024 Letters 151 and 152

Good morning to everyone. We'll look at Michtav Daled this morning. We'll focus on the second paragraph. First paragraph is a nice he'arah, nice d'var Torah. The d'vrei hadracha, the d'vrei mussar are in the second paragraph.

והנה אף על פי שכתבתי לך שהתענגתי הרבה על הערותיך בדברי הקונטרס מכל מקום האמת ניתן להאמר כי הרבה יותר הייתי מתענג

it would have been had I had even more enjoyment from your letter

אם היית מודיע לי כי הקונטרס פעל עליך התעוררות כביר בשיווין של עבודה בפועל ממש.

If I would have seen that the kuntres affected you, not only that it engaged you intellectually, not only that you were nissorar to think about the ideas of the divrei Torah, but I would have wanted to hear from you that it had a practical effect on you. Vederek dugma, by way of example, shehirgashta iluy b'tefillascha that as a result of the divrei Torah you felt an upgrade, an improvement in your tefillah or perhaps in your involvement in chessed v'chadhoma. הלא יודע אתה מחמדי כי בעל מוח אתה. Naturally you're more cerebral. The intellectual dimension is what attracts you instinctively.

וממילא לעולם אשמח יותר לראות עליך צד עליה בהנהגת החיים שבדרכי עבודת השם

because the side of you that needs that comes less naturally, the practical side, the practical dimension to avodas Hashem, so it would have been a great simcha for me to see improvement and progress and growth there

מאשר דברי שכל הנובעים מהמוח. הנני בטוח שתסכים עמי בצדקת המשפט האחרון.

It's an important yesod. In every area we always have room for improvement. There's no such thing as an area in life, in avodas Hashem where a person doesn't have room for improvement. Now that being the case, that sort of gives an opening for the yetzer hara to direct us, to convince us that we're fulfilling our obligation to improve and to grow, but when we're only focusing on that area which comes more naturally to us, which comes more easily to us. And yet avodas Hashem is, needs to be balanced. The three domains of bein adam l'makom, bein adam l'chavero, bein adam l'atzmo, we're supposed to look to as much as possible li-mesaken ourselves and aspire to shleimus in all three of those tchumim. And there is a very natural tendency that we should be aware of. To look to improve and again there is room for improvement and we should improve and we shouldn't be complacent in any of those three tchumim, but there is a very understandable natural tendency to invest all our efforts and mental energies in improving in the area that comes most easily to us. What comes most easily just about always correlates with what we enjoy, and because of that, we're more easily nimshach. And that's what Rav Hutner says. As much as as much as I'm happy to see you being mipalpel and being mishtashea bidivrei Torah, and again, rachmana litzlan, the message is never to neglect that. The message is never to be complacent with with one's talmud Torah, but we all need to be balanced. You know, one of the mumim is if a person's limbs are not the same size. Say a person, one leg is longer than another leg, right? Sometimes you see nebach a person has such a mum and it makes it difficult to walk. Shleimus means when things are balanced, things are evenly weighted and evenly distributed. And our avoda is to look for the shleimus in all the tchumim and not allow ourselves to focus exclusively on that tchum which is the one where we're naturally the strongest. Okay, rabosai, so have a good productive day, a guten Shabbos. The bechina im yirtze Hashem is scheduled for Sunday. The format will be a little bit of a surprise, it'll be a little bit different than than usual, but nothing to be nothing to be alarmed about. And be well, be safe, rabosai. Kol tuv. Thank you, Rebbi, have a good day, have a guten Shabbos. Thank you, Rebbi.