Q:
You quoted a maamar Chazal that if a person is not willing to toil in Torah so he’ll have other difficulties instead. But isn’t learning Torah itself a difficulty?
A:
The answer is it depends what you call ‘difficulty’. When you learn Torah it’s actually not difficult. It’s laziness that you contend with—it’s not difficulty. To contend with laziness is not like contending with real tzaros, chalilah. It’s mostly imagination.
You know laziness is mostly imagination. I’ll bring you a possuk to show. The possuk says as follows: עצלה תפיל תרדמה – Laziness casts a sleep, ונפש רמיה תרעב – but the deceitful soul will remain hungry (Mishlei 19:15). So what’s the connection? What’s the connection between the two parts of the possuk? First half again; עצלה תפיל תרדמה – Laziness casts a slumber. Then it says ונפש רמיה תרעב – a false soul, תרעב – will remain hungry.
It means this: Here is a man. He has a shop and he has to turn out certain amounts of pieces of let’s say jewelry every day. So he comes into the place first at 11 o’clock. He has to get a good night sleep, he says. And then at about half past 11, a little nap. He says he’s tired. He needs the sleep.
So Mishlei says, watch out! It’s not because you need sleep. You think you need sleep? עצלה תפיל תרדמה – It’s laziness that puts you to sleep. You’re not sleepy. You’re lazy, that’s all it is. Only you’re deceiving yourself.
The proof is let’s say it’s late at night; it’s 11 o’clock already so you want to close the Gemara; 11 o’clock, you say. It’s bedtime! Your eyes are closing! So you close the Gemara. But before you go to sleep you pick up let’s say a newspaper for a few minutes. 2 o’clock at night you’re still going at it! What happened to the sleep? The answer is you weren’t sleepy at all. You were lazy. You were deceiving yourself.
So the possuk says if you’re going to deceive yourself, ונפש רמיה – a deceitful soul, תרעב – will remain hungry. This fellow in the factory where he has to make jewelry; every few minutes if he dozes off he won’t have anything to pay the grocer after a while: נפש רמיה – a deceitful soul, תרעב – will remain hungry.
And hungry means also he’ll be hungry in Torah, hungry in mitzvos, hungry in achievements.
So therefore when you say Torah is hard to learn it’s only because of laziness. Other things are even more difficult. It’s harder when you have to go to a grocer and you already owe him $200 and say, “Look. Can you advance me another $50 worth of stuff?” That’s very hard to do. It’s hard to face your landlord when you owe him already three months’ rent.
And so Torah we call hard only relatively but compared to the consequences of not learning Torah it’s very easy. Of course there are all madreigos of Torah. There’s yegiah in Torah; but yegiah in Torah is nowhere near the yegiah that comes from not learning Torah.
September 1977
