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Rav Shlomo Levenstein, a gabbai of Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman, recently spoke at a bar mitzvah of twin boys whose father was niftar over Pesach. Rav Levenstein related the following incident.
Rav Shteinman, apparently not knowing what either of these items are, asked the young man what he meant.
The young man replied that these items are delicious foods.
The young man, with a streak of wit, said to the senior gadol that he is offering him foods that all people consider to be delicious and appetizing and yet Rav Shteinman does not have any interest in them.
How about laziness? Isn’t that the main factor for losing interest in learning Torah? The natural enjoyment of learning only comes after accomplishment of learning, not before.
And, unfortunately there are many learners out there who do in fact speak Loshon Hara. Learning Torah alone doesn’t seem to be a natural shield from speaking loshon hara. One must make a conscience effort to refrain from speaking loshon hara; learner and non learner alike.
wow!
I find it very hard to believe that Rav Shteinman did not know what steak and/or ice cream are.
The Wolf
As an aside, adorable you are not as bad as you think you are if you appreciate this story.
(I dont believe it ever happened, not to detract from the message. Of course.)
I don’t know about this.
Learning Torah is supposed to be something hard to do, otherwise we wouldn’t get schar for doing it. I don’t think it is supposed to be like ice cream.
Wolf: Maybe he thought he meant steak with ice cream, and he was wondering who would want to put ice cream on steak.
Or maybe he thought it meant stake and eye cream.
popa
i think ideally it should be difficult and a challenge and yet be sweeter than ice cream
kind of like a master carpenter building a cabinet. difficult, physically draining, sometimes things dont fit and have to be broken down and rebuilt. but all the while there is the satisfaction of laboring for a beloved goal, and of utilizing your skills for creating something.
Well, we only get rewarded according to the amount that we conquered our yetzer hara. So we really would not get very rewarded for something which is easy.
After all, the reason why Hashem makes us work for our reward, is because we would not enjoy if we got it for free, since it would be ???? ??????, bread of embarrassment.
who said it should be easy
Isn’t that the implication of the story?
i dont know
i didnt really understand the story
but i didnt see anything about easy
i saw sweet though
difficult can be sweet
ask edmund hilary when he got to the top of everest. probably sweet is too mild a word for how he felt
i imagine there were a lot of moments of sweetness along the way up as well, as challenge after challenge was met.
not just conquering the challenge
even meeting it and utilizing his skills
nevermind, you cant ask him, i just found out he was niftar 3 years ago
Ok, here is the rant:
(adorable, I always like what you write, and it is a nice story, but I am going to blast it.)
Torah learning is hard. It is. Ask anyone.
I don’t think it is helpful to tell people who are struggling to do what is right, that they should be finding it easy. It cheapens what they are doing to be told it is easy.
I’m sure Edmund Hillary was well aware that what he was doing was really hard. And if you wanted to help someone climb Everest, you would tell them how hard it was going to be.
And learning torah is just not like climbing Everest. You don’t always feels that accomplished. It isn’t always that rewarding. Sometimes it is just a drag. Maybe that’s because we’re americans, maybe it is because we eat pizza, maybe its because of anything. But it isn’t our fault.
We were born and brought up this way. Our ????? in life is to make ourselves better than how we started, so the measuring point is from where we started. And this is where we started.
So I’m not very inspired when told that I should enjoy torah more than I do. Or that I’m “sick” if I don’t like torah.
Women: You should assume anything you were taught in seminary about learning is false. Because it usually is. The gra says that women have a taava for pritzus as strong as men have for bittul torah.
I don’t pretend to understand what you deal with as far as tznius (not to say I don’t have opinions about what is tznius).
Bump
Popa posted perfectly.
Thanks torah!
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