A Slow Reading of The Introduction to "The Path of the Just" (Part 7)

7.

"The need for the perfection of service and its necessary purity and innocence -- without which it is not at all desirable, but rather disgusting and reprehensible, as (Chronicles I, 28:9) "G-d searches all hearts and understands the inclinations of everyone's thoughts" -- has become self-evident to the wise. How shall we respond on the day of reproach if we will have slacked-off in our study of these matters, and abandoned a thing in our midst so profound as to be the very essence of what G-d asks of us?"

"Can it be that we would toil and labor in the study of things not at all incumbent upon us to study, such as pilpul which could bear no fruit, or laws which have no practical application in our days-- while our great obligation to our Creator is abandoned to habit or left aside as elements of a religion of rote?"

-- That is, how dare we exert ourselves day after day on what's secondary if not tertiary, and spend so little time on what's primary and most fulfilling?

Translation of text (c) 1996 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
Original comments (c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman