-made to taste sweet to each individual who imbibes its wisdom. One such source is a discussion in the Gemara regarding which day of the month of Sivan should be designated as the holiday of Shavuot, which marks the giving of the Torah. Not only is the exact date unclear, but so is the exact location of Mount Sinai, where this world-changing drama took place.

Rav Moshe Feinstein commented that these ambiguities illustrate that there is no set place, date or specific person upon whom Torah learning is incumbent, and therefore, there is no time, place or person to whom it is unavailable. The concept of “Dibra Torah bilshon b’nei adam - “the Torah speaks in the common language of men (Yevamot 71a) - teaches us that the Torah is written for everyone to understand on their own level. Every person has his own “portion” of Torah.

Visualize:  Images that bring the prayer to life
Photo archives from the Warsaw ghetto show a door of an inn that read, “Society of Wagon Drivers for the Study of Talmud in Warsaw.” This referred to coachmen who seized a few moments from their work to gather in a group to “nosh” (grab a tasty morsel of) a page of Talmud… These were not intellectuals, concerned only with the intricacies of scholastic dialectics; they were deeply religious men thirsting for spiritual refreshment and they found it, as countless generations of Jews before them, in the study of Torah.

When the true value of Torah enters a person’s heart, it becomes not only his obligation, but his longing and his joy. It becomes an exertion that re-energizes, rather than drains, the spirit of the learner.

Take It With You: Your personal connection to the prayer
The life we live as Torah Jews has its difficulties, as does every person’s life in this world. However, the power the Torah possesses to lift us up above the fray is in direct correlation to the toil we put into it. We are commanded not only study Torah, but LA’ASOK, to engross ourselves, in Torah (study).

You could compare the concept to the experience of marathon runner; his practice schedule seems to be a heavy demand which he must muster all his self-discipline to fulfill. Once he is out there, though, running with all his strength and skill, he enters a mindset in which time and fatigue fall away. In contrast, were he to jog half-heartedly around the track, he would soon feel bored and tired. By fulfilling his obligation wholeheartedly, he experiences the exquisite sweetness in his exertion. - continued IY”H next week

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