V'zos Haberacha / Simchas Torah

Close to his death, Moshe blesses the nation in poetic form. One of the stanzas reads תורה צוה לנו משה מורשה קהלת יעקב , the Torah that Moshe commanded us is the heritage of the congregation of Yaakov. Rashi says, “it’s our heritage & we will not abandon it.”

All Jews know that the Torah is our heritage and the Importance and benefit of learning Torah. If we were to ask any Jew if they knew of the importance of learning Torah as well as the great reward for learning even one word of Torah, surely they would answer that they know. If that is so, why don’t people take advantage of every opportunity to learn Torah?  

The Chafetz Chaim once came into the Beis Medrash & saw groups of boys shooting the breeze instead of learning. He gathered them around him & told them this story: there was a fellow in town that was a little out of his mind. One day, he went down to the train tracks & started dismantling them. When the people of the town saw what he was doing started yelling at him! Are you out of your mind? what are you doing to the tracks? Do you know what kind of catastrophe can happen if you do that? He yelled back, what's the big deal? The tracks are hundreds of kilometers long & I'm only taking out a few meters!

Continued the Chafetz Chaim, a person who wastes a little time is like the fellow who just dismantles a little track. Although the time he's wasting is little, the damage is great.

There was a person, a regular guy, who was dancing with excessive exuberance on Simchas Torah. The rabbi came over to him & asked, “why are you so happy today? I learn & you rejoice?” The man answered, “Rebbi, on Yom kippur I said על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בכפת שוחד , asking forgiveness for the sin of taking bribes. What do I have to do with that sin? Who would bribe me? Am I a rabbi that someone would try to bribe me? No! But there's a rule that all Jews are responsible for one another, so I, too, am responsible for your sins. If so, I should also be able to be responsible for some of your Torah!”

Maybe the reason we don't take advantage of our time is that we think that someone else will do it for us. We’re willing to support the guy who's  learning so we don't have to learn as much ourselves. We'll try to reap the benefit of someone else's merit instead of getting our own. the Torah teaches us here the importance of getting our own merits, gaining our own share of the Torah and using every moment wisely. Let's take the opportunity on Simchas Torah to commit to a new year of learning where we do it on our own, for ourselves & put our time to good use!