PERASHA YITRO
02/14/2025 10:05:04 AM
Understanding Torah
"And they journeyed from Refidim and came to the desert of Sinai…" (19,2)
"Comparing their journey from Refidim to their coming to the desert of Sinai – Just as their coming to the desert of Sinai was amidst repentance, so their journey from Refidim was amidst repentance." (Rashi)
From the fact that the Children of Israel repented before receiving the Torah the holy SHLAH brought substantiation to what the Kabbalists say – that the reason it is sometimes hard for a person to understand something in the Torah is because of the sins that he has done, and therefore a person should repent before he learns Torah. For this reason, the blessing in the Shmone Esre prayer of "Our Father bring us back to your Torah" is found next to the blessing of "You give a person wisdom" – to teach us that receiving wisdom is dependent on our repenting.
In the book Amud Esh a student of the MAHARIL Diskin testifies to what he often saw when learning with this great rabbi: In the course of his learning if the MAHARIL came across a subject that he could not totally understand, he would ask his student who was sitting opposite him to read out loud the words of the gemara word by word. Meanwhile, he would walk back and forth over the length of the room in deep thought, until he began to cry. Then he would go to the corner of the room and cry to G-d with a broken heart and ask that He enlighten his eyes with the light of Torah; and after that he would say his Confession and give charity – immediately thereafter G-d would enlighten his eyes and the subject would become very clear to him.
SHABBAT SHALOM!!!
Mayer Sasson