Terumah- Inner Motives
For this year of Parsha Lesson, I will be focusing on one area of character growth, to think about in the week ahead and the benefits that a person would have from becoming better in that area.
Background
In this week’s parsha the Torah teaches us how it is that the Aron (holy Ark that housed the luchos/tablets) was constructed. The Aron was to be made with a coating of gold on the outside and a coating of gold on the inside, with wood in the middle.
The Seforno explains that the Aron was made like this in order to teach the lesson that a Talmud Chacham (accomplished Torah scholar) must have an inside which matches his outside. Any Talmud Chacham who is not tocho k’baro (inside like his outside) is not, in reality, a Talmud Chacham.
Question
Why is this so? The criterion of being a Talmud Chacham, a learned scholar, would seem to be a question of knowledge and academic accomplishment. The classical, defining metric of a Talmud Chacham is whether or not a particular scholar is able to ‘derive one matter from another matter’ (meivin davar m’toch davar).
Why is it important that a Talmud Chacham’s behavior- his ‘fear of Heaven’- be of any significance? A tzaddik, a righteous person, would obviously need to have ‘fear of Heaven’, his ‘inside’ would need to match his ‘outside’, but why would this be a criteria for being a Talmud Chacham?
Answer
When one learns Torah, with honesty and to understand what it is that the Torah teaches, it is not possible for him to do so and for the Torah to not instill in a person ‘fear of Heaven’. If a person seems to be a Talmud Chacham, but yet he does not have ‘fear of Heaven’ then it must be that he is really not a Talmud Chacham.
This person may have knowledge of Torah, he may be able to quote many Torah passages and this person may have many of the ‘trappings’ of a Talmud Chacham, but if he does not have ‘fear of Heaven’ he must not really understand the Torah. The understanding of Torah and the fear of Heaven which follows from it, are inextricably linked.
Lesson
Learning Torah, and consistent Torah learning, is one of the most life changing experiences that a person can experience. As R’ Chaim Volozhin famously said- Torah learning can transform the physical into the spiritual. Torah learning can be for a person a source of life, to be really alive in the most profound way possible.
There is however a condition- one must learn Torah without any other agenda other than to learn and understand the Torah. This does not mean that if one has another agenda that one should not learn Torah, but rather it means that one must eventually arrive at a place whereby they are learning Torah just for the sake of understanding Torah and without any other agenda.
To learn Torah for no other reason but to understand Torah is the way in which the Torah will have its potent effect on a person.
Benefits of this…
When a person realizes that their fundamental motives and their most base reason for why they are learning Torah changes the nature of what they are doing, this will motivate them to clarify why it is that they are studying the word of G-d.
More broadly, when one realizes that the difference between one’s good deeds having their desired effect on a person’s character or not, is directly related to the reason why they are doing the good that they do- this will encourage the person to contemplate what it is that drives them. A person must be aware of the true, real reason as to why they do what they do.
For a person to live life blind to the inner machinations and motivations that are going on inside of one’s self, or for a person to live life covering up and afraid of what it is that really drives them- will mean a person who will be frustrated and unsuccessful in truly growing. In order for a person to make real progress in becoming a better person, a person must first turn a critical eye on the last person that anyone wants to critique: themselves.
Wishing everyone a wonderful Shabbos!
