Rav Nathan, the disciple of Rav Nahman made his way to Israel about 11 years after Rav Nahman died. The first stop after was Istanbul where he encountered a middle man that cheated him. He was aware of this but since he could not speak the language he had no choice but to go along with it. People there in Istanbul told him later the story of a fellow who was a tremendous "matmid" [diligent] in learning Torah. (Leib Ashkenazi) who some years before that also had been cheated. He bought a ticket and entered the ship to wait for its departure. He waited for a long time until he decided something was "off". He went to find out, and it turned out that that ship had been out of service for years. So he went to the person that sold him the ticket and said, "For the loss of the money I forgive you. But for the bitul Torah I do not, and surely God will give you what you deserve." [Soon after that the cheater died.] {Autobiography of Rav Nathan vol II. paragraph 105] [Bitul Torah refers to the sin of being able to learn Torah but not doing so. A loose translation would be "wasting time from learning."]
You can ask why did this catch my attention? It is because you usually do not hear about the problem of bitul Torah anywhere except in the Litvak world. And in fact in most of the Litvak places I have hung out in, most people would be learning Torah even if there was no such sin as bitul Torah. The people that I knew in Shar Yashuv and the Mir would be learning Torah even if they would have no reward for it at all. There is some inner essence of Torah that one can be connected to that goes beyond the borders of this world. The reason for this is that one needs to be connected in some sense to the Gra.[as are Litvak yeshivot]. When one is connected with the Gra, the light of Torah gets through to one's soul.
