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Killing Oneself In Torah's Tent
by HaRav Efraim Zemel
This essay was first published twenty-five years ago.
"This is the Torah: a man who dies in the tent. . ." (Bamidbar 19:14). The gemora (Brochos 63b) expounds: "Reish Lokish said: `Where do we learn that Torah knowledge remains only with someone who kills himself over it? "This is the Torah: a man who dies in the tent."'" Rashi explains: "Where is the Torah to be found? With a person who kills himself in the Torah's tent."
There is a twofold problem with understanding this lesson of Chazal's, which is expounded in the parsha of poroh aduma. First of all, why did the Torah find it proper to teach us about diligence in Torah study specifically in the passage dealing with being metaheir someone from tumas hameis? Why was such an essential matter as the way to guarantee that Torah knowledge stay with someone after he has acquired it, not taught to us earlier?
Second, how can remembering Torah studies be dependent upon killing oneself — upon death? The Torah is itself the source of life: "See, I have placed before you today life and good ... choose life, so that you and your seed will live" (Devorim 30:15-19).
"HaKodosh Boruch Hu gave the Torah to Yisroel as a medicine that brings life to the whole body" (Eruvin 54a). "If he is worthy, then the Torah becomes for him the elixir of life" (Yoma 72b).
Furthermore, on the posuk, "For those who find Me find life" (Mishlei 8:35) Chazal expound (in the Yalkut Shimoni, 943): "Anyone who is in the midst of divrei Torah — for him I am present everywhere (and `For those who find Me find life')." That is to say, the Torah grants life both in olam hazeh and olam haboh to those who study it. After studying all these pesukim and the lessons of Chazal, we must ask what is meant in Brochos that someone should "kill himself" over the Torah.
It seems to me that Chazal are referring to a kind of death that begets life, like a seed sown in the earth, which, after rotting, begins to send forth roots in all directions, until the tree rises high and bears fruit.
There are two types of death: one is physical death, when the neshamah leaves the body. The second type is a spiritual death that subdues man's inner self and imprisons his neshamah beneath a heavy cover of materialism. These two types of death are both acts of the Heavenly Adversary. "Reish Lokish said: `He is the Adversary, he is the yetzer hora, he is the angel of death'" (Bava Basra 16a). Physical death is caused by the angel of death, but spiritual death is a result of the yetzer hora's influence on a living man.
This matter is better understood according to the Nefesh HaChaim (1:6, in note): "Before Adam's sin man was doubtless totally capable of either choosing to do good or, chas vesholom, bad, by using his free will, which was the aim of the entire creation. Although he later sinned, this was not because of the evil within himself. Adam was thoroughly righteous and possessed only powers of holiness. Everything that he did was virtuous and refined, entirely good without any admixture or inclination to evil. The powers of evil were outside his body, altogether independent of him. He had free will to, chas vesholom, enter into the powers of evil, just as a person has free will to decide whether to enter a fire.
When the yetzer hora wanted to make him sin, it needed to lure him from the outside, not like today, when the yetzer tempts a person from within. A man feels as if he himself wants to sin, as if he is attracted to sin, and not that some external force is pulling him. When Adam sinned by following the temptation of the yetzer he caused the powers of evil to actually enter within him."
When Adam Horishon sinned, he caused his own death in two ways: physical death was decreed upon him, and simultaneously also a spiritual death — the yetzer was allowed to enter his body and become an internal power.
The Torah teaches this to us in the parsha of poroh aduma in describing the way to become tahor from the tumah of a meis. In addition, from that parsha, we learn the way to become tahor from the spiritual death within ourselves. "When a person dies in a tent, everyone who comes in the tent and everything that is in the tent will be tomei for seven days" (Bamidbar 19:14). By walking into a tent where there is a meis, a person brings tumah on himself, and by "killing himself" in his Torah studies he can bring upon himself the taharoh of true life and eternal existence.
When the Jewish Nation received the Torah at Mount Sinai they enjoyed a total spiritual rejuvenation. The yetzer hora was eliminated from their internal nature. "When the nochosh approached Chava he poisoned her with `filth.' When Yisroel stood on Mount Sinai this `filth' ceased" (Shabbos 146a).
This is what Reish Lokish meant by saying, "Torah study only remains with someone who kills himself over it." In order for the Torah to exist within man, for a person to be able to unite with the Torah and fulfill the dictum that, "Kudsha Brich Hu, the Torah, and Yisroel are one," he must free himself from the yetzer hora's control. By doing so he is metaheir his inner soul from the tumah of death. This is all expressed in a person "killing himself," freeing his essence from the control of the Satan.
This person, who is elevated to the level of "killing himself" — who is metaheir himself from animalistic filth — is privileged to have the Torah dwell within him. Of him the posuk writes: "For those who find me find life" (Mishlei 8:35).
@Big Let Body=The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 19:4) cites a well-known anecdote: "A non-Jew asked R' Yochonon ben Zaccai: `Your ways are similar to sorcery. You bring a cow, burn it, grind it and take its ashes. For some one of you who has become tomei from a corpse, you sprinkle two or three drops on him and declare that he is tahor.'
R' Yochonon told him: `Did a spirit of madness ever enter you?'
The non-Jew answered: `No.'
He asked him: `But did you ever see a person into whom a spirit of madness had entered?'
The non-Jew answered: `Yes.'
Asked R' Yochonon: `And what is done with such a person?'
The non-Jew answered: `We bring roots of herbs and make them smoke under him, throw water on him, and it departs from him!'
R' Yochonon told him: `You should listen to what you yourself are saying. This ruach tumah about which the posuk writes, "and the ruach of tumah I will remove from the land" (Zecharya 13:2) departs from man by sprinkling the water of the poroh aduma over it.'
After the non-Jew left, R' Yochonon's students asked him: `Our mentor, for that person you gave an answer which, although insufficient, was enough to satisfy him; but what can you explain to us?'
R' Yochonon told them: `By your life, the meis is not metamei and the water is not metaheir, but HaKodosh Boruch Hu said: "This is a chok and a gezeira that I decreed. You are not allowed to transgress My decree, as is written, `This is the chukka of the Torah' (Bamidbar 19:2)'"'"
The entire conversation with the non-Jew seems to be just pointless talk. What was Chazal's reason for citing it?
It may be that R' Yochonon told the non-Jew the true explanation according to his level of understanding. The talmidim with their broad erudition thought that it was only to appease the non-Jew, and therefore asked R' Yochonon to tell them the true explanation.
R' Yochonon answered his talmidim: "The meis is not metamei and the water is not metaheir but HaKodosh Boruch Hu said: `This is a chok and a gezeira that I decreed.'" First a person must accept the Torah and humble himself before it. He should not try to grasp it with his intelligence, which is sometimes incapable of doing so. He must accept it as it is, from HaKodosh Boruch Hu, and be fully aware that the Torah's meaning is limitless, that no person can fully understand it. The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 19:3) reveals this principle to us: "Shlomo said: `I understood the whole Torah, but about the poroh aduma I analyzed, questioned, and investigated, but I said: `I will become wise, but it is far from me'" (Koheles 7:23).
This principle does not apply only to poroh aduma; it has broad significance. I saw in the name of the gaon R' Yosef Shaul Natansohn zt'l: "`I said: "I will be wise"' — I thought that there was a logical explanation for all the mitzvos and I could understand it all, but after I reflected about the poroh aduma it was proven to me that `it is far from me' — that I do not understand anything, and that all the mitzvos of the Torah are above man's capability of perception."
Although a Jew must toil to understand the Torah, to labor at his full capacity to grasp it, the Holy Torah with its 613 mitzvos must be fully accepted even without understanding it, without attaching one's views to it.
R' Moshe Chaim Luzzatto explains (in the beginning of Derech Eitz Chaim) the Divine reality of the Torah: "The Torah is in actuality a light given to Yisroel so they can be illuminated by it. The Torah is not like foreign wisdom and secular knowledge, that are merely knowledge that someone grasps with his intellect. The Torah is holy and its reality is as lofty as the heavens. When a person studies the Torah in this world he is illuminating his neshamah and bringing it to the Heavenly store chambers, the storerooms of the Creator. This is what the wise Shlomo wrote: `And the Torah is light' (Mishlei 6:23) — it is true light and not only wisdom. It does not merely show forth an imaginary light, it really is light, and this is its reality in Heaven. When the Torah enters a person's neshamah light enters it, just as when the sun's rays enter a house."
This is the way a Jew must accept the Torah. Reish Lokish is addressing himself to a person who, because of his natural inclination, wants to embrace Torah wisdom only after fully understanding its logic. Reish Lokish tells this person that "he must kill himself over it." He must overcome his powers of intellect and elevate himself above it in order to obtain Divine brilliance. This overcoming one's intellect is considered like a person killing himself.
Now it can be properly understood why the Torah revealed to us this principle specifically in the parsha of poroh aduma. A person's intellect is totally unable to grasp the concept of poroh aduma, and each person feels that "it is far from me" and that it is "a decree that Hashem has decreed." We learn in this fashion that this is the way to acquire Torah knowledge in general, and to cause it to remain with those who study it.
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