I have heard it often enough for it to seem to be a pattern. I think some people don't feel the holiness in the Talmud.
At first I did not think anything of it.
But then I noticed even sincere people that long for God's holiness sometimes do not feel what is happening inside the Talmud.
Sometimes people close to me would see me learning Talmud and did not feel what or why I was doing so.
Sometimes you hear from a Breslov person that he walked into a Litvak (Lithuanian )Yeshiva and all he saw was people talking about some subject in the Talmud and they were not talking about God. And this was always presented as a proof to me that in Lithuanian yeshivas people don't think of God.
[Of course that is silly because we really don't have a lot of information about God. We know he is the First Cause who made everything something from nothing. And that is about it.]
In any case I have realized that there are people who don't feel what is going on in Talmud learning. So I would like to tell people what it is. It is numinosity. It is not that it makes devekut (attachment with God) possible but rather it is a level of devekut in itself.
And it simply is not that case that people don't think about God. From the day I left the world of Lithuanian yeshivas until today I have not seen one single prayer with the fervor and intention I saw at the Mir. At the Mir you could feel the Divine presence [Shechina] descend into the building during the morning prayers.
At first I did not think anything of it.
But then I noticed even sincere people that long for God's holiness sometimes do not feel what is happening inside the Talmud.
Sometimes people close to me would see me learning Talmud and did not feel what or why I was doing so.
Sometimes you hear from a Breslov person that he walked into a Litvak (Lithuanian )Yeshiva and all he saw was people talking about some subject in the Talmud and they were not talking about God. And this was always presented as a proof to me that in Lithuanian yeshivas people don't think of God.
[Of course that is silly because we really don't have a lot of information about God. We know he is the First Cause who made everything something from nothing. And that is about it.]
In any case I have realized that there are people who don't feel what is going on in Talmud learning. So I would like to tell people what it is. It is numinosity. It is not that it makes devekut (attachment with God) possible but rather it is a level of devekut in itself.
And it simply is not that case that people don't think about God. From the day I left the world of Lithuanian yeshivas until today I have not seen one single prayer with the fervor and intention I saw at the Mir. At the Mir you could feel the Divine presence [Shechina] descend into the building during the morning prayers.
