Handle with care! Learning from tales of the Sages

The other day I found myself reading and re-reading the following passage:

How do we relate to opportunity? Let us learn from the Vilna Gaon, who appreciated the endless potential that comes with every moment of one’s stay on earth… The Gaon had a sister whom he had not seen for nearly 50 years. Travel was not easy in those days, but on one occasion she was able to make the trip to Vilna to visit her illustrious brother. He greeted her and, after a few minutes of conversation, excused himself to return to his Torah study. The Gaon’s sister was disappointed. “I don’t understand”, she told him. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other and I’ve travelled so far to come here. Can’t you give me another fifteen minutes of your time?”

He pointed out to her that his hair had already turned grey—a sign, he said, from the Heavenly Court that he was running out of time in this world. How could he spend the little time he had left on conversation unrelated to Torah? [R’ Yaakov Hillel, Eternal Ethics from Sinai, discussing Avot 1:14, “If not now, when?”, with citations].

On the principle of Ben Zoma at Avot 4:1 (that a person is wise who learns from everyone) we are obliged to learn something from this episode, and the Vilna Gaon is justly renowned at a phenomenal Torah scholar so we are bound to seek to learn not just from his writings but from his words and deeds. But what do we learn from the tale related here? Various possibilities present themselves and the are not all mutually exclusive. For example:

·         If one wishes to learn Torah properly, one should not allow oneself to be distracted from domestic and family considerations;

·         This episode illustrates the extent to which the Vilna Gaon’s greatness exceeds our own. Only a person of his stature should behave in this manner but those of us who are not so great should not trouble themselves to do so;

·         The learning of Torah is so great a mitzvah that it trumps the commandment of hachnasat orchim (entertaining visitors), even though hachnasat orchim is so great a mitzvah that one can turn one’s back on God, as it were, to look after them;  

·         The learning of Torah is so great a mitzvah that a person should not feel entitled to assert a claim on the time of someone who is learning Torah, even though they may be closely related;

·         One should ascertain that a person who is learning has not yet began to go grey before seeking to disturb him while he learns. 

With Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur looming fast towards us, time to set our thoughts in order is limited and diminishing fast. Regret and repentance have to compete for our attention with dinner plans, trips to the dry cleaners, shaking the dust off machzorim untouched for a year and remembering to send one’s regards to distant family and friends. Perhaps the best lesson we can take from the Gaon is this: whatever your objective, you should devote both your time and your full attention to it until it is fulfilled. Torah, being effectively infinite, can never be fully mastered, however much time is set aside for it—but if we can sweep aside distractions for the short time that remains between the moment you read these words till the New Year begins, we can at least hope to achieve something.