Torah: A Minute to Learn, a Lifetime to Master
By Maayan Lev
Shavuot commemorates when Moses received the Torah from G!d on Mt. Sinai. It’s a joyous holiday, but if you said that to a non-Jew, they would probably be very surprised at how we express that joy. The hallmark identifier of Shavuot is its emphasis on the study of Torah. Many Jews stay up all night long on Erev Shavuot to study torah. I did this myself one year when I visited my cousins at their local Chabad.
As a Hebrew school teacher, my students often ask me why we have to read the Torah again every year. I give them the standard answer: that not only is it a tradition, but we glean new takeaways from it each time we read it. As Ben Bag Bag taught about Torah:
הֲפֹךְ בָּהּ וַהֲפֹךְ בָּהּ, דְּכֹלָּא בָהּ.
Turn it, and turn it again, for it contains everything.[1]
Sometimes it sounds like a cop-out answer, but it’s really not! A famous Talmudic story relates how a non-Jew came to two great rabbis, Shammai and Hillel, telling each of them separately that if they could teach him the entire Torah while he stood on one foot, that he would convert to Judaism. I see two distinct ways to look at this. Either he was issuing them a direct challenge, or he was saying to them: “I want to learn, but only if it’s easy.” Shammai rejected this as foolishness, and sent him away. But Hillel successfully converted him by saying:
,דַּעֲלָךְ סְנֵי לְחַבְרָךְ לָא תַּעֲבֵיד — זוֹ הִיא כׇּל הַתּוֹרָה כּוּלָּהּ וְאִידַּךְ פֵּירוּשָׁהּ הוּא.
That which is hateful to you, do not do to another;
that is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary.[2]
The truth is, both rabbis were correct. Deep down, I’m sure Hillel knew that it was impossible to boil the Torah down into one sentence. But if this man only had the patience to learn a single lesson from the Torah, then Hillel wisely chose the most valuable lesson among seemingly millions!
As a rabbinical student, I’ve seen from my instructors that you can dedicate your entire lifetime and professional career to studying Torah and still constantly find new meaning in it, especially regarding its real-world applications. Even Hillel and Shammai still probably had things they could learn about the Torah, so certainly they wouldn’t have been able to teach the man while he was balancing on one foot!
I admire Shammai for sticking to his guns and not trying to give him any easy answers, because Judaism isn’t about easy answers. He essentially said to the man: “If you’re looking for shortcuts, then this really isn’t meant for you.” Hillel, however, was focused on winning over this man. He knew that at this point in his spiritual journey, the man did not yet have “a mind to understand” the Torah.[3] Hillel realized that in order to make him want to learn, he had to make him feel welcome.
Hillel wasn’t under any illusions. If he truly believed that all you needed to know about the Torah could be summarized while on one foot, he wouldn’t have added at the end:
Go study!–זִיל גְּמוֹר!
Go study![4]
It’s lovely to try to boil down the Torah to just one beautiful message, but, in actuality, it’s a very complex document. No matter how long we study it, it will always have new mysteries to uncover and new applications to unlock! Even Moses himself wasn’t able to learn the Torah on one foot. It took him 40 days, and he had the major advantage of being taught by none other than the Holy One, Source of Blessing!
The beauty of Shavuot (and truly, of all Torah study) is that when we sit down together to study Torah, we’re not expecting to learn it all in one night. Rather, we’re just hoping to come away with at least one great nugget, and hopefully to also be inspired to continue our study later.
If someone today would ask me to sum up the Torah to them while they were on one foot, I would probably use a blend of both Hillel and Shammai’s approach. My answer would be:
“While you can’t truly learn everything on one foot, the Torah contains so many riches that there is still much that can be taught while on one foot! Come study with us as long as you want, and if you choose to leave, I can promise you’ll have learned!”
We don’t stay up all night at CAH to learn on Erev Shavuot. We know that even if we did, we couldn’t possibly learn all that there is to be learned. But time isn’t a factor to us. There’s no pressure to squeeze everything into one night. We know that we can keep coming back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, for as long as we want. Torah is truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Maayan
[1] Avot 5:22
[2] Shabbat 31a
[3] Deuteronomy 29:3
[4] Ibid.