אין אהבה כאהבת ד
The Rokeach writes that love of Hashem is the greatest Ahava. The clear implication is that at its core, Ahavas Hashem is the same כח as other loves: love of our fellow man, love of a wife, etc. Ahavas Hashem is the greatest love, but all these loves exist on the same continuum. This presents a problem because in our efforts to define Ahava we often offer definitions which are inapplicable with regards to Ahavas Hashem. For example, a common definition of ahava is “giving”, to give to another. But that’s impossible with regard to the Borei Olam; we cannot give Him anything.
I believe the meaning of ahava is that the other person is central in your life and your life revolves around him. Every husband has experienced trying to do something for his wife, only to find her disappointed: “What were you thinking?” Very often the problem is as follows. He cares for his wife, and therefore makes her needs central. But that is a mistake: she has to be central, not her needs. Ahava is not about giving; it is about making the other person central in your life. For sure, if you love your wife, you will give to her and provide for her needs, but that’s not what ahava is. Similarly with children, it is insufficient that their parents provide for them; they should be a central focus of their parent’s lives.
We can appreciate this definition of love by reflecting on its opposite: hate. Hate works the same way. If you hate someone, your entire thought process revolves around him; you think about him this way and that way.
This willingness to make another person central in your life was found to a great degree by Rav Gershon zt”l. You could see that: even if it was a young child who came to speak with him, at that moment, his life revolved around the other, and he was willing to give up his time, energy, Torah.
When the Rokeach tells us that “there is no love such as love of Hashem”, it means that Hakadosh Baruch is most central in our lives, always. We say in krias shema; “And you shall love Hashem your God with all your heart and all your soul…” Chazal teach us the meaning of “all your soul” that you love Him “even if He takes your soul (life).” People make a mistake: they understand love of Hashem in the face of death as a sort of business deal. I give my life and Hashem gives me eternal reward. But that is not Ahava at all. Ahava means that you act completely out of concern for the other person; not for your own benefit. As Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz zt”l famously said, “If you love schnitzel, why do you eat it? Rather, you do not love schnitzel. You love yourself.” So if you sacrifice your life in order to receive olam haba, that might be a very special mitzvah, but it is not Ahavas Hashem; it’s a very, very big schnitzel. Rather the intention of Chazal’s teaching “even if He takes your (life)” is that even when painful things happen to you, and you do not understand, still you do not push the Borei Olam out of your life, but rather keep Him at the center.
Rav Gershon’s life revolved around Torah, ratzon Hashem. He sat in the ICU, at age 100+, preparing a shiur, and he died in the middle of preparing the shiur. That is Ahavas Torah, Ahavas Hashem.
This is a critical lesson for us today, as Western Society’s warped conception of love is built entirely on expected benefits.
אין למד כלהג התורה
First, translations: the word “למד” refers to a “מלמד בקר”—ox guider. In pre-modern times, farmers used oxen to plow the fields. To ensure that the oxen would walk in a straight line and not stray, they would us a מלמד בקר, which was basically a stick attached to the ox and held adjacent to the ox’s face, with a nail at the end. If an ox was ever tempted to turn his head, the nail would poke him in the face, so he would keep his head straight and thereby walk straight. The word “להג” is rooted in the word “הגיון”. (See Koheles 12:12) The word הגיון means logic, in the sense that something makes sense to a person and “sits well” by him.
According to these definitions, the meaning of the above phrase is that when the Torah makes sense and sits well by us, that keeps us straight in life. We have become accustomed to approaching Torah learning as if it is a kind of puzzle, and that we have to develop in each sugya an approach that answers all the questions; everything has to fall into place. That is כשרון— brilliance— but if it does not sit well by the person, does not make sense, then there is no הגיון, and it will not straighten you out in life. כשרון will not help you so much in simple life, but הגיון does. כשרון is not always straight. I recall participating in a chabura in the Mir Yeshiva. The person who was giving the Chabura was an extremely talented learner, but he made a mistake. Rav Asher Arieli, who was also one of the listeners, caught the mistake and asked a question. Immediately, everyone recognized the mistake. But in a split second, the person giving the chabura, realized his mistake, changed his chabura, and said, “No, you misunderstood, I meant like this…” And everything fit into place. It was brilliant to see, but it was not straight. That is the danger of כשרון. Likewise, Rav Yisroel writes that with regard to middos, כשרון can be very dangerous, because the person can justify anything he wants.
Now, I cannot stress enough that what we want here is “להג התורה”, the הגיון of the Torah. In certain circles, people like to use the words “gist of the law”. The problem is that very often, the gist of the law is exactly what they thought before they learnt the Torah: love of your neighboor, equality, liberty, etc. And then they ignore all the halachos which don’t fit into their preconceived notions. So of course it makes sense to them, but it’s not the הגיון of the Torah which makes sense, it’s their own opinions. We must learn Torah as something new, and allow the Torah to create a new הגיון, which is not what we thought originally, and that has to make sense to us.
אין עטרה כענוה
(We will not be dedicating too much time to this phrase, as we are not really holding by working on ענוה.)
There is no crown such as humility. There is a great irony here: a crown implies the wearer stands out, above. Humility implies the exact opposite. The Torah describes Moshe Rabbeinu as being “ענו מכל אדם”. Rav Yisroel (מכתב ל) writes that the explanation is not that he was more humble than other people, as if there was a competition in humility and Moshe came in first place, but rather that he was humble with regard to every person: he thought everyone was bigger than him. The Ramban and Chovos Halevavos define ענוה similarly. Yet still, at the end, the humble are recognized by everyone. This too, we saw by Rav Gershon zt”l: in the end, he was recognized.