רַבִּי חֲנִינָא בֶּן חֲכִינָאִי אוֹמֵר: הַנֵּעוֹר בַּלַּֽיְלָה, וְהַמְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ יְחִידִי, וּמְפַנֶּה לִבּוֹ לְבַטָּלָה, הֲרֵי זֶה מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ
Rabbi Chanina the son of Chachinai says: "One who stays awake at night, and travels alone on the road, and turns his heart to idleness, has forfeited his soul".Unsurprisingly the Sages have a good deal to say about this, some more gloomily than others.
This week I encountered one of the most depressing views of this mishnah I have ever seen, in Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe's 20th century mussar classic Alei Shur. There, in vol. 2, p. 265, he reasons that, since the Torah has been given for people to live by, the continuation of one's life requires non-stop study of and meditation on the Torah. The moment one has time on one's hands but does not use it for the pursuit of Torah, one has turned his heart to idleness. Such a person has ceased to be even a basic entry-level talmid chacham and has truly forfeited one's soul.
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It must be wondered whether this reasoning is there to inspire prospective rabbis and Torah scholars to make greater efforts to fix the Torah permanently in their sights, or will it perhaps serve as a deterrent? It is also worth pondering on the thought that, if a Torah scholar is ever to reach out and impress those distant from the Torah through his words, deeds and lifestyle, he can do so more effectively by blotting the rest of the world out of his mind and focusing on Torah, or whether it is more efficacious to pursue other things but to reflect on them within the prism of the Torah and what its values have to offer the world at large.
