"The Way of G-d"

Part 4: "Divine Service"

Ch. 2: Torah Study

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Torah-study isn't only satisfying on an intellectual, emotional, and a visceral level, it also nourishes your being, mends all kinds of things within, and prepares you for even loftier things.

For a number of things happen when you fix the whole of your being onto Torah-study. The first is that you're amply "rewarded" for it. Now, while that's taken to refer to some sort of "payment" for a job well done, that's not an adequate depiction of what happens to you when you study Torah in depth. For if you're sensitive enough to discern it, you'll find that the reward comes down to an inscrutable and subtle sense of being hoisted upward, inwardly.

And while that sense can indeed be perceived by some, there's a whole other degree of it that happens on an arcane and utterly impalpable, otherworldly level. It also goes without saying that the deeper-in your studying, the higher-up your lift.

But something else happens, too. The Torah that you study begins to trickle down into your being and to meander about there like a thick, warm salve until it starts to fill in all the ethereal cracks and crevices. The exceptional thing about that, though, is that the process goes outward from there, too; until the selfsame thing begins to happen along the cracks and crevices all about you, ad infinitum, until there's nothing in all of creation that isn't rectified on one level or another along the way, thanks to your Torah-study. And much along the same lines as above, the deeper-in your study, the wider-out the reach.

That's why we're encouraged in the strongest of terms to serve G-d by engaging in Torah-study most specifically. And it's also why we're told to study all elements of Torah, including Scripture, Mishna, Talmud, and more, to varying degrees. For each one serves to rectify the world its own way.

Text Copyright © 2004 by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org.