העורך Editor

The contemporaneous “Jewish Observer” article “Rabbi Goren Takes Over: The Tragedy of Irresponsible Leadership”, by Ezriel Toshavi, does a good job:

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Some raise a point against the custom to stay up to learn the entire Shavuos night. They say, ‘Think about it.  On Shavuos, you end up doing a lot less learning than any other day in the year.  You want to stay up all night, so you rest the day before.  Davening starts later and the meal lasts longer, so by the time you start learning you’re already tired.  You get so tired through the night that you aren’t thinking straight until the morning comes and after davening you sleep the whole of the next day as well.  Surely it is better to go to bed at a reasonable time, get up early the next day and learn through the day?!’

Rav Yitzchak Berkovits answers their claim as follows; it is true that if the goal of Shavuos was to learn as much as possible, it may be better to do as these people suggest, especially in today’s generation where lack of sleep affects us so much. However, the goal of Shavuos is to show an expression of our relationship with Hashem and our love for His Torah.

The goal of Shavuos is not to learn as much as possible, we stay up all night to express how much we appreciate the Torah, and this is achieved through learning with a love and excitement, not by covering the most amount of pages.

It is for this reason, explains Rav Berkovits, that when I am asked what one should learn on Shavuos, I tell them that it is clear that they should learn whatever brings them the most amount of ahavas haTorah, love for the Torah.

(Found somewhere.)

This doesn’t fit the Chok Ya’akov (Orach Chaim 493) or the Tikkun, but it sure sounds like something a Mashgiach would say.

Find the beginning of the famous “Akdamus” Niggun sung beautifully over here.

Writes Rabbi Hirsch (Devarim 33:5).

The human we call “king”, when and where active, is merely its first subject:

Possessing humility and fear of Heaven, as Chazal say (Chulin 5b), והכתיב אדם ובהמה תושיע ה'” ואמר רב יהודה אמר רב, אלו בני אדם שהן ערומין בדעת ומשימין עצמן כבהמה, one must be careful about the result of one’s words per שמא מתוכם ילמדו לשקר, and other examples.

Someone once went to a rabbi and asked him an awkward question about Arayos, “for an anonymous friend”. The rabbi responded: I don’t understand why your friend had to go to the trouble of sending you in his name when he could just as well have come himself and told me he was asking for an anonymous friend…

Haha! Very clever. (I think the story happened face-to-face, not by letter, per the famous Iggros Moshe and Be’er Moshe: Jews asking what’s worse, Niddah or Goya?) But, now what? Do you think that fellow will ask again? Worse, what about those who merely heard this rabbi at the time, or of this same story later – might they now think twice about asking this rabbi an important question?

This is called being “too clever by half”.