May 29, 2025
The Mishnah in Pirkeh Avot (6:4) teaches: כך היא דרכה של תורה: פת במלח תאכל ומים במשורה תשתה ועל הארץ תישן וחיי צער תחיה ובתורה אתה עמל . This is the way of Torah: You eat bread with salt, you drink water in rations, you lie on the ground, and you live a life of distress – and you toil in Torah. At first glance, the Mishnah is telling us that the Torah requires us to live in abject poverty. But this is clearly not the case. While it is true that many great Rabbis were very poor, many others were wealthy. And most were somewhere in the middle between very poor and very rich. Certainly, most Torah scholars today sleep in comfortable beds, not on the floor, and eat far more than bread with salt. What, then, does this Mishnah mean? The answer brings us back seven weeks – to the celebration of Pesach. The Alter of Kelm raises the question of why Hashem needed to rush Beneh Yisrael out of Egypt so frantically, such that their dough didn't have time to rise, and they ended up baking matzah. They spent hundreds of years in Egypt – they couldn't stay there an extra half-hour so they could have proper bread? Why did Hashem find it necessary to have them chased out so quickly? The Alter of Kelm answered that this was necessary to teach us a vitally important lesson – that in order to succeed as Hashem's nation, we need to be prepared to eat "matzah," to sacrifice luxuries, to live with just the basics. The Torah demands מסירות נפש – self-sacrifice. In order to excel as a Torah Jew, a pe