When Rav Shimon speaks of “letters fluttering in the air”, he is using an idiom our sages used describe the destruction of the first Tablets. When Moses came down the mountain and the Jews were worshiping the Golden Calf, the letters fluttered up to heaven, and the tablets became heavy, and Moses threw them down. (Tanchuma, Ki Sisa 30; Exodus Rabba 46:1)

The same expression also appears in a description of R’ Chanina ben Tradiyon’s martyrdom. He was wrapped in a Torah, which was set aflame. He was packed with wet wool, so as to prolong his suffering. His students asked him, “Rebbe, what do you see?” He replied, “The parchment is burning, but the letters are fluttering in the air.” (Avodah Zara 18a)

Also possibly relevant is the idiom’s use in contract law, describing the paper or parchment of a contract as a critical component; for example, if the husband refuses to relinquish ownership of the paper, his writ of divorce is invalid, merely “letters fluttering in the air.” (Gittin 20b) The writing surface is an essential element of the text, it is what gives the sequence of letters their permanence.

The difference between the luchos is who prepared the writing surface — Hashem Himself carved out the first ones, but Moshe had to provide the sapphire upon which Hashem wrote the second luchos. Because the writing surface denotes permanence, this explains why someone who studied Torah the first, divinely carved luchos, would never forget what he studied.

There is a famous dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Aqiva about what it is we commemorate with the mitzvah of sukkah.  The Torah reads (Vayiqra 23:42-43):

בַּסֻּכֹּ֥ת תֵּֽשְׁב֖וּ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֑ים כָּל־הָֽאֶזְרָח֙ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל יֵֽשְׁב֖וּ בַּסֻּכֹּֽת: לְמַעַן֮ יֵֽדְע֣וּ דֹרֹֽתֵיכֶם֒ כִּ֣י בַסֻּכּ֗וֹת הוֹשַׁ֨בְתִּי֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּהֽוֹצִיאִ֥י אוֹתָ֖ם מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲנִ֖י יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶֽם׃

You shall dwell in sukkos for seven days; every native in Israel shall dwell in sukkos. So that your generations will know that I made the Israelites dwell in sukkos when I took them out of the Land of Egypt; I am Hashem your G-d.

The gemara (Sukkah 11b) records the dispute:

ענני כבוד היו דברי ר’ אליעזר ר”ע אומר סוכות ממש עשו להם

“They were clouds of glory,” these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Aqiva says, “They made themselves actual booths.”

Among commentators on the verse, Rashi follows Rabbi Eliezer, that “I made the Israelites dwell” refers to the clouds of glory. Ramban quotes Rashi, and agrees. Rashbam and Ibn Ezra, on the other hand, focus on the word “basukkos – in sukkos” and understand the literal meaning of the verse to follow Rabbi Aqiva’s mention of physical booths.

In general, aggadic disputes are not decided by the rules of halachic pesaq. Here, however, the dispute has halachic outcome — the verse relays a halachic rule whether through its literal meaning or through a midrashic one. The Torah obligates us to sit in the sukkah “so that the generations will know.” At least lekhat-chilah (ab initio) one needs to have intent, to use the sukkah as a reminder of something. And therefore, which is it? Are we to sit in the sukkah and contemplate the sukkos our ancestors built in the desert, or to remember the clouds of glory Hashem provided us with?

The Tur, Shulchan Arukh, and Arukh haShulchan (Orach Chaim 525) side with Rabbi Eliezer, and we are told we sit in the sukkah to commemorate the clouds of glory. (My apologies to the rationalists.)

Why is Sukkos in the fall?

The aforementioned Tur says it’s so that we make it clear that we are sitting in the sukkah for the mitzvah, and not because it’s a comfortable way to spend a spring or summer day. (I’m not sure that in practice the underlying assumption holds for Israel’s climate.)

The Vilna Gaon gives an answer I found to be more profound, and related to the above dispute. When the Jews left Egypt, we were surrounded by clouds of glory. These clouds departed with the Golden Calf. After the Golden Calf, Moshe went up on the mountain for 40 days to obtain forgiveness for the Jewish People, and another forty days to get a second set of luchos. He returned with the second luchos on Yom Kippur, which is much of why the 10th of Tishrei is Yom Kippur.

On the 11th, Moshe instructed us about building the Mishkan. During the next couple of days people brought their donations, and on the 14th of Tishrei, Moshe had to tell them to stop — that they had everything needed.

So, as our sages compute is, on the 15th of Tishrei, the actual assembly of the Mishkan began. And, the Vilna Gaon notes, the clouds returned. What we commemorate by sitting in our sukkos is not the initial gift, but the return of the clouds after Yom Kippur.

The first luchos differ from the second luchos in a similar way to the distinction we just made with respect to the clouds of glory. The first set were like the clouds, given as a gift to the Jewish People with no effort on our part. The second required that Moshe make the preparatory step. And similarly, the clouds of glory returned after that same Yom Kippur on which we received the second luchos, but not until people took a step by themselves. We first started assembling the Mishkan and only then did Hashem respond by providing the protecting clouds.

Viewed at this level, the Vilna Gaon provides a partial synthesis of the positions of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Aqiva. Yes, we sit the sukkah to remember Hashem providing clouds that protected us. However, those clouds did not come on their own — they were in response to the human effort Rabbi Aqiva places primary. The dispute then becomes whether we are to remember clouds obtained by the religious effort or physical walls we erected manually — and provided protection also because of our trust in the Almighty. But the notion of gifted protection is not part of either.

Yom Kippur was a renewal of the covenant based on the terms that we must take the first step, and Hashem responds.

In the case of aquiring Torah, we have to refine the writing surface through improving our middos and then study, and Hashem will grant us success.

Rabbi Avohu said: It says, “When I called, You answered, my G-d of justice, when in trouble you released me[; show me grace and hear my prayer].” (Tehillim 4:2) David said before the Holy One, blessed be He, “Master of the universes! Every trouble which I entered into, You used it to release me. I entered the trouble with Bas Sheva [where David sinned in how he courted her], and You thereby gave me Shelomo. I entered the trouble with Israel [David counted the population, despite a prohibition], and You thereby gave me the Temple.”

- Yerushalmi Taanis 2:9 (vilna ed. 11a)

Notice the preposition in these two quotes of tannaim:

ואמאי קרו ליה נחום איש גם זו דכל מילתא דהוה סלקא ליה אמר גם זו לטובה זימנא חדא בעו לשדורי ישראל דורון לבי קיסר אמרו מאן ייזיל ייזיל נחום איש גם זו דמלומד בניסין הוא שדרו בידיה מלא סיפטא דאבנים טובות ומרגליות אזל בת בההוא דירה בליליא קמו הנך דיוראי ושקלינהו לסיפטיה ומלונהו עפרא כי מטא התם שרינהו לסיפטא חזנהו דמלו עפרא. בעא מלכא למקטלינהו לכולהו אמר קא מחייכו בי יהודאי אמר גם זו לטובה
אתא אליהו אדמי ליה כחד מינייהו א”ל דלמא הא עפרא מעפרא דאברהם אבוהון הוא דכי הוה שדי עפרא הוו סייפיה גילי הוו גירי דכתיב (ישעיהו מא) יתן כעפר חרבו כקש נדף קשתו הויא חדא מדינתא דלא מצו למיכבשה בדקו מיניה וכבשוה עיילו לבי גנזיה ומלוהו לסיפטיה אבנים טובות ומרגליות ושדרוהו ביקרא רבה כי אתו ביתו בההוא דיורא אמרו ליה מאי אייתית בהדך דעבדי לך יקרא כולי האי אמר להו מאי דשקלי מהכא אמטי להתם סתרו לדירייהו ואמטינהו לבי מלכא אמרו ליה האי עפרא דאייתי הכא מדידן הוא בדקוה ולא אשכחוה וקטלינהו להנך דיוראי:

And why did they call him “Nachum ish Gamzu”? Because for anything that happened to him, he would say “This too is for the best (letovah).
One time they wanted to present Israel’s gift to Caesar’s home. They said, “Who should go?” “Nachum ish Gamzu should go, because he is learned in miracles. They sent in his hands a chest filled with precious stones and pearls. He went, and spent a night in a certain inn. In the night, the proprietors arose and emptied the chest and filled it with earth.
When he arrived there [at Ceasar's palace] they untied the chest and saw that it was full of earth. The king want to kill all of them. He said, “The Jews are laughing at me.” [Nachum] said, “This, too, is for the best.”
Eliyahu came and [happy ending deleted...]

- Berachos 60b-61a

אמר רב הונא אמר רב משום רבי מאיר וכן תנא משמיה דר’ עקיבא לעולם יהא אדם רגיל לומר כל דעביד רחמנא לטב עביד כי הא דרבי עקיבא דהוה קאזיל באורחא מטא לההיא מתא בעא אושפיזא לא יהבי ליה אמר כל דעביד רחמנא לטב אזל ובת בדברא והוה בהדיה תרנגולא וחמרא ושרגא אתא זיקא כבייה לשרגא אתא שונרא אכליה לתרנגולא אתא אריה אכליה לחמרא אמר כל דעביד רחמנא לטב ביה בליליא אתא גייסא שבייה למתא אמר להו לאו אמרי לכו כל מה שעושה הקדוש ברוך הוא הכל לטובה:

Rav Huna said that Rav said quoting Rabbi Meir, and so too is the beraisa in the name of Rabbi Aqiva : A person should always be in the habit of saying, “All that the All-Merciful does, he does for the good (letav).”
When Rabbi Aqiva was traveling. He came to some city and wanted to stay at the inn. They would not let him. He said “All that the All-Merciful does, is for the good.” He went into the woods [to sleep], and he had with him a rooster, a donkey and a lamp. A wind came and extinguished the lamp. A cat came and ate the rooster. A lion came and ate the donkey. [R' Aqiva] said, “All that the All-Merciful does, is for the good.”
At night, a troop came and ransacked the city. He said to [his audience], “Did I not tell you, that whatever the Holy One, blessed be He does, it is all for the good (letovah)?”

- Berachos 60b-61a

It is notable that Rabbi Aqiva studied under Nachum ish Gamzu. For that matter, even in Rav Huna and Rav’s version, the idea is presented in the name of R’ Meir, a student of Rabbi Aqiva’s. This optimistic view of what befalls us shows a clear line of tradition.

But they do not say everything that happens is “tovah” or in Aramaic “tav“. The word is “letovah“, or “letav“, with the “le-” prefix meaning the preposition “for”. Rabbi Aqiva says that Hashem does is “for the best.” Nachum ish Gamzu’s position is more extreme; all that He allows to occur, even if by “standing by” as people commit atrocities (in possible contrast to R’ Aqiva’s reference to what the All-Merciful or Holy One does), is met with “this too is for the best.”

And I believe this is David haMelekh’s point in our opening Yerushalmi as well. Not everything is good, although everything does lead to good. History runs from chaos and confusion to a world full of knowledge of G-d, when all joinEven as he acknowledges his errors, David haMalekh admitting not acting in alliance with the Divine Plan, he still sees how Hashem only permitted him to succeed in sinning because He was able to bring some good to the world through it.

(See also this related post on the Thermodynamics of History.)

A beraisa: Just as we blow shofar [and make a fast day] for [a lack of rain] on the other days of the seven-year cycle, so too we blow shofar for them during shemittah for the income of others.
What is “for the income of others”?
The peers said: for the income of idol worshipers.

– Yerushalmi Taanis 3:1 (vilna 13b-14a)

This alone reflects more Universalist values than we are used to seeing in today’s Orthodoxy. When there is a drought during shemittah, even though Jews are not permitted to farm this year anyway, we are to be pained enough over the plight of the non-Jew that we fast to appeal to Hashem to bring them relief. But look at this second answer:

ר”ז אמר מפני פרנסת חשודים.

Rabbi Zei’rah [known in the Bavli as Rav Zeira] said: for the income of those suspected [of violating shemittah].

– Ibid.

Someone sins and farms crops despite it being shemittah. Because of the drought, it is likely that his contra-halachic business will fail. Rather than being happy the sinner got his just deserts, the whole community fasts so that the sinner will not suffer a lack of this-worldly benefit from his sin!

This sugya teaches us just how far our love of others has to extend.

The Netziv (Haameiq Davar, Shemos 11:2) asks why is it that when Hashem promises in advance that the Jews would get treasures from the Egyptians, He says (3:22) “וְשָׁאֲלָה אִשָּׁה מִשְּׁכֶנְתָּהּ — and a woman will ask/borrow from her neighbor”, but now when it happens, He tells the Jews “וְיִשְׁאֲלוּ אִישׁ מֵאֵת רֵעֵהוּ, וְאִשָּׁה מֵאֵת רְעוּתָהּ — and a man will ask/borrow from his friend, and a woman from her friend”? Why the promotion from shakhein (neighbor) to reia (friend)?

The Netziv answers that during plague of choshekh, “Yisrael, who were a light in their homes, put out (hoshitu) before them food and everything they needed. And through this, Yisrael obtained a great grace in their eyes.”

Picture what this implies about our obligations to others. The Egyptians were not fellow Jews, they were sinners who worshiped idols, engaged in all forms of sexual immorality, were murderously cruel (all three of the “be killed rather than violate” sins), our tormentors. And yet, we showed them kindness. A lesson in how to treat the other, and a lesson in just how far we should take “do not take revenge and do not and do not bear a grudge.” (Vayiqra 19:18) The prohibition is only against “a member of your people”, but we shine as children of Abaraham when we go beyond the minimum loving-kindness the Torah demands of us.

I was thinking that perhaps this could answer another question I had… Hashem promised Avraham we would leave with “great wealth” (Bereishis ). I’m sure Avraham Avinu would be happy we would end up rich, but is this really the greatest thing a tzadiq would hope for? So, I once offered a chassidishe style answer, re-punctuating a pasuq from after Makas Choshekh (11:2): “Daber na be’zanei ha’am — speak please into the ears of the nation” that they should ask, every man of their neighbor and every woman of her neighbor, gold utensils and silver utensils. And Chazal say that Hashem said “na” (please) because He “needed a favor” (so to speak) in order to fulfill His promise. So my earlier suggestion was to read the verse “say ‘please’ into the ears of the nation”, teach them to say please. Avraham, the maste of lovingkindness, would hear the words “great wealth” and expect Hashem to lead his children to kindness. The wealth was that Moshe put the word “na” in the ears of the people — teaching them to say “please”, even in this situation.

But now I could answer without playing with the punctuation or taking phrases out of context: that Avraham’s “great wealth” of lovingkindness was what the Jews learned by sustaining the Mitzrim during the plague of darkness! We refrained from vengeance when they were down. The Mitzriim didn’t come help (at least not in numbers enough to be recorded in the Torah) when we “cried out from all the work”, but we came when they needed us. As we say in Havdalah, Hashem bestowed on us a difference “between light and darkness, and between Israel and the other nations.”

The Torah describes the words on the first tablets as “engraved on the tablets”. The gemara takes this homiletically; the Torah is emphasizing the permanence of the words on the first luchos because Torah studied from the first tablets stayed with the person. Read once, they were internalized and never forgotten.

However, if “no foreign descendent may eat” of the Pesach offering, one mitzvah, how must more so must it be wrong for the Torah to be possessed by someone who isn’t merely an outsider, but evil! Therefore, Moshe ended this period of simply knowing the Torah through a single study by shattering the luchos. Now, one needs to work at Torah in order to receive it.

In the terms we saw in the previous installment… The Golden Calf and the Jewish People’s rush to sin “in order to permit for themselves prohibited relations” (Rabbi Yehudah, quoting Rav, Sanhedrin 63b) showed Moshe that with the first luchos, it was too easy for someone to simply “water their weeds”, as the Vilna Gaon put it. That a Torah that didn’t require prerequisite work was an invitation to nourish their imperfections with religiosity, rather than first weed out their negative middos and then quench their souls’ thirst with Torah. He therefore forced us to accept the Torah on the terms of the second luchos. Requiring effort, Rav Chaim Volozhiner’s model of building the silo in which one could store the grain.

A story: Rav [Ab]ba bar Zavda, Rabbi Tanchum bar Ila’i, and Rabbi Yoshiah went out [to speak] at a [public] fast.

Rabbi [Ab]ba bar Zavda expounded on “Let us raise our hearts with our hands [toward the G-d in heaven].” (Eikhah 3:41) “Let us raise our hearts with our hands” — and is this possible? Can a person take his heart and put it in his hands? Rather, what does he lift? He pays attention [idiomatically: give heart] to his hands [his fiscal dealings] and then [he can turn] “to the G-d in heaven.” Similarly, if a person is holding an impure breed of house-pest, even if he immerses in the waters of Shiloach [the pool from which the Beis haMiqdash's waters were taken] or the very waters of creation, he will not have eternal taharah. If he sends it from his hand, he is pure immediately.

– Yerushalmi Taanis 2:1 (vilna ed. 8a-b)

A beraisa: They said about Hillel the Elder, when he was happy during Simchas Beis haShoeivah would say like this:

If I am here, then all are here.
And if I am not here, who is here?

- Sukkah 53a

Hillel the Elder, when he would see them celebrating frivolously [at Simchas Beis haShoeivah] would say to them, “Just because we are here, who is here? And does He [Hashem] really need our praise? Doesn’t it say, ‘Thousands of thousands serve Him, and myriads of myriads come before Him.”

When he saw them acting appropriately [in their celebrations], he would say, “If we were not here, who would be here? Because even though [Hashem] has before Him uncountable praise,  the praise by Israel is dearer for Him than all!”

What is his source? “Pleasant are the songs of Israel” [and] “Who ‘sits’ upon the praises of Israel.”

-Yerushalmi Sukkah 5:4 (vilna 24a)

The two talmuds have different versions of this enigmatic statement by Hillel.

Rashi explains the Bavli’s version as Hillel speaking on behalf of the Shechinah. He is warning the masses not to sin through overindulgence in the celebration. Because only if the Shechinah is there will all come to celebrate. If sins drive the Divine Presence away, there would be no Simchas Beis haShoeivah to enjoy altogether!

The Netziv (Shemos ch. 5) has a different translation, but a similar theme — it is also a warning not to sin. Hillel was saying that as long as he was there to keep an eye on the festivities, all would be able to remain and celebrate. But if he were not there…

An interesting difference between that version and the Yerushalmi’s is in number. According to the Yerushalmi, his warning against excess was phrased as “If we are here…” Do not get carried away with the celebrations — all of us here together are nothing compared to the numbers of the heavenly retinue. It is only when the praise is fitting that the quality of it coming from the Jewish people offsets the quantity of those glorifying the Almighty.

All of which brings to mind Rav Shimon Shkop’s treatment of a different enigmatic statement by the self-same Hillel.

According to Rav Shimon, to Hillel the word “ani“, “I”, has a specific technical meaning.  In the ideal, “ani“, a person’s sphere of concern and self-interest, can include the entire world.

“If I am here, then all are here”, indeed. And thus the language difference between the Bavli’s “ani” and the Yerushalmi’s “anan” are not all that far apart. In both versions, Hillel saw himself as that part of the whole that was the “governor” of the engine, that keeps it from running too fast and breaking itself apart. And so the Yerushalmi has him speaking of the whole Jewish people, and the Netziv says Hillel was referring to his own role within the people.

But from this perspective that all are giving variations of the same theme in Hillel’s words, it is Rashi’s words that become the most sublime. When does the Shechinah join us? When everyone’s “ani” is integrated into the whole, and we come together not as a group of celebrants, but as a single celebrating Jewish People. It is this “im Ani kan / anan hakhah” which outshines thousands upon thousands and myriads of myriads of angels.

In this section we will see Rav Shimon explore the relationship between learning Torah, refining middos, and the life-mission of sanctifying oneself to the task of being good to others.

In an earlier essay an earlier essay (published in Daas Torah: Child and Domestic Abuse vol. I by R’ Daniel Eidensohn pp. 220-233), I compared the Vilna Gaon’s and R’ Chaim Volzhiner’s approaches to the relationship between Torah learning and Middos development. To quote that section:

Judaism’s claim is not that Torah and mitzvos by themselves produce moral people, or that following Torah with mitzvos is a complete definition of living according to the Truth.  [This claim was substantiated by quotes from the gemara earlier in the essay.] In other words, there is a preparation necessary for one to become ennobled by Torah, and if someone does not engage in this preparation, they are likely to abuse its teachings and experience spiritual poison.

The Vilna Gaon, as quoted in Even Sheleimah, is specific as to what this preparation entails:

 The relationship of Torah to the soul:  A comparison to rain for the ground, it causes what was planted there to grow, whether a sam hachaim or a sam hamaves, a poison.  Similarly, Torah causes what is in his heart to grow.  If what is in his heart is good, his yir’ah will grow; if what is in his heart is a “root sprouting poison weed and wormwood” then the bitterness that is in his head will grow.  As it is written, “the righteous will walk in it, and sinners will stumble in it” (Hoshea 14:10, as explained by Chazal), and as it is written, “To those who go to the right side of it, it is a medicine of life; to those who go to its left, it is a deadly poison,” (Shabbos 88b).

Therefore, one must cleanse one’s heart every day, before study and after it, of impure attitudes and middos, with a fear of sin and with good deeds.

This [process] is euphemistically called “going to the bathroom.”  It was about this that they hinted when they said, “Going to the bathroom is greater than all of it,” (Berakhos 8a) and, “Whoever spends a long time in the bathroom, it is lofty,” (Ibid 55a).  Also, when they said, “Get up early and go, in the evening go” (Ibid 62a), they intend to say that in his youth and in his old age a man should not distance himself a great distance from his Creator so that he cannot be helped.

One must inspect which evil middah – characteristic – is strong within him, and after that, clean it out.  Unlike like those men of desire who wallow in what they want, and the desire grows greater.  It requires much slyness, to be “sly in yir’ah,” (Abaye, Ibid 17a) in opposition to, “the snake was sly,” (Bereishis 3:1).  One who is lazy in weeding out an evil middah is not helped by all the legal fences and protections that he practices.  For with any disease which is not cured from within… even the fence of the Torah, which protects and saves, will be useless because of his laziness (c.f. Rava, Sotah 21a; Bei’ur haGra Mishlei 24:31, 19:15, 25:4).  (Even Sheleima 1:11)

The Gaon compares learning Torah to watering a garden.  If you start with desirable plants, it will produce healthier, more beautiful plants.  But if you water weeds, you will only produce more weeds.  Learning Torah without attention to character refinement will simply produce more forceful personalities with bad middos.  As such, the Vilna Gaon addresses our dilemma from the end of section III, shedding light on the underlying causes of our crippling lack of direction, which prevents us from using the Torah for the proper purpose.  To gain holiness through the Torah, there is a prerequisite to consciously work on eliminating our destructive middos.  We must have a program to “weed our gardens” before watering our souls with Torah.  This is how we join Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s class of the meritorious, for whom the Torah is a sam hachaim.

Do we make this a conscious goal in our current lifestyles?

The Vilna Gaon’s student, Rav Chaim Volozhiner, offers his own metaphor for the relationship between yir’as Shamayim and Torah:

According to the vast arrangement of the silo of yir’ah that the person prepared for himself, it is through that arrangement that the grain of Torah will be able to enter and be protected within him, according to how much he strengthened his silo.

It is [like] a father who divides grain for his sons.  He divides and gives each one a measure of grain to match what the son’s silo can hold, which he [the son] prepared beforehand.  For even if the father wishes and his hand is open to give him more, the son cannot receive more since his silo is not big enough to hold more.  So too the father cannot now give him more.  And if the son did not prepare even a small silo, then also the father can not give him anything at all – for he has no guarded place where it will remain with him.

So too Hashem, may His name be blessed:  His “Hand” is open, as it were, to constantly bestow every person according to his reward with much wisdom and extra understanding – when it will be preserved by them and will be tied onto the slate of their hearts.  Everything [is given] according to the volume of one’s “silo.” And if a person does not prepare even a small silo, which is that he does not, heaven forbid, have within him any yir’ah whatsoever for Him, may He be blessed, so too He, may He be blessed, will not bestow any wisdom at all, since it will not be preserved by him.  For his Torah would become disgusting, heaven forbid, as our Rabbis, whose memories are a blessing, said.  It is about this that the verse says, “the beginning of wisdom is yir’as Hashem,” (Tehillim 111).  (Nefesh haChaim book IV, ch. 5)

The Vilna Gaon taught that without eliminating one’s poor middos first, Torah will reinforce those flaws rather than help refine the soul.  Of our two descriptions of our communal problem, he is speaking in terms of the second one; the Torah is a tool for us to become the holy people Hashem created us to be, but the tool has to be used appropriately or else woefully limited.

Rav Chaim Volozhiner says, without first developing yir’ah, the positive middah of keeping the importance of G-d and the role He made us for in mind, we will not retain the Torah either, even on a basic level.  His metaphor is akin to our first formulation – that without yir’as Shamayim, we cannot even embody the Torah we are trying to study, and thus only full implementation with developed yir’ah can even be termed true observance of Torah.

Refinement requires conscious effort in and of itself.  Without first “weeding” and “building the silo,” we are left with nothing.

Until this point, Rav Shimon was arguing from a variant of the Vilna Gaon’s position — with the only difference being between the Vilna Gaon’s refined middos and the Shaarei Yosher’s person capable of bestowing good “now and in the future”.  Both define the goal of a good Jew in terms of being a good person, and how Torah study is part of accomplishing that.

Now Rav Shimon switched to a point more similar to Rav Chaim Volozhiner’s. Not only does one need Torah to “water” one’s good middos, or to expand one’s “ani” to include their soul, and expansively more and more people, but without this ethical background, you won’t get anywhere with your Torah study, either.

The quote from Ta’anis 7a is an excerpt referencing a relatively well known Talmudic dictum:

Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak said: Why are the words of Torah compared to a tree, as it is written, “It is a tree of life for those who cling to it?” This it to teach that just as a small piece of wood ignites a large one, so too with Torah scholars – the younger ones sharpen the minds of the older ones. This is what Rabbi Chanina [meant when] he would say: “I have learned much from my teachers, and from my colleagues more than from my teachers, but from my students most of all.”

Rav Shimon here tracks the pasuq of Ve’ahavta (Devarim 6:5) in Shema: וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה’” אֱ-לֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ, וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ, וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ — And you shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart, with all your life, and with all your resources.” Presuming two things inherent in my translation: First, that “levavekha” doesn’t refer only to the heart as the seat of the emotions, but in a more classical sense, where the heart, the core of the person, is thought of as including both feelings and thoughts. And second, that “nafshekha” is the term for soul being used here specifically because it carries connotations of the soul as life-force.

First Shaarei Yosher discusses sharing one’s wealth, that Hashem gives wealth to the community, and being wealthy might be part of one’s role as part of the community. Thus, someone who wishes to be charged with this task should develop the appropriate skills and prove themselves worthy guardians of the community’s wealth. (And then it is proper for them to enjoy their own wealth as well.) This is loving G-d, “bekhol me’odekha.”

In the previous installment, R’ Shimon refers to Nachum Ish Gamzu’s sickbed, and how his very limbs, his life — and thus his nefesh — is also only of value to the extent it is used to bestow Hashem’s good on others.

Now we get to levavekha. Thoughts and emotions too get their value from being shared. Not kept to the core self, but shared with the broader “ani“.

Rav Shimon Shkop’s attitude toward sharing, tzedaqah and chessed seems to fit this Yerushalmi I encountered several months back. See the second answer in Shabbos 14:1 (vilna daf 74b):

כתיב (תהילים מט[:ב]) “שִׁמְעוּ זֹאת כָּל הָעַמִּים, הַאֲזִינוּ כָּל יֹשְׁבֵי חָלֶד.” ר’ אחא אמר ר’ אבהו ורבנן ח”א למה הוא מושל כל באי העולם בחולדה.  אלא לפי שכל מה שיש ביבשה יש בים הרבה מינים בים מה שאין ביבשה ואין חולדה בים.  וחורנה אמר למה הוא מושל כל באי העולם בחולדה אלא מה החולדה הזאת גוררת ומנחת ואינה יודעת למי היא מנחת כך הן כל באי העולם גוררין ומניחין גוררין ומניחין ואינן יודעין למי הן מניחין.

It is written, “Listen to this all the nations, give ear all the inhabitants of Chaled [literally: weasel].” (Tehillim 49:2)

Rav Acha said: Rav Avohu and the Rabbis [both expounded on why this verse calls the world chaled, weasel].

One said: Why does He compare all who come into the world to a weasel? Only because any [species] found on dry land is found in the sea. There are many species in the sea which are not on land. But there is no weasel in the sea.

And the other said: Why does He compare all who come into the world to a weasel? Only that just as this weasel gathers and puts away, and doesn’t know for whom she is putting [things] away, so too all the people of the world gather and put away, gather and put away, and do not know for whom they put away.

So, another way to put this section of this introduction: What are you — a man or a weasel?

To be a person means not only to realize that one’s “ani” includes body, soul, other people, to the ends of creation, but to value what one has oneself for it’s potential to aid that “ani” and not just my narrow “atzmi” self.