Getting Chiyus/Vitality From Torah and Mitzvos

From this longer article on www.bilvavi.net

Throughout the year we need to handle many challenges, and everyone knows the difficulties that he must face.

Usually the solution does not involve making more kabalos. Certainly one needs also to make kabolos, but they are not the solution itself.

It’s like a man who doesn’t feel well. He goes to the doctor who examines him and prescribes three pills a day – morning noon and evening: take these pills and you will get well. The man goes back home and stops eating and drinking. What’s wrong with that? Didn’t the doctor tell him all he has to do is take three pills a day, so then – why should he need to eat and drink too?…

His family urges him: If you carry on like this, in a few days you will die! “But I don’t understand”, he complains, “didn’t the doctor tell me just to take three pills every day?”

The answer is: “You need to eat properly, drink properly, and in order to cure the illness you need to take the three pills daily, but you can’t survive on just three pills alone!”

We have problems, all kinds of illness and diseases, and we need our ‘pills’, prescriptions to heal body and soul; but before anything else, we need to eat the “bread” of Torah and “drink” its water and its wine. Once we have a source of chiyus / vitality internally from the Torah and its mitzvos – it’s like we have a proper diet of food, and now when problems arise we can look for solutions like kabolos. But if we aren’t going to eat a constant and proper diet of food next year, how can we fix what needs to be fixed?!

It’s clear to me that everyone has good intentions and deep desire to be better than last year, but an earnest desire alone will not help.

For example, a man wants to be mezakeh es harabim, and he wants that every Jew throughout the world will say Tehillim. So he gets an idea: publish 6 million sifrei Tehillim, for the zechus of the rabim. The problem is that each sefer Tehillim costs 10 shekel, meaning that he needs 60 million shekel that he does not have.

His intention is very good, his desire is excellent, and he can pour out his heart before the Borei olam to be mezakeh him, but in the meantime he doesn’t have 60 million shekel at his disposal, so he cannot just yet approach a publisher and order 6 million sifrei Tehillim.

We all desire to correct the coming year, but if we don’t have a source of chiyus, how will we do anything?!

There are many problems, and people try to fix up all sorts of things: one works on tznius, another on internet issues, a third on shmiras haloshon. They are all right. All these really are aveiros and we need to correct them. But what is the root of these issues? Why is it that people actually reach the point of having these problems in the first place?

Sure it’s easy to say: Look, it’s the generation, it’s the street, the yetzer hora today is so strong. . .

True and good, but where is the root of the problem? The root of the problem is that when a person does not have life internally, he has to look elsewhere. “Batallah (Boredom) leads to insanity.”

What is meant by “batallah”? That a person doesn’t have what to do? No. A person can sit in a beis midrash from morning till evening and learn, and not waste a moment, and nonetheless he is like someone who sits idle, as if he was asleep! His heart has no chiyus in his learning! The brain is working – sure; he understands the material very well, he even exerts himself, but his heart is disconnected from his learning. He is lacking chiyus, and he needs it, so what does he do? He goes outside to search for some kind of fulfillment. He looks at this, reads that, is drawn after whatever is available.

It is like what the Rambam writes: “A person only thinks a lot about immoral relations if his heart is empty of wisdom.” If the heart is filled with wisdom of Torah, the Torah would be to him a Toras chaim, and then he would have satisfaction from his ruchniyus.

A person who has satisfaction is much less likely to look for things outside. For example, people who have problems in their home look for fulfillment outside of it. By contrast, a person who lives in a good home will naturally, quite naturally be less drawn toward things pulling him from outside.

Someone who has in his heart a source of chiyus from a day of toiling in Torah and keeping the mitzvos, davening, emuna and connection with the Borei olam – he comes out feeling truly alive. Such a person isn’t going to be looking outside for chiyus, because he has something inside giving him life. A person looks outside only when inside he is empty, inside he is missing something, and if that’s the situation, he doesn’t have the self-control to handle the enticements that he sees. If he doesn’t have chiyus inside – he will search for it outside and he is liable to be drawn there.

We should understand that before making any kabolos, and before any corrective action on all sorts of things that need to be corrected – in order that we be able to correct them, we need a source of chiyus within ourselves.

We do not mean to say a person shouldn’t daven for his needs, but like we said before, first he should understand that what’s lacking for him in life is chiyus from holiness. It could be that he has very many maasim that are holy, yet he has very little chiyus from the holiness.

So the first thing he has to daven for on Rosh Hashanah is “Zochraynu l’chaim,” that we should have chiyus in the life that we have! How many people live without chiyus! How much chiyus is there within each one of us? We need to request and to plead, every one according to his where is at in life: “Ribono shel olam, Give me more chiyus in my life, allow me to feel internal chiyus within myself.”

When one has chiyus inside, he can then ask for parnassah, health, and whatever he needs, but the preparation for Rosh Hashanah needs to begin with hisbonenus about how much chiyus he had in his life last year, and from where he derives it. When a person contemplates this, he will be astonished what he is really “living” off of.

Once it’s clear to him what he’s living from, he can come and pleads honestly before Hashem: “Zochraynu l’chaim” – but which kind of chaim? “L’maan’cha Elokim Chaim”, the kind of chaim that my chiyus will be in serving the Creator. Chaim, that when I learn Torah in first seder, I will leave at the end with an inner feeling in my heart of someone who feels “alive”. Chaim, that when I finish Shacharis, I will go out of shul with the inner feeling of chiyus that results from the connection with Hashem when I talk to Him.

When tefillah is done with chiyus, and the Torah is learned with chiyus – then upon that, it’s possible to correct all the rest of our actions too.