| Cut ‘n Paste |

Tying Down the Inspiration

By Elya Krolik | May 16, 2018

By this point your voice is gone, but that doesn’t stop you from yelling at your chavrusa, insisting that he defer to your genius

You enter the beis medrash on Shavuos night after your meal, dressed in your finest attire: a freshly pressed white shirt, your special Yom Tov suit, a new tie and cufflinks, shoes specially shined for the occasion. You greet your chavrusa, remove your hat and jacket, and sit down to learn. You are excited, even a bit nervous, as you look forward to an intense and exhilarating night. Despite your best efforts, your chavrusa detects your eagerness, and you, his.

After the exchange of pleasantries, you open your Gemara, and as the front cover snaps on the table; you begin to sway rhythmically in your chair, singing the words. Your head dips and rises like a swimmer’s, coming up for air and then again descending into the water.

At first, the going is slow. You struggle to understand the Gemara’s question, the answer, the Rashi, the Tosafos. Nothing you attempt works. Every word seems impenetrable.

You go out for a coffee and a Danish to keep awake, and when you resume learning, you notice that something incredible happens. You begin to get smarter. The Gemara opens up. You anticipate every question of every commentator. Curiously, your chavrusa feels the exact same way, and you both wonder how it is that two of the most brilliant people in the history of mankind are learning together on Shavuos night.

You delve deeper into the Gemara, and by now you pace and gesticulate like a seasoned orator, constructing elaborate abstract edifices, layered with depth and meaning, accounting for every last detail. You imagine yourself as Rava, as Rabi Yehudah Hanasi, as Rabi Akiva, so clear is the Gemara before you. Another coffee, this time with ice cream, and you’re back at it, your heart beating and your mind racing to cover the endless plane of Torah stretching out in front of you.

By this point your voice is gone, but that doesn’t stop you from yelling at your chavrusa, insisting that he defer to your genius. For indeed, you now maintain that you yourself received the Torah at Sinai, and learned it with Hashem for 40 days and nights, so how dare anyone dispute you.

The noise in the beis medrash is deafening. You see in everyone’s expression what you intuitively feel about yourself, and in true Talmudic style you briefly wonder (at this point, brief thoughts are the extent of your mental capacity), if everybody is Moshe Rabbeinu, who received the Torah? You do not stop to consider the answer to this question, as you are too amazed by its sheer brilliance.

In the waning hours before davening starts, you soar even higher. Ecstatically explaining a complicated dispute in the Gemara that has such wide-ranging practical implications, you wonder how the halachic authorities of so many generations overlooked it.

You reach an unparalleled euphoria, daring even to suggest that not only could you have received the Torah, but you could have given it also. Before you have time to ponder this staggering and heretical idea further, the chazzan begins to say the morning brachos.

After an uplifting, transcendent davening that rivals the prophetic level reached at Har Sinai, you trudge home, make Kiddush, devour seven pieces of cheesecake, and collapse on your bed, exhausted. Your exasperated wife finally wakes you up at two in the afternoon to start the meal. You sit up and rub your eyes. Last night seems as distant as the day the Torah was actually given. You can barely recognize the person who learned with such fervor, such stamina. You feel deflated.

It is at that precise moment that you understand why the Beis Yosef, in Orach Chaim 494, mentions the halachah of Isru Chag when discussing Shavuos, not Succos or Pesach. Isru Chag, the day after the Yom Tov, literally means “bind the festival.” You have to take that night of learning and inspiration and tie it down, tightly to your very being, so it doesn’t dissipate into thin air. —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 710)

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