When Torah Makes You Worse
I subscribe to the point of view that learning Torah is about improving one’s character. This is what Rav Adin Steinsaltz writes.
In his words
This description of what the study of Torah does to the character of a person does not speak much about intellectual achievement or erudition; rather, it speaks about the human being. Indeed, in Jewish law, a person who is intellectually equipped and a scholar but does not behave properly is considered a most despicable human being. A person who is merely erudite is called, in the Talmud, “a book-carrying donkey,” or “a basket full of books.” Carrying books rather than, say, straw, does not make a donkey less of a donkey.
So Torah study must transform the student’s personality; if it does not, then there is something wrong about the teacher, the teaching method, and the pupil himself. In fact, the Mishna goes on to say that study says that Torah prepares him to be “righteous and pious and honest and faithful,” etc. It does not actually do that: it creates the possibility, prepares the ground. No one will ever become anything unless they want to; but the right conditions must be provided. To prepare the ground means to take care not just of what people know, but also of what they make of that knowledge, what becomes of them as human beings.
I have thus found it incomprehensible when people who are great, learned Torah scholars- leaders of the generation- are proven to be morally corrupt. When rabbis who were in charge of converting others and who wrote important books on prayer spy on women in the mikveh [ritual bath], when the famed authors of children’s books have been preying upon and molesting those children, and when people who spend all day learning Talmud or sitting in Kollel abuse their wives, it bothers me. It doesn’t make sense.
“What does this mean?” I wondered. “How can this be? If someone spends so much time studying Torah, truly internalizing that there is a God, they would be incapable of preying upon others, of committing these abuses of power- or at the very least, if they did commit them, after the first time they would be so struck by remorse, by overpowering regret, that they could never do it again.”
But this is not the case. “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain,” as Shakespeare writes.
I talked to Heshy (my husband) about this. He told me that in his experience, Gemara learning was an intellectual exercise. “What you don’t understand, Chana,” he explained, “is that we spent six months learning about the dimensions of a sukkah [ritual booth]. Six months! In a real yeshiva, you skip all of the aggadata [nonlegal sections], so it’s not like you are learning moral lessons from those. If you’re lucky, you have a mussar [ethical behavior] seder [time to learn], but that’s half an hour once a week, and people come late. I know that you like to learn from everything, especially Tanakh and midrash, but you have to understand that when you’re learning in yeshiva, that’s not what you learn.”
I found this puzzling, because even if you’re not learning the moral or story-filled sections, surely Talmud study still encompasses more than the intellect? I talked about it with a wise individual I know, and he asked me, “Could you study Catholicism?” I said yes. He asked if I could find it fascinating, intellectually stimulating and engaging. I said yes. “But would you become Catholic?” No, I stated. This, he suggested, could be analogous to how some people experience Talmud study- engaging, exciting, stirring, but not something that is linked back to themselves, such that it would change their behaviors and actions. There is a distance that remains.
This still didn’t persuade me. So I reached out to Rabbi Moshe Rosenstein, my former teacher and the current Dean of Tomer Devorah Seminary. I asked him to explain to me how a man could sit in Kollel, study Talmud, live a life that appeared to be filled with Torah, and still terrify and hurt his wife.
He sent me an excerpt from the Sefer Even Sheleimah by the Vilna Gaon.
My friend Rabbi Yair Shahak, Chair of the World Languages Department (which includes Hebrew) at Frisch, helped me translate it.
11- The topic of the Torah to the soul is analogous to the rain to the ground, that it causes to grow whatever is planted in it, an elixir of life or elixir of death. So too with the Torah, it causes to grow whatever is in his heart. If his heart is good, the Torah will cause his fear (of God) to grow. And if in his heart there is a source, “a root that bears gall and wormwood” (Deuteronomy 29:17) the Torah will cause that negative feeling to grow in his heart like it is written “the righteous walk in them (God’s ways) and the transgressors stumble in them” (Hosea 14:10). And like they say in BT Sabbath 88b “And that is what Rava said: To those who are right-handed in their approach to Torah, and engage in its study with strength, good will, and sanctity, Torah is a drug of life, and to those who are left-handed in their approach to Torah, it is a drug of death.”
Therefore, he needs to clear his heart every day prior to and after his learning from the reek of the negative thoughts and character traits, with fear of sin and with good deeds. And this is considered when they [the Sages] discuss what one does in the bathroom (the body ridding itself of waste) and regarding this [ridding oneself of spiritual waste] they hinted when they said in Brachot 8b [we looked this up and ACTUALLY it’s 8a; this is a mistake by the publisher] “the time of finding refers to finding a lavatory” and this is also what they say in Brachot 55a “in praise of one who prolongs his time in the bathroom” and this is also what they say in Brachot 62a “Ben Azzai said: Rise early in the morning and go defecate, wait for evening and go defecate.” This means to say in his youth (that’s what “rise early” refers to) and in his old age (that’s what “evening” refers to), that you should not distance from your Creator a great distance, because then she (the Torah) won’t be able to help. And he needs to feel out whichever bad quality is strengthened in him, and after this he should clear it out. He should not be like Baalei Taavah, desirous individuals, who fast, and their desire becomes even stronger. And he needs for this great shrewdness/ cunning, shrewdness in fear, against (to counteract) the shrewd/ cunning serpent. (The serpent in biblical literature is a reference to the yetzer hara, evil inclination.) And the one who is too lazy to search out every bad quality, all of the boundaries and fences that he makes won’t help him because any malady that is not cured from within [is not really healed.] And even the fence of the Torah, that is a shield and a salvation, is destroyed through his laziness (Proverbs 24:31, 19:15, 25:4).
עַל־שְׂדֵ֣ה אִישׁ־עָצֵ֣ל עָבַ֑רְתִּי וְעַל־כֶּ֝֗רֶם אָדָ֥ם חֲסַר־לֵֽב׃
I passed by the field of a lazy man,
By the vineyard of a man lacking sense.וְהִנֵּ֨ה עָ֘לָ֤ה כֻלּ֨וֹ ׀ קִמְּשֹׂנִ֗ים כָּסּ֣וּ פָנָ֣יו חֲרֻלִּ֑ים וְגֶ֖דֶר אֲבָנָ֣יו נֶהֱרָֽסָה׃
It was all overgrown with thorns;
Its surface was covered with chickweed,
And its stone fence lay in ruins.עַ֭צְלָה תַּפִּ֣יל תַּרְדֵּמָ֑ה וְנֶ֖פֶשׁ רְמִיָּ֣ה תִרְעָֽב׃
Laziness induces sleep,
And a negligent person will go hungry.הָג֣וֹ סִיגִ֣ים מִכָּ֑סֶף וַיֵּצֵ֖א לַצֹּרֵ֣ף כֶּֽלִי׃
The dross having been separated from the silver,
A vessel emerged for the smith.
This is radical.
Because what the Vilna Gaon is saying is that Torah does not have an inherent property to transform you and make you better. Torah is water and it can only water the ground you have prepared- as Rav Steinsaltz himself referenced.
This means that if a man has evil, or arrogance, or anger in his heart and he does not work on himself to root out these negative character traits, Torah waters those very traits, helping those poisonous weeds grow. Learning all that Torah does not help him and it can even make him worse.
This helped me make sense of an experience my friend had. This is the poem she wrote about her husband, a man who was the ultimate Torah scholar- and cruel and abusive to her.
Daf Gemara
He knows how to learn.
Rows of tomes
Shining black letters.
He knows how to learn.
Focus on those. Less on him.
Less on his behavior.
On his obsessions.
On his calculations.
Focus on the sefer.
On the black on white.
Less black and white.
Than the criticism
Than the name calling.
Than the cold and cruel emotions.
Better focus on the black.
On the nights of rape
On the nights of darkness.
On the nights of endless endless talk and no sleep.
On the nights of refusal.
Or on the white.
Focus on the white.
Those laws he threw in your face.
Those rules he insisted you live by.
That control he craved.
Maybe there is some grey?
That time he beat you up?
You provoked it.
That time he hit the wall above your head?
You deserved it.
That time he punished you?
You should have known better.
Black and white tomes full of laws.
Rules restrictions and obsessions.
And the right to dominate the home.
Dominate the wife.
She has to obey those rules and him.
But who cares about the fear
Who cares about the swear words
And the sobs through the night
Who cares about the money he stole
Or the years she served him
Or the times she tried to flee
All that matters is
He knows how to learn.
To this I say
אַל־תַּבֵּ֧ט אֶל־מַרְאֵ֛הוּ וְאֶל־גְּבֹ֥הַּ קוֹמָת֖וֹ כִּ֣י מְאַסְתִּ֑יהוּ כִּ֣י ׀ לֹ֗א אֲשֶׁ֤ר יִרְאֶה֙ הָאָדָ֔ם כִּ֤י הָאָדָם֙ יִרְאֶ֣ה לַעֵינַ֔יִם וַיהֹוָ֖ה יִרְאֶ֥ה לַלֵּבָֽב׃
Don’t look upon his appearance, or his stature, for I [God] have rejected him. For man sees only what is visible, but God sees to the heart.
God knows who you really are. All the artifice and pretense in the world cannot save you. Remorse, regret, ownership and acknowledgment of one’s past behavior and offenses coupled with a true desire to change is the only way forward. The world may see an upstanding individual with a black hat, white shirt and the most brilliant Talmudic interpretations but none of that matters when your core is rotten. All your Torah cannot save you. You cannot hide from God.
So turn to Him instead. Admit your guilt. And change your life.
He wants you back. He’ll wait for you with open arms.
You just have to mean it.
This is an exceptionally important and eloquently stated piece, Chana.
Whoa. What courage.