{"id":98717,"date":"2022-11-20T03:20:29","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T01:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/?p=98717"},"modified":"2022-11-20T03:20:29","modified_gmt":"2022-11-20T01:20:29","slug":"a-mussar-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/a-mussar-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mussar Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Mussar Lesson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A yeshiva <em>bachur<\/em> once turned to me in consternation. \u201cRabbi David,\u201d he began, \u201cwhy is it that I feel something is missing in my faith in Hashem? I sit all day long learning Torah, but I cannot learn with peace of mind when my mind is constantly occupied with this thought.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I turned the tables, asking him what <em>he<\/em> felt was the reason for this condition. He thought for a few moments and then replied the following: He thought his lack of <em>emunah<\/em> stemmed from the fact that the rabbanim of the yeshiva do not give their students enough <em>mussar<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>His sincere words struck home. I now understood the words of our Sages in a new light. The Mishnah (<em>Avot<\/em> 3:17) states, \u201cIf there is no worldly occupation, there is no Torah.\u201d The term \u201cworldly occupation,\u201d or <em>derech eretz<\/em>, refers to the study of <em>mussar<\/em>, or ethics, whereas \u201cTorah\u201d refers to faith and mitzvah observance.<\/p>\n<p><em>Through mussar, one learns how to approach mitzvot with the proper attitude, with fear and love of Hashem<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Mussar Lesson A yeshiva bachur once turned to me in consternation. \u201cRabbi David,\u201d he began, \u201cwhy is it that I feel something is missing in my faith in Hashem? I sit all day long learning Torah, but I cannot learn with peace of mind when my mind is constantly occupied with this thought.\u201d I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":27297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1084],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mussar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}