We live in a very spoiled generation. People like things quick and easy. If Halacha demands more than people are comfortable with then it is deemed irrelevant. The opposite is true. To be religious is to sacrifice.
Big topic.
Religious activity is, in essence, an experience of suffering. When a person encounters God, a personal sacrifice is demanded of him by God, which finds expression in a struggle with his primitive instincts, by breaking his will, by accepting a transcendental “burden”, by denying exaggerated desires of the flesh, by sometimes withdrawing from the pleasing and the pleasant, by addiction to the strange and bitter, by colliding with a secular authority, and by yearning for the paradoxical world (!) which is incomprehensible to others. Offer your sacrifice! This is the essential command given to the homo religiosus. The chosen ones of our nation, from the time that they discovered God, occupied themselves constantly with sacrificial activities.
על אהבת התורה וגאולת נפש הדור
