Chashivus haZman & Sefira-Kabbolas haTorah

The Gemara has a din that a davar she-beminyan is not battel. If you have something which it's accepted to be particular that you don't sell it by an approximation, but you sell a dozen eggs. You don't just say, well there's approximately a dozen eggs, maybe there's 10 or 11, maybe there's 13 or 14. No, you count how many eggs you're selling. So then if it's sold by number, so then it's a davar she-beminyan and a davar she-beminyan is not battel. So if you'll have one egg that's assur and it'll get mixed in with other eggs, so because it's a davar she-beminyan, it's not battel. The idea is that the fact that every individual unit is counted represents a chashivus which is attached to it. Why is it that we're makpid to sell a dozen eggs, why don't we just sell it by approximation? So that's a reflection and expression of chashivus. Mimeila, when one counts the days of Sefirah, one effect of the Sefirah should be time becomes a davar she-beminyan and it should remind us of yekaras hazman, of chashivus hazman. A vort quoted from the Chofetz Chaim. The Torah has for those who are ochozei me'orchei hamilchama:

מי איש אשר בנה בית ולא חנכו ילך וישב לביתו פן ימות במלחמה ואיש אחר יחנכנו.

So the Gemara says, the Braisa says, what's the shiur of a bayis to qualify for that din of בונה בית ולא חנכו? The Gemara says ד' אמות על ד' אמות. Not more than, maybe less, but not more than ich veis eight feet by eight feet. So why is it that what's the tragedy here of pen yomus bamilchama without having ever made a chanukas habayis? And so the Chofetz Chaim said, because obviously the pshat is, a person builds a house, he invested time. How much time did he invest to build a house which is ד' אמות על גבי ד' אמות? We're talking half an hour. How long does it take to build a house which is ד' אמות על ד' אמות? Rav Aharon Kotler, I think it's in the Mishnas Rav Aharon, in the Musar Shmuess, has the Gemara in Kesubos that when Reish Lakish was dying, he had a kava de-morika, a small quantity of some kind of ich veis yellow dye, whatever it was, that he had amassed and hadn't needed to use. So he said about himself, va-azvu l'acherim cheilam, that they squandered in that they amassed chayil and they had no benefit from it because it represented, again, it must have represented a half hour of work which turned out to be unnecessary. The notion of yekaras hazman is one certainly in the society in which we live doesn't come naturally. The whole notion of vacation and comfort, the whole goal is to have downtime, is to have free time, is to have time with no accountability. That's the whole goal. The whole goal is the antithesis of yekaras hazman, of feeling a need within healthy boundaries to... to use one's time as productively as possible to maximize one's time. And in this context it becomes very important to within Talmud Torah we're always supposed to be holding in the middle of a project. We're always supposed to be holding in the middle of pursuing some intermediate goal which is part of a longer and broader pursuit. And that's for two reasons. A, independent of what we're talking about now, if the goal as it is, as the Torah establishes it for us, שיחיו דברי תורה מחודדים בפיך that each one of us should learn as much as just quantitatively and qualitatively as much as each one is capable of, כפי כוחו באשר הוא שם. So unless there's a goal, unless there's a map, unless there's a blueprint, it's not going to happen. It means that there has to be a goal and a plan. So just mitzad the chiyuv of yedi'as hatorah we should always be in the middle of a project in terms of kinyan torah. But it also has the effect of instilling within our person this sense of yakvas hazman, chashivas hazman. משל למה הדבר דומה. People when do we pull all-nighters? If there's a final tomorrow morning and there's five hundred pages that the professor assigned three months ago but somehow for some reason it fell between the cracks. So then it's time to pull an all-nighter. Why? 'Cause there's a project, there's a goal, there's a deadline. So all of a sudden the yakvas hazman you can't, we can't battel as much in the normal ways and the normal opportunities for battalah so we pass on them because there's a sense of that yeah I can get through this material but I can only get through this material I have this goal that I need to accomplish. It is doable but it's only going to be doable if I take advantage and I make the most of my time. Having a goal, again, it has to, it should be ambitious, even very ambitious but realistically so. A person is not supposed to, it's counterproductive that a person rachmana litzlan sets himself up for failure because then a person just it can then just encourage ye'ush and then that's obviously counterproductive. It boomerangs. So it has to be realistic but ambitiously realistic, even very ambitiously realistic, but never beyond realistic but ambitiously so and that then there's a sense of that now I can't afford to waste this time because my daily what I need to accomplish today in terms of moving towards my goal of finishing this limud by the end of the zman, finishing this limud by the end of the summer. It's always true, it's always true that need to be in the midst of an ambitious again albeit realistic to always be in the midst of an ambitious project in pursuit of an ambitious but realistic goal. It's always true and it's certainly true, becomes even more true and To a degree, being within the framework of the Yeshiva, to a degree, not fully, but to a degree, it imposes certain goals, it imposes certain projects. But whenever, whether it's bein hazmanim, whether it's that ba'asher hu sham, a person is leaving Yeshiva, and then there is no goal or project that's externally imposed, so then it becomes, the need for one to do so is magnified many, many times over. When the Rishonim comment on the mishnayos in Avos of היום קצר והמלאכה מרובה and הפועלים עצלים ובעל הבית דוחק, so it refers especially, or maybe specifically, to Talmud Torah. That sense of melacha meruba, which is what we're talking about, is that my goal, my project is such that there's a sense of melacha meruba, and that sense of melacha meruba is what generates the concomitant sense of hayom katzar. And itachen, that's the pshat, that what we said initially, that Sefiras Haomer has the effect, or should have the effect, if we respond sensitively, of impressing upon us יקרות הזמן וחשיבות הזמן. It's not simply an additional to'eles that really Sefiras Haomer is designed as a countdown, a count up to Kabbalas HaTorah, it's as the Chinuch explains, to connect Yetzias Mitzrayim with Kabbalas HaTorah, so avada it's that. But what we're talking about is not just a sort of fallout, a mimeiladike totza'ah, no, it's that that is an essential component of hachana for Kabbalas HaTorah is developing that sense of yekaras hazman. Because in terms of mitzvas Talmud Torah, above and beyond other areas of avodas Hashem, it's especially within the context of mitzvas Talmud Torah that that sense of yekaras vechashivas hazman, again, within healthy boundaries, when a person needs to relax, it's a mitzvah to relax, but within healthy boundaries, that sense of yekaras vechashivas hazman is an essential component of hachana for Kabbalas HaTorah.