A Brilliant Blessing

Rabbi Moshe Ben-Chaim

Blessed are You God, our God, King of the Universe, Who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to immerse in words of Torah.

It’s our command to engage in Torah, so this blessing is formulated around our action. But then the blessing continues, asking God to make Torah sweet: 

God, please make the words of Your Torah sweet in our mouths and in the mouths of Your people Israel. And may we and our descendants and the descendants of Your people the House of Israel, all know Your Name and study Your Torah for its own sake (lishma). Blessed are You, God, Who teaches Torah to His people, Israel.

Why is God’s act of making Torah pleasant, part of what “we” alone are responsible to perform? The blessing concludes:

Blessed are You God, our God, King of the Universe who chose us from among all the peoples and gave us His Torah. Blessed are You God, giver of the Torah!

Now we refer to God’s act of giving the Torah. Again, how does God’s action become part of our blessing regarding our obligation to study Torah?

Maimonides formulates his Laws of Torah Study, commencing with teaching others, not one’s personal study, which is only mentioned afterwards. One would think that when formulating the obligation to study Torah, that Maimonides would first address the one’s own study, to indicate its primary objective. But we now see the answer…

The objective of Torah study is not for one person, it is that the Jewish nation learns Torah. As my friend Howard Salamon said quoting Rabbi Freundlich, the High Holidays prayer reads:

And so, grant that Your awe Hashem our God, be upon all Your works, and Your dread upon all You have created; and [then] all [Your] works will fear You, and prostrate before You will be all [Your] created beings. 

The repetition of “all” means God’s kindness in creating man is that He did not create one man. God’s kindness is expressed in desiring the good for masses. We ask that all fear God, and all descendants learn Torah. Therefore, Maimonides is correct to first discuss man’s obligation to transmit Torah, before discussing our obligation to learn as an individual. Teaching is the more primary aspect of the command of Torah study. 

 And where do we see the original form of Torah? It is God’s transmission of Torah to mankind. The very inception of Torah was in the form of a transmission, teaching. That is Torah par excellence, its primary form, a shared form. Therefore we discuss God giving man Torah in our blessing, to epitomize Torah’s primary form: it was through transmission. This must be the focus of the blessing and fulfillment of Torah, that “mankind” enjoys it. Therefor we discuss our descendants benefiting from Torah, and that God “gave” Torah. Transmission is at the core of Torah, and of our command. Maimonides follows this formulation by prioritizing teaching before learning as an individual.  

Furthermore, we must identify the purest form of Torah, which is where one has no ulterior motive in his studies, rather, he seeks God’s wisdom as an end in itself. Not to become a leader. Not to be called a scholar. Not to accomplish. Not to amass. Not to brag. But to study for the enjoyment of God’s wisdom alone. What we call “lishma.”