The Chizuk Tour that Almost Wasn't

A local Litvish shul near me organized a chartered bus trip to see Litvish gadolim. A trip for chizuk. And it was a well organized trip. We even arrived back home exactly on schedule. 

We saw three, the first a famous rosh yeshiva in a famous litvish place. The second a grandson of a famous one at the same place. The third was RY of a musar yeshiva.

Nothing went wrong. The rabbis all acted respectably enough and tried to be inspirational in their way. But what I experienced was a distinct lack of inspiration from the first two because all they talked about was the importance of Torah study. Happiness is Torah study one said. And if you only study part of the day, that's the time when you'll be happy. The other one talked about how klal Yisroel lives through Torah study. And his grandfather built a yeshiva against all odds. And now all this studying goes on. Mind you, the bus was full of baal habatim, not yeshiva students.

This kind of talk has never moved me and I have tried for decades to make it move me. To me, there are 613 mitzvos and the most important thing is emunah.

The musar rav did speak about the shechinah and how it left the Temple during the year under the Syrian Greeks when the Temple ceased functioning. And how the miracle of Chanukah helped bring back the shechinah and how we can too. 

The last talk I enjoyed. For it was about Hashem and not about "mevakshei Hashem" by virtue of hunger for Torah study alone.

I like musar. And I like Chassidis. I feel bad saying it, but the Torah study as Judaism approach doesn't feel like religion to me. If it works for others, fine. It doesn't work for me, never has, and likely never will.

Until we visited the last guy I was starting to feel a little blue. Chizuk that almost wasn't.

I asked a student there how much musar they do. He said, 1/2 hour a day of self-study. One shiur a week. That made me a bit sad again. I don't understand these people.