During this period, a new student, Yaakov Sepsel, joined the yeshiva, a brilliant young boy all of fourteen and a half, who was acknowledged as 'the Vishker genius.' This Yaakov was afflicted with tuberculosis, a disease considered high risk during those years before penicillin.
His fellow students went to the Chofetz Chaim, suggesting that the yeshiva pay for his lodging to prevent his disease from becoming more acute. The Chofetz Chaim thought for a moment and then said, 'I am not prepared that the students discontinue sleeping on the floor as if for the sake of their study and at the expense of their health. On the contrary, I insist that they continue to sleep on the floor for the sake of benefiting from 'the lights within the Torah' and will surely remain healthy nonetheless.'
His blessing was fulfilled and I remember Sepsel from much later years in America, when he was advanced in age, living in an Old Age Home for talmidei chachomim, and still involved in writing his Torah novella. Many people from the outside visited him to engage him in Torah study.
What did the Chofetz Chaim mean to convey regarding sleeping on the floor for the sake of benefiting from the lights of the Torah?
It is written that when Moshe Rabbenu beheld the burning bush, he covered his eyes, maintaining that he was not worthy of seeing the Shechina. Hashem then spoke to him and said: 'I have appeared to you in order to reveal great secrets to you. By concealing your face, you have implied that you are not worthy enough, which caused Me much honor, so to speak. In this merit, you will be by Me for forty days and forty nights, without eating or sleeping, in order to receive the Torah. Not only this, but I will grace you with rays of glory, all because of your humility in the honor you showed Me.'
We see from this that if one venerates Hashem, one receives special merits of Torah, besides being granted increased special Heavenly assistance and closeness to Hashem.
This is what the Chofetz Chaim implied: that by being willing to sleep on the hard ground and sacrificing themselves in order to gain Torah, the yeshiva students were expressing their reverence towards Hashem to an incomparable degree. This homage can be compared to Moshe Rabbenu, a desire to increase their Torah and receive increased Heavenly assistance, which would be lacking were they sleeping comfortably in a bed, even, like Yaakov, at the supposed benefit to his health.
My message is that we are asking this audience to show their veneration towards Hashem, like sleeping on the floor, so to speak, meaning that they do something way beyond the norm that one is prepared to do. In other words, to show ultimate respect towards Hashem.
We must be aware that doing something that is very difficult for us is an expression of our reverence. We are asked to give and give all the time, and surely, people come constantly to you for help, and here we come, asking for even more. It is truly very difficult.
We are asking you to sleep on the floor, as it were, to show your honor for the Torah and for Hashem, and if so, He will surely award you with all of the merits of Siyata deShmaya in your homes, in the Torah study which you pursue on your own, and with Heavenly assistance to your entire families, which will bring much honor to all of Jewry.
