We are up to Pirkei Avos chapter 6, mishnah 6 (in some versions, mishnah 5). This is an extremely well known mishnah, and anyone who has spent time in Aish HaTorah circles knows it well: Rabbi Noach Weinberg, of blessed memory, built the entry gate to the organization - a lecture series called 'The Forty-Eight Ways to Wisdom', which draws in Jews who are not yet observant - entirely on the foundation of this beraisa. In fact, he has some fifty lectures based on this one beraisa alone. We will cover it in a single lesson, even though there is a great deal here to say.
"Gedolah Torah yoser min haKehunah u'min haMalchus" - Torah is greater than the priesthood and than kingship:
The beraisa opens with this statement. Recall the words of the mishnah in the fourth chapter about the three crowns - the crown of kingship, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of Torah. Here we are dealing with those three areas of authority in a life of Torah, and the beraisa establishes that those who bear the crown of Torah are greater than those who embody the priesthood as a kohen or kingship as a king.
Why is that? "SheHaMalchus nikneis bishloshim ma'alos, v'haKehunah b'esrim v'arba, v'haTorah nikneis b'arba'im u'shemonah devarim" - kingship is acquired with thirty qualities, the priesthood with twenty-four, and Torah is acquired with forty-eight things. It is worth noting that the word "nikneis" (acquired) with regard to kingship does not appear in most of the early manuscripts, even though it is found in most printed editions today; the passage is far easier to understand without it, so we will omit it.
Thirty qualities set the king apart from everyone else, and twenty-four set the kohen apart from a non-kohen. But Torah is not inherited at birth: the king is born into kingship and the kohen is born into the priesthood, whereas one who wishes to wear the crown of Torah must earn it and acquire it through forty-eight ways - and it is these that make the one who wears the crown of Torah distinct from everyone else.
We will not dwell on this at length, but briefly: the twenty-four qualities of the kohanim are the twenty-four gifts that they receive and that no one else benefits from:
Ten in the Temple - including the meat of the various offerings, which they may enjoy in a place where others may not. In total, ten items that are types of food.
Four in Jerusalem - including the firstborn, the first fruits, and the like.
Ten throughout the Land of Israel - the great Terumah, challah, and also rarer items such as the dedications assigned to kohanim.
Regarding kings, there are differing understandings:
Some understand that these are material matters: just as the kohen benefits from material gifts, so too the king benefits from thirty items that are uniquely his, derived from verses in Koheles, in Shmuel, and in Devarim.
Others understand that the distinguishing features, both for kohanim and for kings, are the special laws that apply to them: the kohen is commanded to benefit from Terumah, and the king has special laws listed in Maseches Sanhedrin, in the book of Devarim, and in the book of Shmuel.
Either way, when it comes to Torah we are speaking of forty-eight things that can be acquired, and anyone serious about wearing the crown of Torah must acquire them.
A beautiful hint from the Maharal in his work 'Derech Chaim':
The Maharal explains that the three crowns are symbolized by three vessels in the Temple, the vessels that have a rim upon them - a crown:
The Shulchan (Table) - on which the lechem hapanim rested, and it had a crown around it. It symbolizes kingship, since the king's role toward the nation is to provide the people with material well-being.
The golden Mizbe'ach (Altar) - on which the most special service was performed, the burning of the incense twice a day in the Kodesh of the Heichal, and it too had a crown around it. It symbolizes the service of the kohanim on behalf of the people.
The Aron (Ark) - in the Kodesh HaKodashim, which held the Tablets of the Covenant that Moshe Rabbeinu received, the Tablets of the Ten Commandments, and it too had a crown. It symbolizes the crown of Torah.
And here comes his novel insight: if you calculate the perimeter of the vessels in two dimensions, in tefachim (six tefachim to an amah), you get:
The golden Altar - one amah by one amah, six by six. Six plus six plus six plus six - twenty four tefachim, corresponding to the twenty four gifts of the kohen.
The Table - an amah and a half by an amah: an amah and a half plus an amah is two and a half, doubled for the two sides - five amos of perimeter. Five times six tefachim - thirty tefachim, corresponding to the thirty qualities of kingship.
The Ark - an amah and a half by two and a half: an amah and a half plus two and a half is four, doubled - eight amos around. Eight times six - forty eight tefachim, corresponding to the forty eight ways in which Torah is acquired.
This is a remarkable Maharal, and there is much more to elaborate there.
What "acquisition" means here:
An ordinary acquisition is a binary event: the object either belongs to me or it does not, depending on whether the act of acquisition was performed. A car changing hands - until the acquisition is made it belongs entirely to the seller and zero percent to the buyer, and after the acquisition it belongs entirely to the buyer; that is a complete transfer. But with the acquisitions of Torah, the intent is not that by performing one of them, or even all of them, the Torah becomes fully one's own. These are partial steps, like bonding agents that connect a person to the Torah.
Each one of these forty eight tools is a way in which a person makes himself into a vessel fit to receive the Torah and to connect to it, and thereby to connect to the Holy One, blessed is He. Taken together, the forty eight acquisitions turn a person into a complete person, capable of uniting with the Torah and therefore of uniting with the One who gave it. This is a matter of levels: fulfilling all of them is not possible, but everyone must make his best effort and focus on as many as he can.
And these are the forty eight things:
"BiTalmud" - through study. When Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi said this, his first intent was straightforward: show up to the shiur. There was a shiur every day, and someone who does not learn Torah will not merit Torah. The commentators stress that it must be learning from a rebbi specifically, and not from books alone, since a rebbi ensures that the student will not fall into errors and will understand things properly.
Rav Noach and many of the commentators direct these words toward the student's whole life: lifelong learning. There is so much to learn that you never reach the end. A person who lives with the mindset of "I must learn and keep learning all the time" discovers that he has a desire to learn and admits that he is lacking; he needs to fill the gap in the knowledge he does not yet have, and that itself pushes him to learn more and better. The aspiration is to be constantly engaged in Torah study in every possible way, growing and growing without stopping.
There is also an approach that the word "Talmud" refers to the type of learning found in the Talmud Bavli. Obviously the Bavli was not written until some two hundred and fifty years after the sealing of the Mishnah, and the intent is not reading a book called Talmud Bavli, but rather the activity itself: thinking about the mishnayos, taking them apart, comparing and contrasting them, drawing conclusions from them, probing them and applying them. This process is called talmud, and the instruction here is to take part in that activity as it was immortalized in the collection of the learning done in the yeshivos of Bavel in the centuries that followed.
"BiShmias ha'ozen" - a puzzling expression: with what else would a person hear if not with his ears, and what would the ear tell him? On the first level, the meaning is that it is not enough to show up to the shiur; you have to pay attention, to listen, and to hear the rebbi's words.
But Rav Noach explains: very often, listening is not merely a mechanical absorbing of words. A person hears what someone else says through a filter of what he expects to hear, what he wants to hear and what he assumes the speaker means. "Shmias ha'ozen" says: stop. First take in the raw data exactly as your ears take it in, without filtering it through your thinking, without questions and interpretations, and without prior assumptions. Take the words at face value, get the data, hear the information; the processing, the thinking and the questions come later. First hear the speaker's words objectively, and listen with great concentration and genuine eagerness - because the only access a person has to information he does not know is by listening to others who convey it to him.
"Ba'arichas sefasayim" - arranging the words on the lips. The simple meaning: after hearing the teacher's words, the student repeats them to himself out loud. The puzzling part is not the lips but the word "arichah," arranging. It could have said "hotza'as sefasayim," speaking the words out with the lips. But "arichah," as in "Shulchan Aruch," means order. When you tell a child "set the table" and he grabs a fistful of knives and forks and tosses them onto the table - everything is indeed on the table, but this is no set table. "Aruch" means that everything is lying in its proper place.
After absorbing the information, you have to make sure it is clear in your mind, and process it to the point where you can say it over in an arranged, organized way. There are no questions or critiques yet, just clarification: "Did I clearly understand what I heard? Do I have the whole picture in front of me before I begin to process it?"
Chazal describe repeating the material out loud, literally with the mouth, and many statements stress how important and necessary it is to learn aloud. The Rema rules this as halachah (Hilchos Talmud Torah, chapter 3, halachah 12): one who learns out loud will remember, and one who reads to himself quietly will forget. The Gemara about Beruriah, who kicked a student for not learning out loud, is well known. So a person should enter his learning with his whole body: articulate what he is learning clearly, and say it out loud with his actual mouth, not merely run the words through his mind.
This is not the intent of the Mishnah, but as a plan B: whoever is not willing to speak out loud to himself and clarify the words with his mouth should at least do it with his pen. Let him write the material down and write up the class. You heard a class on the forty-eight things - review what you learned at least on paper, and again by way of arranging: not a word-for-word transcript, but a clear organization - "there are forty-eight ways; this is the first, this is the second, this is the third." And further: "arichas sefasayim" means that the words should always be on your lips, that is, a fixed routine of reviewing and processing what you heard and learned.
"B'vinas halev" - understanding of the heart, and in my view "heart" should always be translated as "mind": understanding of the mind. Until now we have heard and verified that we have the raw data in hand; now its processing begins. This is not mere review, but a certain level of critical thinking: to think about what you learned as if for the first time, to analyze it carefully, and to clarify whether it is clearly understood and whether there are questions.
In some versions the phrase "b'sichas halev" appears afterward, meaning the discernment of the heart, and according to that the process divides into two separate stages: analysis, and after it critique. And if the version reads only "binah," then both are included together. In other words: think carefully about what you heard and about your understanding of it - does it make sense? Does it fit with what you learned earlier? Is it consistent with your own personal experience? What questions would you want to ask? This critical process keeps a person from fooling himself into thinking he understood when in fact he did not; one who thinks the material through to the end discovers what is really unclear, and enters into the questions.
"B'taharah" - cleanliness. (In the version in front of me this word does not appear; it appears in some versions, including the one Rav Noach had.) If these are the forty-eight ways by which a person cleaves to the Torah, he must be pure. And taharah has at least two aspects. The first: creating a clean bond. The instructions on a tube of contact cement say, "before spreading, clean the surface so there is no dust on it," and that is the first step toward a good, solid bond with nothing intervening. Tumah is about getting your mind out of the sewer it has been in and cleaning yourself off from it, in order to create a proper connection to the Holy One, blessed is He, without the things that come between.
And the second, more general aspect: to clear your mind of unnecessary clutter altogether. We spoke about "adam ki yamus ba'ohel," a man who dies in a tent - when a person sits in the tent of Torah, he is like one who is dead to the world. Clean out your mind, make it pure of everything else, so that you can focus on your learning and gain solid focus and a solid bond with what you are learning, with no admixture, no side thoughts and no distractions - leave those for another time.
"B'eimah" and "b'yirah" - some have the reading "b'eimah," some have "b'yirah," and some combine the two into a single item. Eimah and yirah differ slightly from one another: one is mainly dread, and the other is reverence. And there are two things toward which eimah and yirah are called for: the Holy One, blessed is He, and one's teacher.
Toward the Holy One, blessed is He - because this is a serious matter, and the learner is engaged with His Torah. And one could say that there is eimah and yirah toward the Torah itself: the Shechinah is present with one who learns properly, and he must take that seriously. He is engaged in a sublime act, he is connecting to the Holy One, blessed is He, he has access to His thought and the Shechinah rests upon him - but only if he takes the matter seriously. And just as the Torah was given on Har Sinai with dread, with awe, with trembling and with quaking, so must a person take his learning seriously. The same applies to one's teacher: the teacher is the source of the information, and the student must feel reverence for him and stand before him in awe, not wasting time and not joking around - which is neither proper nor effective, and undermines his ability to receive Torah from him.
And there is another angle here: the Torah is ultimately instructions for living. Someone who does not take his learning seriously and says, "what difference does it make whether I understood the matter with absolute clarity" - will in the end do the wrong thing. Someone who learns the laws of Shabbos and does not learn a particular detail precisely will not know what to do when a fingernail is torn, half attached and half detached: may he pull it off, and how? The details have to be known, and therefore one must take his learning seriously in order to know exactly what to do and how. That is eimah and yirah.
"Ba'anavah" - with humility. Humility means knowing exactly who you are and who you are not, and not deceiving yourself. It does not mean that you think of yourself as inferior, and it does not mean that you make yourself small. Obviously, in relation to Hashem we are all small, but the point is not to think of yourself as less than what you are; it is simply to know what you truly are.
And the truth is that the human condition is that we all have a great deal to learn. We all want to project that we are good and capable, but deep down we know that we are not that good and not that capable; we have many shortcomings, and we have to admit them. Chazal stressed many times that the choicest of all traits is humility: Moshe was the humblest of all men, and that is why he was able to be the vessel that held the entire Torah.
Humility requires a person to say: I have a lot to learn, I am not perfect, I need to grow, I need this Torah. And by overcoming arrogance and admitting this, he will be able to learn from every person, he will learn with desire and enthusiasm because he knows he must, he will give his chavrusa the respect he deserves, and he will admit when he was wrong. But someone who fails at humility will be afraid to ask questions when he does not understand, afraid to admit that he does not understand, and that will hold him back. This is why Torah is compared to water: just as water flows to the lowest place, so too Torah will flow to a person, provided that he lowers himself and is humble.
"B'simchah" - with joy. The idea is straightforward: the Shechinah rests upon a person who learns Torah, and the Shechinah does not rest upon a person who is not joyful. The joy meant here is the joy of a mitzvah, the joy that comes from the learning itself. First, a person must have a positive orientation, be hopeful, optimistic and in a good mood, because otherwise his mind is in a constricted state: he is not open to new ideas, he has no interest in learning, he is not creative and he does not remember what he learns, because he is sunk and stuck. But when a person is in a good mood his mind opens up, he is open to new ideas and to thinking about them, and he is full of energy to work hard and process the material. That is why joy is essential.
More than that: a person only learns in the place his heart desires. It is a mistake to approach Torah as a burden to be carried out against your will or merely because it is good for you. When the doctor tells you to exercise, and we all need to, it is foolish to say, "I hate running, but I will do it because it is the most efficient sport." Why? Because you will not keep it up: running is hard, and if you do not enjoy it you will not do it. The thing has to be its own reward if you are going to stick with it. So investigate: maybe you love pickleball, maybe mountain biking, maybe tennis. Once you find the activity that is its own reward, you will naturally come back to it again and again, and you will get the exercise you need.
The same is true of Torah study: someone who associates Torah with hard labor and suffering will find it difficult to bring himself to do it, no matter how much he believes it is the right thing to do. You have to be joyful in your learning, and your learning has to make you joyful. So investigate which subjects you love to learn, what kind of learning excites you, and which method of learning leaves you feeling most satisfied and engaged, and pursue that. When the direction is exciting and energizing, the material goes in better, you cover more ground, you come back to it faster and you want to review it. Practically speaking, joy is an essential component in absorbing Torah.
Here it is worth recalling what was said at the opening of the Mishnah: although these are the forty-eight tools through which Torah is acquired, they are also, after the fact, the signs by which talmidei chachamim are recognized and distinguished from everyone else. A genuine talmid chacham, one who acquires Torah, is recognized by the fact that he lives with joy, lives with humility, practices attentive listening, and so on.
"B'shimush chachamim" - by attending to the sages. There is far more to learn from a wise man than the information that comes out of his mouth. You can learn a tremendous amount from the way he conducts himself, from his personal practices and from the way he interacts with other people, and that is why Chazal said that even from the casual conversation of a wise man, from light banter and everyday speech, there is much to learn.
Therefore the Mishnah advises being m'shamesh, that is, to serve. What does the wise man want brought to him? No rabbi wants to be followed around; so a person has to make himself useful and find a way to help him - drive him to the airport or to a class, carry his things back to the classroom, and the like. This provides the opportunity to be in his presence and to learn from what he has to teach beyond the words he says. And it is worth noting that Rashi consistently explains that "shimush chacham" means understanding their reasoning: when it is said that the disputes between Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai multiplied because the students did not attend upon their teachers sufficiently, the meaning is that they did not delve into the depth of their reasoning and did not question them about their understandings.
"B'dikduk chaverim" - not to interrogate your teachers, but to examine matters precisely with your friends. When you hear a class and receive from a teacher, there are things that require investigation which cannot be done within the framework of a lecture or a classroom, and it is also not appropriate to ask the teacher about every small detail; there is a place to discuss it with friends and investigate.
More than that: Chazal said that Torah is acquired only in a group. Connect your mind with other minds - two good heads are better than one, and you get to see different perspectives. As Rabbi Chanina says in Maseches Taanis: "I learned much from my teachers, and from my friends more than from my teachers." This give and take sharpens the mind, and the multiplicity of perspectives produces more than a person produces on his own. So do not learn alone; learn with a friend.
"B'pilpul hatalmidim" - through the sharp analysis of the students. The word "pilpul" means seasoning and sharpening. The questions the students raise sharpen the teacher, and so this is advice for the teacher: he has to make himself available to his students and be willing to take questions. The questions bring him to understand the things that are not clear in his own mind, since the students are the sounding board, and they reflect back to him that he did not understand something or that he did not say it clearly.
That same Rabbi Chanina said in Taanis 7a: "and from my students most of all." Chazal explained why the Torah is compared to a tree, as in "Etz chaim hi": the word "etz" can mean a tree, and it can also mean firewood. Just as, in order to ignite a large log, one needs small wood chips to start the fire, so too the great talmid chacham is ignited and sharpened by the questions of the little twigs. The junior students are needed to raise the questions that spark the teacher's thought process, and the students who ask and season him - to everyone's benefit.
"BeYishuv" - and in several versions, "bishuva." Yishuv means yishuv hadaas: calmness, clarity of thought, not feeling under pressure, taking your time and not rushing to give answers. "Be deliberate in judgment," said the very first mishnah in Avos - give yourself time to think matters through well and clearly. There is also diligence in this: leave no stone unturned, and do not feel an urgency to cover ground quickly where you ought to be learning in depth properly. Stay put in your learning, do not let yourself be distracted easily, do not move on too fast, take your time and keep your composure - and that way you will learn properly.
And if the version is "bishuva," then the point is that one must put in the hours of sitting in the beis midrash. Nothing comes easily, nothing comes quickly, and there are no shortcuts: you have to find a way to get out of the house and into the beis midrash, to sit there with everyone, to pay attention and to be present. This is an essential ingredient - putting in the hours to acquire Torah.
"BeMikra" - the Written Torah, the twenty-four books of Tanach. A person needs to be fluent in Tanach in order to understand what the Torah is saying; the house of God is built on Tanach, and that is where Torah flows from and where it is rooted. Therefore a person should set as his goal to be fluent not only in the Oral Torah but also in the Written Torah. The Gemara in Kiddushin says, and the Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch bring this as halachah, that a person should divide his learning into three parts each day: a third Mikra, a third Mishnah and a third Talmud.
True, the Rambam says that once a person has mastered Mikra and knows all the verses, he can review them from time to time - and fortunate are you if you know all of Tanach. It is well known that the Rema writes, based on the Zohar, that the Talmud Bavli is "bakol," that everything is contained in it; but the truth is that I checked, and fewer than half the verses in Tanach are mentioned even once in the Bavli. So not everything is there, and we should not delude ourselves. The Maharal expands that this is merely an evasion, and that in truth one must hold a firm foundation in Mikra and Tanach. And here it is before you in black and white: whoever wants to acquire Torah must have fluency in Tanach.
At a young age, a child from five to ten can learn verses all day long; at an older age it is sometimes boring. First - shnayim mikra ve'echad targum on the five books of the Chumash, and this is an explicit ruling in Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim (siman 285). This is a halachah to be fulfilled every week, and through it one acquires fluency by going through the Chumash every year, parashah after parashah. And in addition, one should at least make an effort to learn a daily chapter or some other program, through which one gradually gains familiarity with all the verses, and especially with the less familiar ones: after Nevi'im Rishonim come all of Nevi'im Acharonim and all of Kesuvim, which are less familiar - and one cannot do without them if one wants to acquire Torah.
"BeMishnah" - to acquire fluency in Mishnah, as we are doing right now (and in our case what we are learning is a beraisa). Talmud, and the process called talmud, is indeed the peak of learning, but you need raw material to grind. You have to know the material, and the material is based on what Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi and his beis din gathered in their time as the canonical, defined body of the Oral Torah, which they placed in the Mishnah, and one is obligated to know it. Someone who does not know the basic laws of Sotah and Avodah Zarah, of Zevachim and Gittin - is simply not ready.
Learning Gemara without first knowing the mishnayos is like walking into a university library and reading articles in academic journals in your field of interest - macular degeneration of the eye, for example - when you never studied basic biology and you do not understand the anatomy and physiology of the eye. What business do you have reading something so technical? Every sugya in the Gemara is something highly technical, like an academic article on a specific topic; and someone who has not mastered the fundamentals and principles of that topic - whom is he fooling?
The series of "miut":
Next comes "miut sheinah," and here a series of "miutim" begins. In the version before me there are five things to be reduced, and in some versions the list opens with "miut sechorah"; we will follow the version before me, and we will return to sechorah later on. "Miut" literally means to lessen, but it needs to be understood properly: less is not necessarily better. I would translate "miut," at least idiomatically, as limiting or streamlining.
And these are the five things to be reduced according to the version before me:
Miut sheinah - limiting sleep.
Miut sichah - limiting chatter.
Miut taanug - limiting luxuries and indulgence.
Miut sechok - limiting levity and joking.
Miut derech eretz - limiting ordinary activity outside the beis midrash.
All of these things are necessary. A person cannot survive life, and cannot become a successful talmid chacham, if he never sleeps, never speaks, never enjoys anything, never laughs and never does what it takes to get through life - that simply will not work. But there is an element of a zero sum game here: there is a tension between devoting time, mental space and resources to these things, and the time invested in learning and in thinking about it. So they have to be limited and made efficient - meaning, get what you need in the most efficient way possible.
"Miyut sheinah":
In the smallest amount of time, get the greatest amount of rest: do not sleep more than you need, but do sleep as much as you need. In our generation most people are not sleeping enough anyway; there is an epidemic of sleep deprivation, with people staring at phones, computers and all sorts of devices that keep them up at night. You need enough sleep for your brain to function optimally. And the halachah, as the Rambam brings, is that a person needs about eight hours; modern science likewise confirms that a person needs seven to nine hours of sleep.
How do you make sleep efficient? Go to sleep at a set time every night. That discipline allows the body to drop into efficient, restful sleep as quickly as possible. Everyone knows what it is like to be jet lagged, or to try to sleep after a sleepless night - when there is no rhythm, there is no good sleep. Someone who wants to work on limiting his sleep should start with eight hours; if he is managing well with that, he should wake up earlier - not go to sleep later. But once he finds that he cannot concentrate or focus, that he wants to nap in the middle of the day, and the naps eat up the time he gained at night - that is a sign that he overdid it and is not sleeping enough.
So start with a full eight hours; that is the law, and there is nothing to be embarrassed about. Do not compare yourself to people with tremendous siyata dishmaya, the sages of the Talmud, who were able to sleep two or four hours a night. And in fact, there is a human gene, found in one percent of the population, that allows a person to sleep four hours a night; someone who does not have that gene cannot function. You cannot function on four hours of sleep unless you have that gene, or unless you merit extraordinary siyata dishmaya. Do not fool yourself, and move slowly. Likewise: a dark room, consistent sleep patterns, and avoiding alcohol and caffeine close to bedtime, even six hours before. And do not fool yourself that alcohol helps you fall asleep - you do fall asleep and pass out, but your sleep is not good and not restful.
There are Gemaras that say "lo ivri leilya ela l'girsa" - that the entire night was created only for learning, and of course there is the mitzvah of "v'hagisa bo yomam valailah". So one should set fixed times at night as well. But in the modern era it seems that the best option is a little learning after Maariv, and depending on your lifestyle, to make sure to get to bed at a reasonable hour so that you are rested and can have your good learning in the morning. If it is possible, a far better approach is to get up early - before work, before school and before any other obligation - and learn when your mind is fresh, rather than doing Daf Yomi at nine at night while falling asleep on the Gemara.
"Miyut sichah":
Cut down on the chatter. "Sichah" is not speech in general, but talking about last night's game, about the weather, about politics and who is going to win - that is chatter. And here too it is a zero sum game: the more time a person wastes on idle conversation, the less time he has to think about meaningful things. So the focus should be on not wasting time discussing things that make no difference, and getting back to learning. And do not forget the words of the Mishnah in the first chapter: "v'lo matzasi laguf tov mishtikah" - there is nothing better even for the body, and certainly for the soul, than silence. Talk less, do and learn more.
"Miyut taanug":
Cut down on indulgence and pleasure seeking. Everyone needs a break, sometimes a person has to relax and sometimes even take a hot bath; just as with sleep and just as with chatter, a person is entitled to his own time. But the point is that it is very hard for a pleasure seeker to sit down, commit himself and learn the way learning has to be done. Because part of learning means that sometimes you are a little hungry and you have to push it off, sometimes you are a little tired and you keep going anyway, and sometimes your head hurts and you carry on. Someone who is soft and pleasure oriented will not have what it takes. So you have to toughen up.
We spoke recently about the pleasure cycle: you have to understand that a person's demands for physical comfort keep climbing once he gets used to a certain level of comfortable chair, comfortable pillow, comfortable lunch and comfortable air conditioning. It is very hard to go back, and suddenly a person says: "I cannot learn there, it is too hot, it is too cold, the lighting is not good enough." So you simply have to stop. Anyone listening with a device playing a recording already has the ability and a good enough standard of living; he has more than kings had five hundred years ago. So stop indulging yourself and get back to work, because although there is a time and a place for these things, you will not withstand the difficulties of real learning unless you tell yourself: "I do not need more things and more comfort, I need more Torah."
"Miyut sechok":
Sechok means levity, mockery and joking around, and it should be understood in contrast to simchah. Do not forget that simchah is one of the forty eight qualities: joy is required, but it is an inner matter - to be uplifted, full of hope, optimistic and in good spirits. But telling jokes, clowning around and getting wild - not so much.
The Gemara in Shabbos 119 teaches that there is a place even for sechok: Rava would open every lesson with a milsa d'vedichusa, a joke, and this draws the students in. We are not saying not to joke at all, but rather to limit it and use it properly: when there is a need to get everyone excited, to arouse their interest and open them up, there is a place for a joke. But once the time comes to be serious, one has to stop fooling around and get down to what needs to be done.
"Mi'ut derech eretz":
Derech eretz, which means the way of the world, includes all the things a person has to do in order to get through life, and this is true for a Jew and a non-Jew alike: earning a living, taking care of one's body, one's relationship with his wife, and doing the shopping. Rashi learns that the plain meaning here is not to hang around with friends in the marketplace - everyone needs to shop, but there is no obligation to wander around the mall; you can do what is needed and come back. There are different explanations that focus on different aspects, and all of them are included.
The principle is: whatever you need to do in order to get through life, do it, and once what is needed has been done, return to your real focus, acquiring Torah. Someone who wants to attain Torah must focus on attaining Torah. Therefore "mi'ut derech eretz" means not to invest excessive time in marital matters and not excessive time in earning a living and in work. You do not have to work sixty hours a week in order to become a partner in the firm; and if that means you will not become a partner, so be it. You have one life to live: what do you want to do, be a talmid chacham or be a partner? You cannot have both.
Similarly, one should not spend time hanging around and idling, playing billiards in a cafe, in a bar or in the mall. There is a time and a place for these things; derech eretz - indeed, everyone needs to do their shopping and rest from time to time, but it should be minimized and limited. The same applies to all sorts of investments in the material world: do you really need to buy a new car? Does it require market research? Is there a need to plan what new color you will paint the living room? I do not know if that is important enough to be invested in. Let it go.
"Mi'ut sechorah":
There are versions in which "mi'ut sechorah" is also counted as one of the forty eight acquisitions, and it means minimizing business: investing less time, or limiting the amount of time devoted to buying and selling and commerce, leaving work a little early in order to learn more. And if this is one of the forty eight, then "mi'ut derech eretz" cannot be referring to business matters, and it apparently refers to marital matters.
"B'erech apayim" - not to get angry quickly. If we are speaking about a teacher, this is understandable: the Mishnah already said in the second chapter, "v'lo hakapdan melamed" - a teacher who easily becomes angry and frustrated is a teacher from whom children do not learn. The students will not want to pay attention and will not listen, and they will not be able to ask questions because they are afraid of what he will say.
And if we are speaking about the students, and that is apparently the case - that the Mishnah is speaking to each one of us as an acquirer of Torah - there are two basic approaches:
Anger in itself is contrary to absorbing Torah. It is said that anyone who becomes angry, if he is wise, his wisdom departs from him and he forgets his learning. Angry people and a talmid chacham do not go hand in hand.
Someone who is quick to be offended by his teacher will have a very hard time learning. Most children who do not succeed in school, the reason is that the teacher does not like them, and they cannot learn from him because of one thing he said one time. A person can attend a class for ten years and do very well, and then one day the teacher has a bad day and says something that hurts him, and he never comes back. Someone with that approach to life will run out of teachers very quickly. Therefore one has to be slow to be offended by the rebbi and by his words, for otherwise the ability to learn and to hold on to teachers will be undermined.
"B'lev tov" - a good nature. The simple meaning is that a person is happy for others who succeed, who advance and who receive things; he has a positive attitude and a positive orientation toward other people. In other words, it is not enough that he does not get angry, which is the subject of "erech apayim"; rather, even inside himself he must not nurture resentment, negative thoughts and ill will. And someone who is immersed in these things has no room to learn.
The Maharal in 'Derech Chaim' says: "Torah is found only in a good place" - meaning in a good heart, for "ki lekach tov nasati lachem" - the Torah is called good, and good things belong only in good places. Therefore you should not envy people, you should not covet their success, and you should not feel that you are competing with them in the beis midrash. You need to be positive, and that overall positivity is what gives you the head space to learn. Someone immersed in negative thoughts, in cynicism, in frustration, in anger and resentment is tied up in those problems, and he has no free head space and no open heart to absorb Torah.
"be'emunas chachamim" - trusting in what the Sages have taught us. This does not mean me, and not even necessarily your local Orthodox rabbi, but Chazal: when Chazal say something, you believe what they say. And this does not mean that they cannot make a mistake - of course they can - but there is the mitzvah of "lo sasur," not to deviate from what the Sages have taught us.
The Sefer HaChinuch describes it this way: whenever what is being taught makes sense to you, and the rabbis tell you something you already agree with on the strength of your own knowledge, you are not really listening to them at all, you are listening to yourself. Listening to them expresses itself precisely in those rare situations where they say something and you wonder, "Really? I thought exactly the opposite." Following them because they are generally right - that is faith in that Sage.
The idea here is that when Chazal say something, you should assume that it carries the weight of Torah from Sinai, and you should be receptive rather than cynical. I am not saying you may not ask questions, but if a person has a filter of distrust, suspicion and cynicism toward what Chazal are trying to teach him, it is obvious that through that thick filter the Torah as a whole will not be able to enter the way it needs to. So trust the judgment of Chazal, accept it and go along with them; do not fight them. That is a good way to receive Torah, and the other way is certainly not a path to Torah.
To conclude - "bekabbalas hayissurin":
Here, in the version in front of me, the beraisa divides into two halves, and we are standing at the halfway point. The next kinyan is accepting suffering - accepting trials and tribulations, challenges, pain, suffering and difficulty. The Torah is vast, and learning it is a great deal of work that demands thought, dedication and sacrifice. It is going to be hard, and you have to accept that from the outset.
It is like someone climbing Mount Kilimanjaro: before he sets out he is told that the climb will take ten days, that he will be cold, that he will be tired, that he will be uncomfortable and that his legs will hurt. So - do not complain, do not whine, and do not turn back because your legs hurt. Whoever wants to climb the mountain accepts in advance that there will be pain and hardship; that is how it goes, and now set out. And this is Torah: Torah is hard work.
We know that "there is no reward for a mitzvah in this world." Being a talmid chacham, or trying to be a talmid chacham, will not shield you from difficulties: you too will have difficulties, your head will ache too, you will get sick too, and your child will get sick too and his head will ache too. But accept it. Do not sit and ask how the Holy One, Blessed be He, could do this to you and where the justice in it is; put that aside, accept that it is going to be hard, and now gird your loins, accept that you will be asked to bear the difficulty, the suffering and the discomfort - and push forward. This is the price that has to be paid, and whoever is not willing to pay it should not even bother starting to climb the mountain, because he will not get there.