Falling in Love with Scripture: Intellectuality and Emotionality in Lithuanian Haredi Torah Study

Abstract

This article examines the emotional and intellectual dimensions of Torah study in contemporary Lithuanian Haredi Judaism in Israel by analyzing the cultural construction of ahavat ha-Torah (love of Torah). While scholarly discussions of religious love have traditionally focused on interpersonal love or love of God, this study highlights a unique form of love directed toward a textual object—the Torah. Drawing on discourse-analytic approaches and engaging both high and popular cultural sources within the Lithuanian Haredi world, the article explores how the ethos of this tradition constructs the Torah as an object of emotional attachment. To understand the nature of this distinctive form of love, the article develops three interrelated conceptual lenses: (1) love of Torah as love of wisdom, (2) the perception of Torah as an entity capable of emotional relationship, and (3) the ethos of toil (amal ha-Torah) as a practice of devotional attachment. These categories serve to unpack how Lithuanian Haredi discourse constructs a model of love that fuses intellectual rigor with emotional intensity. The article concludes by suggesting that within Lithuanian Haredi Judaism, while God is often depicted as transcendent and distant, the Torah takes on an emotionally immanent role—serving as a locus of sacred attachment, identity, and even revelation.

1. Introduction

Categories denoting emotional experiences such as “fear,” “joy,” and “sadness,” which in daily language may seem quite clear, raise profound difficulty when one seeks to define them (Beatty 2014, pp. 545–46; Barrett 2006, p. 20; Rosenwein 2010, pp. 13–14; Lutz and Abu-Lughod 1990, pp. 4–5; Lamy 2016, pp. 97–107). And the nature of love, sometimes even more than other emotions, has been described as particularly diverse and elusive (Lamy 2016, pp. 97–98; Lindberg 2008, p. x). Love encompasses a variety of phenomena such as romantic love, paternal love, love of God, and love of one’s neighbor. Although all these phenomena fall under the heading “love” and one can try to identify the connection between them, it is clear that they are not identical. The meaning of these concepts is also dependent on cultural context and subject to historical change.1

Scholarly engagement with the definition of love, particularly religious love, has typically focused on interpersonal relationships or been directed toward God as a “divine subject.” Far less attention has been given to forms of love that extend beyond these frameworks, such as love directed toward objects or concepts.2 This article addresses this gap by analyzing the discourse of Lithuanian Haredi Judaism in Israel surrounding the ethos of an emotional relationship that one should have with the Jewish Scripture, the Torah. What does it mean, then, to speak of “love” toward a textual corpus such as the Torah? And what cultural frameworks enable the construction of this distinctive form of emotional attachment?

The centrality given to Torah study is one of the distinctive characteristics of rabbinic Judaism (Breuer 2003, p. xi). The simple reason for this centrality is the fact that the “Torah” is perceived as an inexhaustible source of metaphysical knowledge: about God, about His will, and about the world He created. Different streams of rabbinic Judaism emphasized different branches of knowledge—mystical, philosophical, moral, and so on—but it seems that all, or almost all, streams gave at least some central place to the Torah as a source for knowing the divine law, the Halakha. Religious leaders usually excel in their knowledge of the legal branch of the Torah and in the intellectual ability for a deep analysis of the complex canonical texts that store this knowledge, the most important of which is the Babylonian Talmud.

The emphasis on this intellectual ability is particularly strong in the stream of Judaism that began to take shape in the 19th century, in part as a reaction against the Hasidic movement (which was perceived as undermining the centrality of Torah study by emphasizing experiential and existentialist values, see for example: Katz 1987, pp. 56–57),3 and as an Orthodox response to the intellectual spirit of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment, see Kehat 2016, pp. 16–17; Wozner 2016, pp. 62–65 and Tikochinski 2004 pp. 100–104 who discusses this critically, along with the sources he mention). This stream established an intensified model of the Talmud scholar—with much inspiration from the hagiographic figure of the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797), the main opponent of Hasidism—and it created a modern, non-communal version of the higher educational institution for Torah study, the yeshiva. This stream is now called “Lithuanian Judaism” due to the origins of the important yeshivas established in Lithuania. The first modern yeshiva established according to this model was the Volozhin Yeshiva, founded by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (1749–1821), a disciple of the Vilna Gaon. In addition to founding the yeshiva, Rabbi Chaim also played a central role in formulating the theoretical justifications for the Lithuanian approach (Etkes 2002, p. 202). The Lithuanian society in Israel presents an extreme manifestation of the Lithuanian ethos. This society is distinguished by the fact that its political and sociological structure revolves around the dedication to the study of the Torah of most of the men in yeshivas, and which consequently was defined in the research literature as the “society of learners.” (Friedman 1991, pp. 70–87; Friedman 2007, pp. 431–32)4

Most of the time in the yeshiva is devoted to the deep study of the Babylonian Talmud—called iyun—with the focus primarily on specific sections of the Talmud that are considered particularly analytically profound. The haggadic components of the Talmud, which do not deal with halakha, are hardly studied. The analytical emphasis of Lithuanian study is another element that distinguishes the love of Torah I analyze, beyond the attribution of love to a textual corpus. This is because it ascribes emotionality to an intellectual activity, in contrast to the common dichotomy between emotion and intellect. Thus, the Lithuanian case is an example of how the systematic analysis of the world of emotion teaches about the blurred boundaries that often exist between intellect and emotion, and about the elusiveness and flexibility of the human emotional world.5

As I argue, the Israeli Lithuanian discourse on the ethos of loving the Torah reflects a transposition of affective structures from the mystical relationship with God onto the relationship with the Torah as a sacred textual entity. In other words, the Lithuanian model of Talmudic study presents a unique case in which a “mystical” love was formed without mysticism. Additionally, the love of the Torah retains characteristics of the concept of love for God in the Bible, existing in the space between practice and emotional state. My analysis draws from theoretical tools developed in the extensive research literature that has accumulated in recent decades in the fields of history and social sciences, concerning the historical and cultural shaping of emotions (See for example: Stearns and Stearns 1985; Reddy 1999; Rosenwein 2010; Scheer 2012). I analyze sources that belong to the “high culture” of the Israeli Lithuanian world: the words of Lithuanian exemplary figures and canonical rabbinic literature, alongside sources of a “low culture” such as the popular hagiographic literature and memories of the yeshiva milieu. Through these sources, I describe the unique meaning that the love of the Torah carries in Lithuanian discourse (on a discourse analysis of emotions see: Lutz and Abu-Lughod 1990), the “emotionology” of the love of the Torah, that is, the cultural assumptions and norms regarding how this love should be felt, expressed, and valued (Stearns and Stearns 1985), as well as the myths and cultural practices associated with this love and reinforcing this ethos.6

2. What Is the Study of the Torah and What Love Has to Do with It?

A story about the diligence in Torah study of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv (1910–2012)—one of the important rabbis in Lithuanian Judaism in Israel—describes the way Rabbi Elyashiv responded to the news of his daughter’s death:

At that time, the Gaon Rabbi Elyashiv was sitting and studying diligently the Shulḥan Arukh section Ḥoshen Mishpat. Upon hearing the bitter news, he rose from his place and returned the volume of Shulḥan Arukh to the bookcase, and in the same motion took out the section Yoreh De’ah and sat back down with it, beginning to study with the same diligence the Laws of Mourning.

(Segal 2010, pp. 256–57)

This story, and others in a similar vein,7 seemingly establish a polar contrast between the world of emotion and Torah study: engagement with the Torah requires concentration, self-control, and immunity from emotional storms to the extent that even a tragic event, like the loss of a daughter, would barely divert the scholar from his study. An earlier formulation of this ethos can be found in the Vilna Gaon’s commentary on the Book of Proverbs, where the Gaon described the praise of the “man of valor” who is entirely focused on the service of God, and especially on the unceasing study of the Torah. As the Gaon wrote: “And ‘men of valor’ are those mighty of heart in the perfection of complete trust [in God Y.B.], to constantly perform commandments and meditate on Torah day and night, even though in his home there is no bread or clothing and his son and household cry out to him: ‘Give us sustenance to keep us alive and provide for us’, and he pays no attention to them at all and is not dismayed by their voice” (Gra 2005, p. 277). According to the myth around him, the Vilna Gaon himself was indeed faithful to this instruction (Heschel 1874, p. 27).

The image of Torah study as detached from emotion is based on the common contrast between the world of “intellect” and the world of “emotion.” According to Robert C. Solomon, this contrast has been prevalent in the tradition of Western thought since ancient times (Solomon 1993),8 while according to historian Thomas Dixon, it was shaped in the 19th century with the growth of the category “emotions” as a comprehensive name for the experiential world that previously had many more divisions (Dixon 2003, pp. 2–4). However, this prism may obscure the fact that the establishment of Torah study as a supreme value is often linked precisely to an emotional ethos: the conception that the scholar should “love the Torah.” This is apparent immediately after the Vilna Gaon’s description of the learner’s “mighty heart,” when the Gaon explains the absolute devotion to study with the words: “because all his loves have been nullified against the love of God and His Torah and commandments” (Gra 2005, p. 277). The emotional significance attributed to the Torah study stems from the fact that the centrality of the Torah and its study derives not only from the content of the Torah, but also from the Torah as a focal point of ritual and veneration (Shalev-Eyni 2008). Accordingly, intellectual engagement with the Torah must also be understood, among other things, as a religious practice—one of the rituals through which the worship of God is performed, and, as it becomes clear later, even the worship of the Torah itself. In existing research, this aspect of study has been emphasized mainly regarding the conception of Torah study in the Kabbalistic tradition.9 In this article, I seek to show the relevance of this dimension also in the context of Lithuanian study, which largely excluded itself from mysticism and Kabbalah (In the generations following R. Chaim of Volozhin, see: Katz 1987, p. 58).

It may be helpful to clarify and to map the essence of the attribution of love to Torah study through Bennett Helm’s philosophical analysis of the concept of love (Helm 2021). Helm analyzes two everyday statements that express two different types of love. One statement is: “I love doing philosophy (or being a father),” and another statement is: “I love my wife (or mother or child or friend).” According to Helm, in the first sentence: “the implication is typically that I find engaging in a certain activity or being a certain kind of person to be a part of my identity and so what makes my life worth living; I might just as well say that I value these” (Emphasis in the original). In contrast, the second sentence seems to indicate “a mode of concern that cannot be neatly assimilated to anything else.” On the face of it, one can identify the concept of the love of the Torah with the first type of statement that Helm mentions—the love of the Torah means that engagement in Torah study is an identity-forming occupation for the one who loves the Torah, and for him, the engagement with the Torah is what gives proper meaning to life. Many uses of the concept of the love of the Torah indeed fall under this meaning of love, which as Helm notes, does not necessarily contain any reference to a distinct emotional state but indicates the assignment of value.

However, the complexity created by the discourse around the love of the Torah stems from the fact that this concept often carries a stronger meaning, which contains emotional arousal and devotion reminiscent of the love found in the second type of sentence. In these manifestations, the love of the Torah involves devotion and care for the Torah, or Torah study, similar to the devotion and care typically attributed to inter-subjective relationships, as well as the intense emotional arousal in which love is expressed in these relationships. In other words, around the Torah, there exists a myth that establishes it as an object one can fall in love with.10 Let us look, for example, at the way in which the love of the Torah of Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Kahaneman (1888–1969), founder of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Israel, is described in the hagiographic book by Aharon Sorasky (1940–), one of the most prolific writers of Israeli–Haredi hagiographic literature:

It was enough to see and hear just once how he expressed and uttered the word ‘Torah’ with enchanted excitement, with unworldly fervor, close to the point of soul-expiration. He spoke of Torah like a lovesick man speaking of his beloved one, and his soul goes out to her.

(Sorasky 1999, p. 1)

This ideal description of the love of the Torah places it on the same continuum as the types of love found in inter-subjective relationships, with the model of (heterosexual) romantic love standing at its peak. The love of the Torah is also accompanied in this description by an intense emotional experience of excitement, enthusiasm, and passion. In a manner characteristic of the Haredi hagiographic literature, Sorasky’s formulation is notably ornate and picturesque, and one can assume there is a gap between it and the true figure of Rabbi Kahaneman. Nevertheless, reading the description should raise the question of how the comparison between the love of an “object” or corpus, such as the Torah, and inter-subjective love became possible, even at the level of ethos? And what is the specific emotional structure attributed to the love for the Torah in accordance with the characteristics of study as an intellectual activity?

In the following sections, I point out three main components that reinforce this image of the love of the Torah: The first component is the comparison between the concept of “love of Torah” and the concept of “love of wisdom”. The second component is the concept of amal ha-Torah (toil in Torah)—a concept that describes the effort invested in study, which expresses devotion to the Torah. The third component is the reference to the Torah as an “entity” in a way that gives it the profile of a quasi-subject.

3. Love of the Torah as Love of Wisdom

As Michael Stocker has shown, contrary to the common contrast between intellect and emotion, the concept of “philo-sophia”—love of wisdom—teaches precisely about the emotional side that may exist at the heart of intellectual engagement (Stocker 2010). Part of the motivation that feeds those engaged in “pure” and intensive intellectual work is the emotional experience that accompanies this engagement. The view of the Torah as wisdom, which may arouse the “love of wisdom” similar to philosophical contemplation, is mentioned in Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s commentary on Pirkei Avot, in which he responds with ambivalence to the presence of this feature as a motive for study. This is because the pleasure derived from Torah study raises suspicion that engagement with the Torah is driven by an external motive—the enjoyment of the scholar—rather than being pursued for its own sake. The love of the Torah expressed in such a manner is conditional and tainted by self-love:

There are those who study out of a love for wisdom, for even all philosophers would acknowledge that all other wisdoms are but a drop in the ocean compared to the profound depths of Talmudic wisdom. Now, if one studies the Torah for its own sake, with the intent to put it into practice, and he derives enjoyment from its wisdom in the process this will not be counted as a sin for him.

(Volozhin 1994, p. 102)

In contrast to Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin’s ambivalence, when examining the sources that reflect the ethos of the Israeli society of learners, one can see that the wisdom of the Torah and the enjoyment of this wisdom, fundamentally connected with the sanctity of the Torah and with the ideal emotion of the love of the Torah. Let us look, for example, at the way the Chazon Ish (1878–1953)—one of the prominent figures in the Lithuanian world in the twentieth century—compared physical pleasure to the pleasure derived from study:

This pleasure [the physical, Y.B.] cannot compete with the noble delight of the toil of wisdom, where the human soul rises above the tumult of the world to the very heavens, and they enjoy the splendor of the supreme wisdom, and this is the great and superior good that has been given to man under the sun.

(Karelitz 1990, pp. 33–34)

These words represent one of the common explanations given for the ethos of devotion to the Torah: engagement with the Torah is engagement with sublime wisdom that contains spiritual pleasure incomparable to any physical pleasure. The person who has tasted the “taste of Torah” will not want to engage in anything besides it and will thereby become a “lover of Torah.”

Unlike engagement with “wisdom” in general, the experience that study is supposed to awaken is a religious experience. In a talk delivered by Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky (1913–1979), who was a head of the Ponevezh Yeshiva, one of the three most important and largest yeshivas in Israel, Rozovsky sought to arouse the yeshiva students to enthusiasm and devotion to Torah study. As Rozovsky states, study must be conducted in such a way “that we open the heart wide to the love of Torah and its commandments [...] [T]he main work and effort is directed at opening the heart wide, to receive an abundance of wisdom” (Rozovski 1985, p. 554). Rozovsky continues and describes that Torah is like “a great cellar of wine. That anyone who smells the scent of Torah should be like one intoxicated with Torah in intense thirst and great love” (Ibid., p. 555). But how could “this great love enter him”? As Rabbi Rozovsky explained, the way to open the heart to feel this love is to invest in the intensive study of the Torah. And in his own words: “The main thing is, that by studying out of complete devekut (cleaving, attachment), without distraction […] when the heart is wide open to receive the Torah with great love” (Ibid., p. 557). The word Rozovsky uses here, devekut (cleaving, attachment), is a loaded word. In common usage, this word indicates a unity bond between a person and God. However, in Rozovsky’s words, a state of cleaving occurs in relation to the Torah, and not to God. The reference to a state of cleaving to the Torah sheds light on the relationship that is supposed to form between the “Torah-loving” scholar and the Torah, a relationship similar to the love of God, and which even serves to some extent as a replacement for it; Torah study is perceived as a religious practice that not just aims to worship God but to worship the Torah itself. To explain this argument, I would like to return to the roots of the Lithuanian yeshiva, to the writings of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin and to the myth created around his teacher, the Vilna Gaon.

As Emanuel Etkes argued, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin sought to establish in his book Nefesh Ha-Chaim a “mystification” of Torah study (Etkes 2002, p. 7). Rabbi Chaim based “the value of Torah study on ideas and concepts taken from Kabbalah” (Ibid., p. 173). Rabbi Chaim gave Torah study a dramatic meaning related to the mystical influence of Torah study on the heavenly and earthly worlds (Ibid., pp. 174–78), and presented the actual Torah with which the scholar engages as “none other than the earthly reflection of the higher Torah, which is a divine entity” (Ibid., p. 181). This is how attachment and cleaving through study is described in Nefesh Ha-Chaim:

And he should intend to attach himself to the Holy One (blessed be He) via his learning the Torah, specifically to cause himself to attach with all of his powers to the word of God (this being the halakha), and in this way actually be attached to Him (blessed be He) so to speak, for He and His will are one, as is written in the Zohar. And every judgment and halakha from the holy Torah is His (blessed be He) Will, for that is what His will decreed, that such is the judgment, kosher or disqualified, impure and pure, forbidden and unrestricted, guilty and innocent.

(Volozhin 2014, Gate IV, chap. 6)

The foundation of the idea that Torah and God are one, as Rabbi Chaim himself mentions, is in the Kabbalistic tradition. Among various Kabbalistic writers, one can find descriptions of Torah study as a practice of cleaving. However, in these descriptions, the unity of God with the Torah is usually explained by the conception that the Torah teaches about God’s nature, or about the structure of the divine world (Idel 1981). These dimensions of the Torah are found within the esoteric layer of its teachings, and therefore, in these conceptions, the study of Kabbalah is what enables the practice of cleaving. Thus, for example, Rabbi Hayyim Vital (1542–1620), the key figure in the dissemination of Lurianic Kabbalah, expressed:

There is no pleasure for the Holy One, blessed be He, in all that He created in His world except when His children below engage in the mysteries of the Torah in order to recognize His greatness, beauty, and exaltedness. For in the plain meanings of the Torah, its laws, and commandments, when taken at face value, there is no recognition or knowledge through which to know the Creator, blessed be His name. On the contrary, there are commandments and statutes that the intellect cannot endure [...] If so, where then is the Torah’s splendor, its beauty, and its greatness?

(Vital 1988, p. 13; Cited in Idel 1981, p. 80)

In stark contrast to this sharp claim, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, as we saw, sought to infuse the study of Torah laws with value of cleaving. For this purpose, he used the identification of God with His will, embodied in the practical commandments.

It is important to note that, according to Vital, the reason why the study of the “revealed Torah” (Torat ha-nigleh) cannot inspire cleaving is not only that its subject matter is removed from direct engagement with divinity. The issue is also aesthetic and emotional; according to Vital, the study of the revealed Torah simply does not bring enjoyment and is, in fact, a source of suffering. In that sense Vital’s words reflect the connection, following Plato, between love, or a related emotional arousal, and the experience of beauty (Guyer 2019). In his view, the revealed parts of the Torah lack this aesthetic quality. Did Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin attempt to provide an equivalent within the framework of the study of the revealed Torah for this emotional aspect as well? Jacob Katz answered this affirmatively:

On the level of emotion and inspiration, however, the work seeks to remove the barrier between esoteric and exoteric study, to provide a sense of involvement in metaphysical processes to one engaged in the interpretation of talmudic texts-as if one were involved in uncovering the secrets of the divine. With the latter he has in reality nothing to do, for R. Hayyim had no intention of having Kabbalah studied in his yeshiva, reserving its study for exceptional individuals like himself, if for anyone.

(Katz 1987, p. 58)

Even if we accept this claim, which is not necessarily warranted, the charging of revealed Torah study with metaphysical drama involves a theoretical Kabbalistic structure, superimposed on the study. Unlike Vital’s approach, the experience of cleaving does not inherently emerge from the act of studying the text itself, through its inherent beauty or similar qualities. The emotional experience is not an immanent part of the study itself and at most is added to it through an external intention: “And he should intend to attach.” In this sense, Rabbi Chaim maintains coherence with the conception that pleasure is not a required component in Torah study.

This is not the case in Rozovsky’s talk. In Rozovsky’s words, the Kabbalistic explanation for attachment is absent and with it also the meaning of attachment as bonding with God. Thus, cleaving refers exclusively to the Torah itself, and a “mystification” of Torah study is created without the support of Kabbalistic language. Cleaving to the Torah is expressed as an intoxication with its deep wisdom. In this way, an immanent connection is created between the intense and emotionally charged actions of deep study and cleaving to the Torah: cleaving to the Torah is actually performed through immersion in study “without distraction”; the experiential performance of study is what produces cleaving.

The intense immersion in study, and the endless effort that Torah study demands, are called in yeshiva jargon amal ha-Torah (toil in Torah).11 The ethos of toil plays a central role in the construction of the love of the Torah and its mystification. In the popular hagiographic literature, there are many descriptions of the extraordinary effort that great Torah scholars devoted to study. For example, the toil of Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz (1902–1979), the head of the Mir Yeshiva, is described in the book titled Mind and Heart:

All his strength and energy—in body and spirit—he invested in Torah [...] Day and night were equal in his eyes, as long as he managed to keep his eyes open. [...] In his love of Torah there was no place for distinction between ‘more interesting’ and ‘less interesting.’ On entire tractates in the Talmud, which scholars call “dry tractates” [...] Rabbi Chaim would review hundreds of times (without exaggeration) and repeat them again and again in their minutest details.

(Grossman 2009, pp. 29–31, emphasis in the original)

This description seeks to illustrate the fact that the physical and mental effort that must be invested in study is an effort that exceeds human limits. One can see how this characteristic supports the resemblance of Talmud study to a mystical practice of cleaving: First, study involves asceticism and personal transcendence that has the power to bring the person into contact with what can be called the “infinite entity” of the Torah. Second, the emphasis given in this description of nocturnal Torah study replicates the emphasis given in the mystical tradition on the nocturnal study of Kabbalah (Hellner-Eshed 2005, pp. 167–76).

In common understanding of how emotions function, they are often described as feelings that “flow” naturally within the subject. Dealing with this image has been at the center of studies that sought to show how emotions are also something that people “do”: train themselves to feel; learn when it is right to feel and how to “present” the emotion (Scheer 2012; Hochschild 1979, 2012). As we can see, in the case of the love of the Torah, the connection between emotion and practice is not a hidden element to be exposed but instead stands at the forefront of the definition of emotion.

The perception that love for the Torah is closely tied to practice and action echoes the way the concept of love functioned in the biblical corpus. As the philosopher Lenn Goodman demonstrated, in the Bible—and often in the Rabbinic (and Christian) literature influenced by it—the concept of love

[is] more active than notions of a pure (or impure) emotion suggest. It may have the intensity we associate with a passion, but rarely the passivity that the Latin and Greek cognates of the word “passion” signify. Often the Hebrew word. ḥesed, rather than ahavah, conveys a fuller, richer idea of what love means normatively in Jewish thought and life. Ḥesed is more a character trait than a passion, and it’s active in the sense that generosity and grace are active.

(Goodman 2019, p. 382; and see Corrigan 2024, pp. 28–33)

The connection between the love of the Torah and Torah study preserves this biblical structure of love as an active act of devotion. Thus, in the “emotionology” of the love of the Torah, love is directly linked to action, that is, to the “act of love” of learning: more love for the Torah equals more learning. The ideal figures of the love of the Torah are described as those who, out of their love, are unable to desist from their study. For example, Rabbi Shmuelevitz is described in this way: “[T]here was not a moment when he was not seen learning. Even during his meal, it was evidently clear that his mind was sweeping him across the expanses of some Talmudic issue” (Grossman 2009, p. 29). And in the words of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin himself: “And the more he adds to learning, the more he will add to desire to learn more. And in the love of Torah he will err and think, and if only he could not sleep and not eat, but all days and nights to toil and study and drink thirstily her words” (Volozhin 1994, p. 150). According to my argument, we can see that the model of incessant engagement in study—where, at the highest level, a person can reach a state in which they are able to study even while engaged in other activities such as eating and conversation—seems to be drawn from mystical models of devekut and constant contemplation of God (See for example: Luzzatto 2021, chapter 26; Maimonides 2024, pp. 518–21).

The roots of the ethos of toil and the image of the Torah as an “entity” and as an object of cleaving, can be found in the mythical image of the Vilna Gaon, which highlighted and glorified his complete immersion in Torah study and his extraordinary intellectual capacity (Stern 2013, pp. 135–43). The descriptions of the extraordinary toil in study and the transcendence beyond the human that is involved in this toil to a large extent are drawn from the Vilna Gaon, as the prototype of the figure of the scholarly “gadol” (great one). The stories about the Vilna Gaon’s genius in Jewish mystic knowledge, in scientific wisdoms such as mathematics, together with the fact that ultimately, he invested enormous efforts in deciphering the halakhic literature, and especially the Talmudic corpus, allow the halakhic literature to be established as the pinnacle of wisdom, the most sublime and difficult wisdom to attain. This enables a statement like the one quoted above that “all wisdoms are like a drop from a bucket compared to the depth of the wisdom of the Talmud”; the Talmud itself is portrayed as having the character of a mystical and esoteric knowledge.

In sum, the myth of the Vilna Gaon together with the works of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin outline the process by which the ethos around Talmud study and the love of the Torah could become an alternative to the ethos of attachment to God and love of Him. For the Vilna Gaon himself, direct engagement with Kabbalah was central, but the boundaries between the revealed and the mystic became blurred in his mythical figure. His disciple Rabbi Chaim sought to push aside the study of Kabbalah and instead to offer the possibility of cleaving to God directly through the study of the revealed Torah, although still relying on Kabbalistic reasoning. The yeshiva ethos that developed in the later generations adopted, following Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, the exclusivity of the study of the revealed Torah. It also shaped the figure of the Vilna Gaon as an ideal model of the Lithuanian scholar, devoted solely to the revealed Torah,12 while at the same time, adorning this scholarship with mystical motifs drawn from the image of the Vilna Gaon. The Kabbalistic conceptualizations were abandoned, while the myth surrounding the complexity and depth of the halakhic literature in general, and the Talmud in particular, rendered this literature a site where a quasi-mystical revelatory experience could take place.

4. Cleaving to the Torah and the Method of Study in the Yeshivot

One of the definitions that Bennett Helm offers for love between subjects is of love as “intense concern” for the beloved “own sake” (Helm 2021).13 This definition can shed light on one of the central concepts that structure the ethos of Torah study in the modern Lithuanian sense, namely, the concept of studying the Torah lishmah (for its own sake) as interpreted by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. Scholars often emphasize Rabbi Chaim’s effort to detach Torah study from external motivations and establish it as an “end in itself” (See for example: Kehat 2016, pp. 147–61). However, a closer look reveals that lishmah also carries a positive dimension, which Rabbi Chaim explicitly associates with love (Volozhin 2014, Gate IV, Chapter 3 at the very end of the chapter). This is the idea that investment in study enhances and benefits the Torah itself, and thus the study is conducted, literally, for the sake of the Torah.14 In his commentary on Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Chaim states: “[...] if we engage in Torah, [...] it also has joy [...] and this is the meaning of lishmah, for it literally” (Volozhin 1994, p. 153). In this case too, it is evident that Rabbi Chaim’s way of thinking is influenced by Kabbalistic conceptualizations of the Torah as a metaphysical “living” entity. These conceptualizations are, as mentioned, absent from the later yeshiva discourse, yet, as I show in the following, within the yeshiva setting, “care for Torah” has been preserved through the very dynamics of the study method itself.

From the end of the 19th century, a method of study called “the way of understanding” or “the way of logic” began to spread in Lithuanian yeshivas (See Wozner 2016, pp. 40–42; Tikochinski 2004, p. 39; Klibansky 2022, pp. 152–56), centered on an analytical conceptual analysis of selected issues in the Talmud (Wozner 2016; Tikochinski 2004, pp. 39–73; Brown 2011, pp. 315–21; Stampfer 2012, pp. 105–9). Study by “the way of understanding” is called in yeshiva jargon iyun study (in-depth study) and most study hours in yeshiva are devoted to it. Much less time is dedicated to what is defined as bekiut study (breadth study)—rapid learning, with a quantitative emphasis.

The way of understanding exists within a certain tension between emphasizing the power of the human intellect and emphasizing the depth of divine wisdom contained in the Torah. On the one hand, and this is emphasized more in existing research on it, part of the charm of this method was rooted in the fact that it opened a door to the creativity of the scholar and the freedom of human reason. In this way, it provided a yeshiva response to the attraction of science and enlightenment in Europe of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Wozner 2016, pp. 42, 62–25; Stampfer 2012, pp. 105–9; Klibansky 2022, p. 152). But on the other hand, it was precisely the “deep” and discerning style of learning in the way of understanding that was best suited to the image of the Talmud as containing infinite divine “wisdom”.

The question of how exactly one should view the relationship between the Torah as divine knowledge and Man’s ability to understand its essence, lay at the center of a dispute between Rabbi Chaim of Brisk (1853–1918) and Rabbi Shimon Shkop (1860–1939), two of the figures who laid the foundations of the method. Rabbi Chaim rejected the attempt to understand the reasons behind the laws of the Torah and focused on fine and sharp definitions of the norms in a formalistic way: on the question of “what” and not “why” (Wozner 2016, pp. 72–73). For Rabbi Shimon, on the other hand, it was important to bring the words of the Torah closer to its scholar, and to give place to the human intellect by attempting to understand the logic behind the norms and the conceptual structure, and to answer the question “why”. In that spirit, Alter Wasser a student of Shkop wrote: “[Rabbi Shimon was] bringing the intellect of Torah closer to your intellect, and your intellect to the intellect of Torah.”

However, Wasser’s words also highlight the other side of the coin: the effort required to “push ourselves and bow our intellect to the intellect of Torah” (Waser 1973, p. 56). Hagiographic tales about Shkop often emphasize the notion that the Torah contains a “secret” that can only be uncovered through relentless toil. One such account describes how, before delivering a lesson in the yeshiva, students saw him “crying bitter tears and whispering a fervent prayer, begging the Holy One, blessed be He, that his eyes be illuminated with the light of truth” (Sorasky 1971, p. 103).15 This story, like others, aligns with the framework of revelation and the quasi-mystical dimension of halakhic and Talmudic study. These accounts frequently portray the immense difficulty of deciphering these texts—a challenge that can be overcome only through extraordinary perseverance and effort, yet even then, success is not guaranteed. Shkop’s figure was also closely associated with the elevation of hishtomemut (Wozner 2016, pp. 27–29)—a state of astonishment and profound incomprehension—as a fundamental condition of study:

One winter night, at midnight, I entered Rabbi Shimon’s chamber and found him pacing back and forth, immersed in deep thought and absorbed in contemplation. I tried to slip away so as not to disturb him, but it was too late—he had already noticed me and asked briefly: “Tell me, what is the meaning of the word zika?” [A central concept in the laws of yibbum (levirate marriage) Y.B.] [...] The next day, he was due to deliver his lecture at the yeshiva on the topic of zikat yabamin (the bond between levirate partners). And let us not forget: he posed this question after having already served as a head of yeshiva for fifty years and after having authored a vast treatise on the subject of zika.

(Sorasky 1971, p. 108)16

The dynamics of non-understanding, as described in this text and others, mirror the discourse on the attainment of God and esoteric knowledge. The rhetoric of lack of understanding as an ongoing, fundamental state serves as a persistent counterpart to the rhetoric of genius, the extraordinary ability to resolve complex difficulties and attain understanding. Non-understanding is central to the mystification of the Talmud, shaping Talmudic knowledge as a form of esoteric wisdom. The effort invested in deciphering the Talmud is akin to removing a veil from a mysterious object. The motif of mystery plays a crucial role in constructing the emotional relationship with the Torah. Just as secrecy and mystique often surround the figure of the “beloved” in romantic love, so the hidden and enigmatic nature of the Torah deepens the emotional engagement with it. This contrasts with other forms of love, such as the love between parents and children, where mystery plays a much smaller role.

The constant and Sisyphean transition between the question and the answer, which directs yeshiva iyun (in-depth study), returns to the definition of love as “intense concern”: true love of the Torah, and care for the Torah, are expressed by discomfort with a state of doubt and the feeling of the need to save the Talmud from its own difficulty. As Shlomo Guzmen has shown, yeshiva study is scripted: at the beginning of study, the text is placed in a state of “danger” through the accumulation of difficulties and challenges posed to it, and the process of study serves to rescue it. In Guzmen’s observation, much of the weight of the image of “danger” hovering over the text stems from the awareness of ultra-Orthodox learners of non-yeshiva interpretations of the text. In his words, the studied text is “in danger of being interpreted in a mistaken way, and in the more severe danger of being interpreted by those whose worldview is different” (Guzmen-Carmeli 2020, p. 113).17 But beyond this, the drama of saving the text from danger by resolving the difficulties is present even without the threat of “improper” interpretation; it is part of the internal pattern of yeshiva iyun and one of the factors that are supposed to create the emotional connection with the Torah.

In light of the centrality of iyun study and its role in shaping the emotional relationship with the Torah, I want to revisit the passage quoted above from the book on Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz. As described, Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz devoted himself to immense toil, repeatedly reviewing neglected issues “hundreds of times.” At first glance, one might think that the ethos of achieving expertise in the Talmud through bekiut—rapid learning—contradicts the myth of “wisdom,” which emphasizes slow, contemplative study and the connection between the love of the Torah and the love of wisdom. However, this assumption overlooks the ways in which bekiut study may actually reinforce the myth of the Talmud’s wisdom.

It is said that when the Vilna Gaon completed his commentary on the Song of Songs, he called his disciples together in order to conduct a ceremony. When he had finished the commentary, he blessed God that “enabled him to conceive the light of all the Torah from within and from without.” And the Vilna Gaon explained the meaning of attaining the light of “all the Torah”: “All the wisdoms are needed for our holy Torah and are included in it, and he mastered them all perfectly. And he recalled them: the wisdom of algebra and triangles and geometry and the wisdom of music; … and of the wisdom of philosophy, [the Gaon] said he knew it perfectly.” These words, attributed to the Vilna Gaon, depict the Torah as a unified and complete entity. The Vilna Gaon’s life project was to attain mastery—both in breadth and depth—over this entirety in all its facets (See: Etkes 2002, pp. 21–23, where the story is cited). Unlike the broad portrait of the Vilna Gaon reflected in this story—as a scholar, mystic, and even a kind of “scientist” in the world of yeshiva scholarship—the horizons of the Torah are narrowed to the realm of Talmudic study. Nevertheless, the description of expertise and repetition of all parts of the Talmud carries the same impression of the Torah as a source of comprehensive, deep, and broad wisdom. In the continuation of the description of the effort that Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz invested in repeating all parts of the Talmud, it is described how the repetition itself is capable of revealing illuminations:

He testified about himself that there were matters he reviewed thousands (!) of times until they fully settled in his heart. [...] Sometimes, studying one passage would illuminate obscure corners in another, and points that seemingly had no connection would suddenly shine in his mind. At other times, things would coalesce into a wondrously perfect and lucid whole, filling his heart with overwhelming joy.

(Grossman 2009, p. 31)18

In this way, bekiut study joins that same goal of achieving attachment to the Torah and it reinforces the image of the infinity and “secrecy” of the Torah in general, and of the Talmud in particular, and the ethos of toil required to understand its wisdom. The integration of scattered elements into a larger picture creates the “beauty” that evokes joy and love. Indeed, the ability to derive these qualities from bekiut study is not as direct as in the case of deep analyses of the issues in iyun, and it remains a unique matter appearing more in the description of great figures who continue the myth of the Gaon. The more distinct and more available field through which the wisdom of the Torah and its love are revealed is ultimately the framework of yeshiva iyun study.

The descriptions of attachment to the Torah, embodied in toil and in the strenuous and unceasing attempt to reveal its secrets and understand its infinite wisdom, raise another definition offered by Bennett Helm for love between subjects: “love as union” (Helm 2021). As defined by Robert Solomon: “Love is the concentration and the intensive focus of mutual definition on a single individual, subjecting virtually every personal aspect of one’s self to this process” (cited in Helm 2021). The possibility of achieving unity with the Torah—where a person’s entire being is immersed in it and defined by it—is prominently present in descriptions of toil in Torah study. The figure of the gedolim (great ones)—the exemplary figures of genius, extraordinary in their Torah greatness (Leon and Brown 2017)—serves as the pure embodiment of this unity with the Torah. This can be seen through the doctrine of da’at Torah—which characterizes modern Haredi Judaism—which expanded the authority of the “great ones” to decide and produce a kind of halakhic ruling on any topic, even if it is outside the “traditional” boundaries of Torah law (Etkes 2017, pp. 21–29; Stampfer 2017, pp. 12–20; Brown 2005). The idea of da’at Torah stems largely from the identification of the figure of the “great one” with the Torah itself, which is related to the enormous and unceasing toil that he invested in Torah study. As described in the introduction to the hagiographic book about Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, da’at Torah is “the result of a revelation, a connection, and an intellectual fusion—mind with mind, intellect with intellect. The worldview of a great Torah sage, because he himself has become an embodiment of Torah” (Eliyach 2012, p. 174, and see also pp. 212, 670). Or as the editor of the memorial book on Rabbi Shmuelevitz expressed: “His tremendous greatness in Torah and his great toil in it brought him to the point that he and the Torah became one unit. He served as a reflection of Torah, and Torah constituted a reflection of him [...] [T]his is the man from whose throat Torah speaks—and his knowledge is Torah knowledge” (Buchsbaum 2000, p. 13).19 The image of the Torah as an “entity,” and of the ability to achieve unity with it, has implications not only regarding the myth created around the “great ones” but also in relation to the world of the simpler Torah scholar: even if the toil he invests in study does not turn him into a “great one”, he is supposed to study with the goal of uniting, to some degree at least, his subjectivity and identity with the entity of the Torah; even if he does not merit da’at Torah, he should still become a ben Torah (Man of Torah), as the successful yeshiva student is called.20

5. Conclusions

Among scholars of Jewish thought, there is an ongoing debate about the positioning of Rabbinic Judaism on the spectrum between immanence and transcendence (Kauffman 2011, pp. 44–84). The accumulated research on this topic suggests that no definitive characterization can encapsulate Rabbinic Judaism as a whole; rather, it is necessary to identify trends that vary across different periods and streams of Rabbinic tradition (Ibid). When it comes to ultra-Orthodox Judaism, particularly the Lithuanian branch, the most prominent characteristic appears to be a strongly transcendent perception of God. God is seen as distant, contemplation of His ways is largely set aside, and the concept of halakha has solidified around the commandments, framing them as an external and well-defined legal code to be obeyed (Soloveitchik 1994, pp. 65–69; Ahituv 2013, pp. 191–92). However, examining the place of the Torah in Lithuanian Haredi Judaism presents a somewhat different picture. If regarding the relationship to God, it can be said that the Lithuanian society of recent generations was characterized by “theosophical indifference,” (Brown 2017, p. 144), regarding the relationship to the Torah as a divine entity for which there seems to be a rich and emotionally charged theosophical engagement. As we have seen, this engagement has even absorbed structures present in the tradition of mystical devekut to God. In addition, through the figure of the great ones, the Torah also takes a human form, “revealing” itself and issuing rulings on new matters and contemporary questions. Thus, even within Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox society, one can identify a trend toward the immanence of the Torah—and through it, of divinity itself. In this context, the concept of the Torah should be considered alongside notions such as the Shekhinah and angels (Kauffman 2011, pp. 44–84), which serve as mediating figures through which rabbinic Judaism mediates the presence of God in the world.21

The emotional ethos surrounding analytical Torah study in the yeshiva tradition is just one example of the paths that the study of emotion might open in the exploration of Torah learning. While the Lithuanian case may be particularly pronounced, it reflects a broader tendency in Rabbinic Judaism, where the word of God often plays a more central role than God Himself. As such, analyzing the emotional relationship with the divine text deserves scholarly attention no less than the relationship with God. The history of “love of Torah,” and of related emotions such as joy (or suffering) in Torah, offers a fertile ground for exploring other Jewish traditions across time, as well as distinct cultural spheres—including the role of synagogue preachers in making the Torah beloved and entertaining; early childhood education; Jewish women’s spiritual worldviews; and the ritual life surrounding the Torah.

Beyond its significance for the study of Rabbinic Judaism, the concept of Ahavat HaTorah—and the unique framework that contemporary Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox society has built around it—serves as a compelling example of the vast diversity cultivated within the garden of human loves. It illustrates the transformative nature of love as a concept and underscores the importance of deciphering the many “varied and peculiar” forms that love can take. This can be achieved by mapping both the recurring, “generic” motifs of love and the distinctive characteristics and unique variations that emerge within each specific instance and conception of love.