“If you will follow My statutes”
Rashi explains: that you should toil in Torah.
Rebbe Nachman begins the first lesson in Likutey Moharan by teaching that through learning Torah with strength, the power of the kingdom of the sitra achra falls away. Then all prayers and requests are accepted, because favor and grace will rest with us.
What does it mean to learn Torah “with strength”?
It is true that Torah study requires effort and hard work, but the intention here is far deeper.
Reb Noson writes in Hilchos Pikadon (Law 4) that receiving the Torah means, on one hand, connecting our learning to HaShem - internalizing and understanding that the purpose of learning is in order to draw closer to Him.
Not to feel that through our learning we have already arrived spiritually or reached lofty heights.
And on the other hand, to know that all the Torah we merit to learn comes specifically through prayer - to pray for the fulfillment of our learning, to merit engaging in Torah, and especially to transform the teachings themselves into prayers.
This is the kind of Torah learning that gives strength to the kingdom of holiness and empowers it over the kingdom of the sitra achra.
It is known that when the Breslover chassidim would learn Gemara and come across statements such as “Abaye said,” they would actually say the name with tremendous yearning: “Ai, ai, Abaye… ai, ai, Rava…” It was not only what they learned - they themselves became the living vitality of the Torah they were studying.
May it be HaShem’s Will that we merit to fulfill this, to soon witness the subjugation of the kingdom of the sitra achra, and to see the coming redemption speedily in our days, Amen.
Shabbat Shalom
Chaim Kramer |
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