What The Yetzer Hara Wants From You

An interesting thing that I have noticed over the course of time. A really popular Jewish music video will get tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of views. A really-really popular shiur [on Yutorah] will get a few hundred hits or maybe a thousand or two.

Why is music so much more popular when the reality is that Torah is an incomparably greater mitzva than listening to music [which, shhhhhh don't tell, isn't even a mitzva at all]? Five minutes of Elchonon Ehrman on Parshas Noach has more mitzva power than 2 hours of hearing Shwekey reach the highest notes on Im Eshkochech. Yet Shwekey is in the millions and I [E.E.] am in the dozens [I admit that he has a much much much better voice that I can ever dream of having but that is not my point].

Learning is hard. It takes effort. Listening to music is effortless pleasure that trumps learning anytime. I have watched people try to squeeze themselves out of learning for decades. The yetzer hara says "Do ANYTHING! Chesed, say tehillim, call your bubby, ANYTHING. Just don't crack open a Minchas Chinuch and start breaking your head. Don't learn Tosfos with Pnei Yehoshua! When you do - I am finished!!"

Sweetest friends! I am not making light of the importance of listening to music. I am a chossid and anything that gives a Yid added simcha, rates in my book [as I type I listen to Shloime Gertner. He is SOMETHING!]. And chesed, tehillim, giving your bubby some love and attention - extremely noble endeavors. But I seek out those modern day heroes who TOIL in Torah into adulthood. Not kollel men - that is their "job", but the average layman. Just about everybody reading this went to Israel for the year and tasted the sweetness of learning in depth. Don't give it up. It is hard and requires great mental exertion, but is well worth the effort.

Today there are no excuses. You can find a chavrusa on any level [I know someone who learns with people on Skype so you don't even have to leave the comfort of your home or office], there are so many good sfarim out there on all levels, there are also many thousands of high level shiurim on the computer. The opportunities are limitless. You can hear the most popular maggid shiur in the world - Rav Asher Arieli. You can hear the YU super-hero - Rav Schachter. You can hear so many of the finest gedolei Torah. Instead, when people go on-line they often choose the juicy easy-listening type of shiur [which also has it's place]. Or worse - they read the Jewish Week. Why read the Jewish week when you can read the Shev Shmatsa. I have yet to see anything in the Jewish Week that is as stimulating as a shtikel Shmatsa. Or in silly blogs. They is really a waste of your valuable time.

Breishis Bara Elokim. The very first creation was "The Beginning" - time. Time is the source of everything. Use your time well.

It is limited, and unlike money or food which man so craves - once it is gone it never ever comes back.