Q:
What can a person do if he is not the scholarly type and does not enjoy learning?
A:
If a person wants to achieve shleimus, if he wants to become perfect without learning, he has to know that he’s going to be limited. Because it says lo am ha’aretz chassid – an ignorant man cannot be a chossid. Chossid means perfection, shleimus, and you won’t get shleimus if you’re an am ha’aretz. And a woman has to know that her perfection comes from a husband or from a father or from brothers who are bnei Torah.
However, beneath chossid there are plenty of other madreigos. There are madreigos of tzadik. An am ha’aretz can be a tzadik. It’s possible for people to become perfect in tzedek in very many fields of endeavor. If you’ll learn mussar seforim, if you’ll learn avodas Hashem, you can be a tzadik. There’s a great wealth of material. There’s no time now to enumerate the various courses of action, but there are so many things that people can do even in limited circumstances that will help them become so great that even though they won’t be called chossid but they will be considered people who live successfully in this world.
TAPE # 434
