תורה 57

11. Addendum to sections 1 and 2:

Someone who shames a Torah sage has no cure for his punishment (Shabbat 119b). This is because all cures are compounds. In other words, we take so much and so much in volume and weight of a particular medicament and a particular grass, and so much and so much in weight of another grass, and also weigh a number of different types, each grass having a different potency. Then we mix all the types together and make a compound out of them. It is this compound that has the power to heal the person who is ill. We see then that the cure’s essential potency comes from its being a compound. It acquires a new and different potency through the energy it receives from all these grasses that have been mixed together. And it is specifically this potency of the compound that heals the illness. This is why an expert doctor is needed, someone who knows how to make the compound. However, someone who is not an expert, even if he uses the grasses that have the power to heal, he will still not accomplish anything because he does not know how to compound them.

The same is true of the Torah, which is a cure for all things, as it is written, “a healing for all his flesh.” No one knows it other than the sages of the generation, for it has been given over to them to interpret with the Thirteen Principles through which the Torah is expounded. However, from the Torah itself it is impossible to learn anything, except by means of the sages of the generation, for they expound it. For “the words of Torah are sparse in their place but enriched from elsewhere.” The sages assemble, mix and compound the Torah, and with the Thirteen Principles expound one place based on another: “removing, adding and expounding” (Bava Batra 111b). And even though in the Torah it is written one way, they remove a letter or word from there and add it elsewhere, and with this interpret it in accordance with what they know, as was given over to them. Therefore, when someone disgraces a Torah sage, he has no cure for his punishment. This is because the main healing energy that we get from the Torah can be gotten only through the sages of the generation, for it was given over to them to expound and they know how to compound the Torah’s letters, as mentioned above. This is the essence of the healing energy, because all the grasses receive potency from the Torah, as explained above, and their healing energies comes mainly from the compound, as mentioned above. Therefore, the essence is dependent upon the sages of the generation; they know how to interpret the Torah and compound the Torah’s letters, as mentioned above, and through this they receive the energy of all the compounds of all the grasses that receive potency from the Torah.

The main thing, therefore, is having faith in the sages; to be heedful of their honor and in great awe of them. Even if a person sees them doing something which in his opinion is not explicitly in the Torah, or it seems to him that they are going against the Torah, God forbid, he is obligated to believe that they are certainly acting in accordance with the Torah, because the Torah was given over to them. For example, we see that in the Torah it is explicitly stated: “give him forty lashes” (Deuteronomy 25:3), yet they said specifically thirty-nine lashes (Makkot 22b). Based on the interpretations and measures, as were handed over to them, they know that it must be specifically thirty-nine lashes. Therefore, a person has to have faith in the sages; he has to disregard his own intellect and knowledge, and rely solely on them, for it is to them that the Torah has been given over for interpretation, as mentioned above.