The Sum is Greater

Part A

ברסיסי לילה נ"ב ד"ה ובקריעת (וע"ע מי השילוח ברכות ז.) וז"ל ושמעתי דהלימוד הרי יש לו גבול עד כמה הוא משיג אבל השימוש הוא החשק והאהבה שיש למשמש שמחמתו הוא משמש ומשתדל להקים דגל התורה זה אין לו גבול כי הוא אינו משיג עצמות דברי תורה המתגלה לחכמים רק חומד וכוסף לדברי תורה דהיינו לכל התורה כולה.

This is an extremely profound piece from Rav Tzaddok, actually quoting the Ishbitzer but R’Tzadok said it better, and I would like to elaborate on what he said in order to explain it. I will preface my explanation with an idea that I have shared many times with groups in person, but I have never tried to put it in writing.

Imagine that you are trying to explain to an emotionally-challenged alien what love is. The alien asks you why you love your spouse. You explain to the alien that you love your spouse because she is beautiful. “Oh,” says the alien, “so love is beauty?” “No,” you add, “not just because she is beautiful, she is also smart.” Oh. So love is smart?” “Well, she’s also funny.” “So which one is it? Is love beauty? Is it intelligence or is it humor?” “Well, it’s not really any of those things, but it’s all of those things.”

The fact is that if you truly love your spouse it is something that you cannot put into words. Every word that you can use is really dancing around the topic. It may be an element, it may be a contributing factor, but there is really no word that you can use that explains what the love is. There are certain things that ליבא לפומא לא גליא, the heart does not reveal to the mouth. There is no way to verbalize them. They are not just greater than the sum of the parts, but are much more profound.

The same is true of Torah study. One can study Torah and acquire a tremendous amount of knowledge. But at the end of the day the corpus of Torah is finite and there is a limit to your brains capacity. But even more so, none of that knowledge is the essence of Torah. The true essence of the Torah does not lie in the knowledge of the Torah but in the desire to have the profound depth that comes about from an intimate knowledge of the Torah.

גדול שימושה יותר מלימודה

Sitting at the feet of the Tzaddikim who embody the Torah is much greater than acquiring the knowledge of the Torah because now you are in the face of something that is infinite. Something that is all encompassing at that one can see and sense in the presence of the true Tzaddik even if there is no way to put it into words.

Part B

If we go back to our little story, let us take it one step further. Imagine someone were to come to you now and say that they had conducted a study among PhD beauty experts and they had determined that your wife was not beautiful. Would that cause your love for her to stop? Or what if they told you that they administered an IQ test and despite your being attracted by her intelligence, academia says that she is unintelligent? Or what if a Professor of Comedy told that you that she really wasn’t funny. Would that end your love? Surely not because all of these elements are not logical reasons to love. None of these define or determine the love and someone telling you that you are objectively wrong about any of these facts that attract you does not diminish your love in any way.

Our Sages teach us in Pirkei Avos that love cannot be dependant on anything. Love which is dependant on some factor is doomed to failure, because it isn’t love. As long as your love can be falsified, you have not yet truly loved.

The same is true when it comes to knowledge of God. If one’s knowledge and love of God is connected to one “proof” or another which, if disproven would negate their belief, then they have never believed. There can be many reasons why one believes in God, but at the end, like loving one’s spouse, it is not a logical process, but one that supersedes logic. As long as it remains in the realm of logic it is susceptible to the logic being disproven and the belief and love being shown to have been fake all along.

Part C

This also explains the “danger” and difficulty in the study of Kabbala. As is known, everything the Arizal taught is metaphor. It is easy to get caught in the metaphor and think that that is the real thing. In truth, it is all pointing to a deeper truth to which the metaphor helps direct you but ultimately you must find in your heart. Too often, as in Torah as in love, people get caught in the metaphor in studying Kabbala and can’t see the forest for the trees. Or they get so caught up in the beauty of their spouse that they never find the true love within. Or they are so caught up on the knowledge of the Torah that they never touch the sum of its parts that are greater than the whole.