How Do We Build the Mind? The Secret of Study and Perseverance
Class No. 1 | Wednesday, Parashas Kedoshim, 26 Nissan 5755
Rabbi Berland shlit"a explains why the attempt to become a "genius" quickly leads to despair, and what the true path is to acquire a lasting portion in Torah. He discusses the difference between fleeting enthusiasm that disappears like "fireballs," and the building of mental vessels that endure.
Prayer must be in the form of "supplications," like a destitute and poor person standing at the doorway. A person must imagine himself as a beggar knocking on the door, begging for a slice of bread or a small charity. This is how prayer should look—calmly, deliberately, and slowly.
Just like that poor person who asks calmly and does not rush, so too a person must state his request word by word. If he rushes and swallows his words, the master of the house will not understand what he wants and will close the door in his face. King David says: "I am poor and needy." Prayer requires this approach of a beggar at the door, pleading for his soul calmly and deliberately. The great mistake is thinking that through speed we will achieve more; the opposite is true—speed only causes a person to lose the abundance. Specifically, the slower and more calmly one prays, the more the mind opens up, and the person merits a higher ability to concentrate, which subsequently impacts his Torah study as well.
The Mistake of Those Seeking Quick Genius
Regarding Torah study, many people are caught in a terrible mistake. Everyone wants to be a genius within a year, or at most two years. A person begins to study with enthusiasm, but after some time, he sees that he still hasn't become a "genius." Then he falls into despair, closes the Gemara, and says to himself: "I tried, I learned seven pages a day, I sat for 18 hours over the Gemara, two years have passed, and I am still not a genius." Consequently, he despairs and abandons his studies.
This is a fundamental mistake. A person must know that the true path of study is to learn section by section, Mishnah by Mishnah. Do not rush, but rather learn one line in the Mishnah, two lines, a quarter of a page, or a third of a page—and do not try to swallow the entire page immediately. While it is possible to review the page once or twice to get a general picture, the study itself requires delving deeply into small sections.
The secret is repetition. One must learn a quarter of a page and review it dozens of times, with Rashi and with Tosafos, until the concepts are absorbed into the mind. In every word of Rashi, there are infinite nuances, disputes among the Rishonim and Acharonim (early and later commentators), and approaches in Halachah. The problem is that a person lacks patience; he wants to be a genius here and now. And when that doesn't happen, he mistakenly concludes: "Apparently this isn't for me; I wasn't born to learn Gemara."
Crying Over Every Single Section
Our holy Rebbe, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, teaches us that there are no shortcuts. The Rebbe would cry over every single section he learned. He would cry: "I didn't understand the Mishnah, I didn't understand the Gemara, I didn't understand the Zohar." The Rebbe was not born knowing the entire Shas (Talmud) on the first day and the Etz Chaim (primary Kabbalistic text) on the second day. The Rebbe toiled and labored.
A person's task is to know the order of study and to develop the patience to review the same page ten or twenty times. One must break the klipos (spiritual husks) that prevent understanding. The Rebbe demands of us, first and foremost, to be "Litvaks" in the sense of deep, analytical study, without illusions. He laughs at all the empty enthusiasms that have no substance.
The Parable of the "Flying Saucers"
Rebbe Nachman explains (in Likutey Moharan, Torah 159) a deep concept regarding enthusiasm that is not based on intellect, and compares it to a phenomenon we know today as "flying saucers." People see fireballs in the sky and get excited, thinking they are spaceships that arrived from distant stars billions of light-years away, complete with creatures and buildings.
But the Rebbe, already two hundred years ago, explained this phenomenon simply: these are vapors rising from the earth, gases that gather and ignite into a fireball as a result of air pressure and winds. It looks like a burning fireball, and sometimes it can burn for an hour or two, but ultimately—it is just hot air that caught fire. There are no "aliens" and no mystery there, but rather a natural phenomenon of igniting gases.
"The Rebbe says: It is good for a person to be enthusiastic; you don't need to be a 'refrigerator,' you don't need to be ice. But if you are enthusiastic for two or three days and then it leaves you, and you have no mind—if you don't learn Gemara—then it is worth nothing. All this enthusiasm will not endure."
The analogy is clear: there are people whose hearts "burn" for Hashem. They get enthusiastic, they run around, they look for where the "action" is, they jump on tables, and they think they are already complete tzaddikim. They search for places where there is external enthusiasm. True, it is forbidden to be cold as ice, but enthusiasm without building the mind, without the toil of Torah study, is like those "flying saucers"—an inflated balloon of hot air that pops and disappears.
Building the Mental Vessels
This enthusiasm lasts for an hour, half a day, maybe a week—but it is not forever. If a person does not build his mind, does not build his intellect through the toil of Torah, he remains empty. Rebbe Nachman explains (in Torah 156) that the mind must be in motion. One cannot rely solely on the "self-sacrifice" of traveling to the tzaddik or jumping around.
A person can travel to Uman, practice self-sacrifice, and reach the tzaddik—and this is a tremendous and important thing without which one cannot draw close. But this does not guarantee that his mind will be illuminated. For wisdom to shine, a completely different type of work is required—the work of toiling in Torah.
Without building the mental vessels, a person is liable, Heaven forbid, to lose his mind from an abundance of lights without vessels. He thinks: "I am a Breslover, I was in Uman, I am exempt from developing my mind." He settles for superficiality. But in Heaven, and also on earth, they rule that this is not enough. One cannot acquire the World to Come solely with a visa that says "I was in Uman." Rebbe Nachman wants us to build a true spiritual stature, to uncover the truth, and to cleanse away the lies and illusions.
The main thing is the internal and intellectual work. Even an earnest Jew who sits in a corner and learns Torah 13 hours a day, who has never spoken lashon hara (evil speech) and views himself as dust and ashes – can reach higher spiritual levels than someone who makes a lot of noise and fanfare but is empty inside. The goal is not the noise, but rather the building of the person from within, layer upon layer, with patience and perseverance.
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