Q:
When you learn mussar, should you repeat one line again and again or learn further the whole sefer?
A:
And let me tell you, it’s a good question. You should do both things.
You should learn the entire sefer because you need yedios. You must know because there’s so many things we don’t know.
The Mesilas Yesharim for instance is a chest of diamonds. Every line is full of important yedios. And yet you’ll discover that you have skimmed over the lines superficially. You never get the real meaning unless you think about it again and again and again. And later in life sometimes you’ll go back again and say, “Why didn’t I understand that when I was a boy?” The answer is you learned it too rapidly.
And therefore you need both things. You have to learn one line many times again and again like they do in some yeshivos until it finally sinks in.
When I came to Slabodka, I discovered that they learn one line for a half hour every night. The same line. Motsei Shabbos, they didn’t have any lights in the yeshiva. It was dark. After shalosh seudos, they all sat in the dark and each one was saying a line by himself aloud. Louder and louder and louder and louder. At the end, everybody was shouting. The whole yeshiva was shouting with all their kochos that one line. Then there was a klop, “והוא רחום יכפר עון,” daven maariv. It was a tremendous experience. Going through like a mikvah of fire, of kedushah. One line for an hour in the darkness and you concentrated on it, then you begin to feel what is he saying there.
You should know you still don’t understand it. But it’s a tremendous achievement. It was a tremendous achievement.
The greatness of these great men who in a few words they contained a world of wisdom. The Gra said on Mesilas Yesharim, he said, “I read the first eleven perakim, there’s not one superfluous word.” And so you can afford to spend time line by line too.
(November 26, 1998)
