Your Way in Learning Torah - 002 Binah | Connecting Abstract Information

A Child’s Development of the Soul’s Abilities

We will continue, with the help of Hashem, to discuss the ways of learning Torah. In the previous lesson, we explained briefly the structure of the early steps of Torah learning. We explained about the elementary stages of Torah learning, from when a child is first taught Torah, until the stage of learning Mishnayos. So far, we have not yet explained about how to learn Torah orally. Now that we have given the outline, we can try to get a little further into these matters.

In another series[1], we have elaborated at length about the general description of the abilities of the soul: the power of havayah (“existence”), emunah (faith), taanug (pleasure), chochmah (wisdom), binah, or hisbonenus (contemplation\reflection), the middos (character traits or emotions), and action.

The root of power of the soul is havayah, existence. It is concealed and hidden. A person can definitely have a sense of it, but only weakly. For the most part, this deep power in the soul remains concealed from a person’s awareness.

After the highest point in the soul, havayah, are the second-to-highest abilities in the soul, which include emunah (believing),and taanug (pleasure). These abilities are more consciously revealed. A person is aware of taanug already from his first day. Chazal compare the words of Torah to a child nursing from its mother. This is pleasure for a child. A child is also in touch somewhat with emunah, because he has a blind faith in his mother, that she will give him all of his needs. A child is entirely dependent on his parents, because his power of emunah is very active.

After emunah and taanug, the next-to-highest power in the soul is ratzon, the will. This is also very much revealed in a child. When a child wants something and he doesn’t get it, he cries. When the child cries, it is very apparent that he wanted something badly. So a child’s ratzon is very active.

[In summary, the power of havayah is not that revealed in a child, but the powers of emunah, taanug and ratzon are very much revealed already at a young age].

The Child’s First Exposure to the Abilities of Chochmah and Binah

After ratzon, the next-to-highest power in the soul, chochmah (wisdom), is not that revealed in a child, as mentioned earlier. Although human beings are designed “with wisdom”, with chochmah, there is basically almost no access to chochmah yet when one is at a young age. It is very hidden. When a child begins to talk and his father teaches him that the Torah was commanded to us from Moshe, and he is also taught Shema Yisrael, that is when the child can begin to perceive what chochmah is.

After the ability of chochmah begins to become gradually open for the child, the child also is introduced to a deeper ability of thinking, which is called binah (understanding).

There are several aspects to the ability of binah. It comes from the word hisbonenus, to reflect, and it also comes from the word binyan, “building”, to combine together different thoughts. An additional aspect of binah is called tziyur, to picture. When we build anything, we need a certain picture (tziyur, or tzurah) of what we want to build, so that we can carefully plan it out with thought. To illustrate, any carpenter will first formulate some kind of picture of what the future building will look like, and only then does he begin to build it.

To summarize, there are three uses of binah: the ability to combine together different information, the ability to picture information, and the ability to reflect deeper into the information.

Only after a child’s ability of chochmah becomes opened, can his ability of binah also begin to open. We have so far explained the outline, and now we will explain more about this developmental process, with siyata d’shmaya. 

We mentioned before the abilities of havayah, emunah, taanug and ratzon, in order to complete the “picture” here, but we will mainly be explaining here about the abilities of chochmah and binah. A child’s ability of chochmah slowly begins to become revealed as he grows and matures, and then his ability of binah can slowly develop.

How does binah become revealed? It was mentioned that there are three parts to binah – reflecting, combining, and picturing. Which of these does a child first develop?

The three primary abilities of the soul are action, speech, and thought. The Vilna Gaon said that there are three different kinds of intellect: to think about doing an action (seichel haMaasi), to think about what one will say (seichel haDiburi), and to intellectualize (seichel haIyuni). A child is given toys to play with, such as playing blocks and various pieces which he combines together.

At first the child will simply move around the objects, for the simple enjoyment of moving things around. (On a deeper level, this represents the hidden level of the Torah, which is called shaashuim, “delight”, the simple joy of a child, which represents the deep delight in Torah learning. This is a much deeper point than what we will explain about here.) At a later stage, the child begins to combine the toys together. First he will create different combinations of toys together, without trying to form anything in particular. Slowly he will begin to understand that he can combine the pieces together to form something.

Once he begins combining pieces together, he will slowly begin to think more about what he is building. This is his first exposure to the ability of hisbonenus (reflection) that is binah, and even though at this point it is mostly hidden from the child, it is still beginning to become revealed. The child has begun to be aware of how to combine and connect things together to form a certain structure. After that the child slowly begins to become more creative, for he has become aware that it is possible to create, either by combining or taking apart. He is beginning to think more.

At this point, the child is still only at the stage of seichel haMaasi – he is only using his ability to think in order to get something done. He hasn’t yet been taught Torah. After the child begins to use his mind in order to do things, the child begins to talk, and that is when he is first taught Torah. At first the child will simply pronounce sounds, and his pronunciation will not be accurate. This is because although he has begun to combine information, he hasn’t yet refined this ability. Although he has begun to grasp how to combine things together, he isn’t consciously aware that he is using the ability to combine, so he still will not know how to combine properly. That is why he can’t pronounce accurately yet.

Maaseh Beraishis (Raw Information) and Maaseh Merkavah (Combined Information)

The ability to keep information separate from the other is called maaseh beraishis (lit. “the story of creation”) - to first formulate the information without combining it with other information. The ability to combine together information is referred to as maaseh merkavah (lit. “the story of the Holy Chariot”), the idea of complexity. Although maaseh merkavah is a term that implies an esoteric view from the higher spiritual realms, it also exists as a way of thinking, when a person combines together information. When a child begins to combine together different objects, this is a subtle use of the ability of complex thinking, maaseh merkavah.

In different terms which mean the same thing, maaseh beraishis corresponds to chochmah, while maaseh merkavah corresponds to binah. As a hint, the Targum Onkelos translates the word “Beraishis” as “b’chochmasa,” “with wisdom”, alluding to how maaseh beraishis is identified as chochmah. As for the other kind of thinking, maaseh merkavah, the root word here is merkavah, and the root letters of this word are the Hebrew letters beis, chof and reish, which are all products of the number 2 (beis is equal to 2, chof is equal to 20, and reish is equal to 200). The number 2 is the root of all combinations, [because two is a combination of one and one].

As explained earlier, harkavah (complexity) is an ability that a child first begins to develop in the area of actions. Later the child begins to combine words together, with the ability of speech. But on a subtle level, a child also begins to develop the power to create (maaseh beraishis), as soon as he is given objects to play with, using the sense of touch. The child feels each object by itself, before learning how to combine one object with another. In the area of speech as well, first a child develops maaseh beraishis before harkavah. First the child hears sounds and discerns them, and later the child learns how to follow the sequence of the sounds, combining them together, where he will understand words and sentences.

Of course, every sound is complex. Everything in Creation is a combination of different factors together. But when a child first hears sounds, such as when he hears his parents talking to him, he only has chochmah and he doesn’t have yet binah, so he perceives the sounds on a very simple level. The child doesn’t yet have the ability to take apart information, so he is hearing a simple, undifferentiated level of sound. Slowly he will begin to understand different combinations of sounds, but until he develops the power of binah, any combinations that he does perceive will not be precisely understood.

We shall repeat this once again because it is very important. A child in the beginning stages of development can only hear things on a simple level. The child will hear a raw piece of information, and this perception is called chochmah, the simple level of knowing. When a child hears several sounds and words together, the child is unaware that he is hearing something a bit complex. The child also expresses this in the way he talks. When a child begins to talk, the words are mixed and cannot be properly connected together to form a sentence.

Certainly there is some degree of complexity even in the child’s first words, but the child hasn’t yet been opened to think in a complex way yet, so this will be expressed in one-word phrases which he cannot connect together with others words. As the child matures, slowly he begins to uncover the power of binah.

The Reason Behind Imprecise Thinking

If the above has been understood, we can now arrive at a deeper understanding, of what will result from this concept. It was a point mentioned earlier, and now it will become clearer, with siyata d’shmaya.

There are many mature adults who are able to think very well, but they will only have a general grasp on a matter, without thinking into the complexities involved and without gaining a precise understanding of a matter. They don’t take apart the different factors involved. Sometimes this can happen when people simply don’t pay attention to details. Sometimes it is because people will skip a detail, or they will make a false connection between one detail and another and drawn an erroneous conclusion. What is the root of this problem? It started in one’s childhood: when one developed his ability of chochmah, but he never developed his ability of binah.

Chazal state there if there is no chochmah, there is no binah, and if there is no binah, there is no chochmah.[2] This is a problem that begins with developing chochmah without revealing any binah. The result will be that one’s thinking will be off-mark and imprecise, and it will become a firmly rooted habit in the person, to think in an imprecise manner.

Of course, a person can certainly change this. But our point here is to show that a child will usually develop chochmah without binah, and this becomes his “girsa d’yankusa” – “the way that one learned as a child”[3] - and what happens? There are many people who, as adults, are weak in their ability of binah. Their ability of chochmah is far stronger than their binah [and this causes an imbalance in their thinking: they will grasp a concept or idea in very general terms, without taking apart the matter and seeing the details involved].  

There can also be another reason for this. It can be because there are different roots of souls, and therefore some people have more chochmah developed in their souls, whereas others will have more binah, by the very nature of their souls. Or, a person may have developed the problem from a previous lifetime. This is certainly what to discuss about that, but here we are talking about when the issue developed from childhood, where a person never learned how to take apart things when he was a child, he never learned how to combine things together, so he never learned how to be creative. As a child, he never learned how to reflect. The result is that the child never developed the ability of binah.

That is why many people think using only chochmah, but with no binah, which results in an imprecise thinking process. When a person uses chochmah and his thinking is not balanced enough with binah, a person will not be able to properly combine thoughts together. The combined thoughts will be off their mark.

Developing Your Child’s Thinking

Practically speaking, we need to implement the following exercise for children, in order to avoid the above issue. There are gentiles who taught this as well, and they reached the right conclusion, so it would be an example of “Wisdom is among the nations.”[4] Children should be given toys to play with so that they learn how to combine the toys together and make different structures out of them. This will introduce the child to develop a more complex and precise kind of thinking, the ability of binah.

Playing with toys involves the realm of action, but there is also the realm of speech, which a child will also need to learn how to become more precise in. The Gemara says that when you teach Torah to your children, the “words of Torah should be sharpened in your mouth”, to the extent that if someone would ask a question about it, you can give a clear answer on it.[5] This is true on different levels. We need to do so that we can have clarity in our Torah knowledge, so that we are clear about it in our thoughts. This aspect is discussed in halachah. Here we are mentioning an additional reason why. It is because there is a more developmental problem if a person isn’t “sharp” about his Torah learning.

On a subtle level, even by Moshe Rabbeinu we find that he had “k’vad peh”, his “mouth was heavy upon him”. However, this flaw in his speech was rectified at the giving of the Torah, the fiftieth day after the exodus, which corresponds to the “50 Gates of Understanding”, which repairs everything.

The Sages are saying that “the words of Torah should be sharp (mec’hu-dadin) in your mouth”, and the simple implication of the word mec’hu-dadin, “sharp”, is from the word “chad”, “one”. When a person keeps each matter separate from another and he is careful not to mix together two different concepts, this is called mec’hu-dadin. However, a person will not develop the power of binah in this way, because, as it was mentioned before, a person develops binah through harkavah/complexity, which a child develops slowly through pronouncing sounds, letters, words, phrases, sentences, etc.

Katnus Sheini: A “Second Childhood” - The Concept of Returning To and Repairing Our Childhood Stage of Learning

We should understand that almost all people, without exception, have skipped an important stage of analytical development in their childhood. We have begun to mention how we can repair this: We will need to “return” to our beginning, childhood stage, and re-train our thinking patterns. Certainly, this is not the entire task of man. However, practically speaking, one who wants to deepen his life will need to “return” to his childhood, and to begin our development again, from the start.

In the words of our Sages, this concept is known as “katnus sheini”, “second childhood.”[6] It is a return to one’s childhood stage, by returning in our adult state to our childhood stage. As opposed to returning to our childhood stage from amidst our child state, we need to return to our childhood stage from amidst our adult state. The childhood stage we need to return to, though, is the exact childhood stage we have never yet gotten past. This is the concept of katnus sheini, the “second” childhood – to “return” to our childhood stage, beginning again from the very first stages of childhood.

There is a great depth to this, which was mentioned earlier, and which we will now elaborate upon. A child lacks awareness. So far, we have mentioned the negative side to this, which is that it may carry into adulthood. However, there is also an advantage contained in the child’s perspective. Chazal praise the “words of vanity uttered by children” of the Jewish people, which upholds the world[7], for children haven’t yet sinned. This is the deeper implication of the term “girsa d’yankusa”, the way one learned as a child, which is when the child is first taught the verses of “The Torah was commanded to us by Moshe” and “Shema Yisrael”. But there is also another purpose to this childhood stage: One needs to return to it, and apply a clearer perspective to it.

As mentioned earlier, a person can work on this idea when reciting the weekly Torah portion, of Shnayim Mikra V’Echad Targum. Generally speaking, most people are able to set aside enough time to recite the Shnayim Mikra, but we will also need to put a little bit more energy into this. We should use it as an opportunity to return to the childhood stage, and develop the power of binah. One can take a word and think about the combination of the letters, and when he pronounces it, he should do so with the awareness that he is using the power of binah to combine different letters together. And one should practice this precisely when he is reading the verses of the Torah, because the point is to “return” to the childhood stage when one first began reading the verses of the Torah.

By doing so, one forms a very deep connection to the very first stage of his Torah learning, his childhood stage, when he began his Torah learning by reading the verses of the Torah. One returns to the childhood stage of learning Torah by simply reading verses of the Torah, but it is not simply a return to the childhood stage, it is coupled with the ability to become consciously aware that when one is reading the letters, he keeps combining together different combinations of letters.

All of us are aware that when young children are taught by their respective teachers in the yeshivos, they are first taught letters. Some of the letters form words, such as the letters aleph and beis, which form the word av (father) and the letters aleph and mem, which form the word aim (mother). But children are also taught various letter combinations which do not form any words. They are shown the letters aleph, beis, and gimmel together, with various different nekudos (pronunciation) and then they are told, “Read this word”, but such “words” do not mean anything. The reason that this is done is so is because sometimes the child already understands what a word means, so he will read it quickly, and then he will not read the word correctly. To counter this issue, the child is given different letter combinations which cannot form any words, and in this way, the child is trained to first pronounce the word, regardless if he understands what it means or not.

The idea we can see from this is that there are two different abilities of combining information together: through understanding, or through pronunciation. We need both abilities. There is a gain in training oneself to read letters which cannot be combined to form any words, because a person will learn how to pronounce the word. Therefore, we can also say that there is a gain in reading Aramaic words which we aren’t familiar with.

On a subtler level, let us consider the following. A prominent amount of the teachings of Rav Abulefia involve various letter combinations, usually letters which cannot form any understandable words. When one first sees such words, he is puzzled. But there is something very deep in these illogical letter combinations. It is because, as explained, the words of lashon hakodesh which we are familiar with today are already understandable to us, and we can analyze them, but in order to connect together letters which seemingly cannot form any words, we need to access a higher level of understanding which is beyond our regular comprehension. The letter combinations brought in the sefarim of Rav Abulefia cannot form any logical sounding words, because he is describing abstract information that cannot be logically understood. These illogical letter combinations are to show that “The purpose of knowing is to know that we do not know”, the spiritual point of non-intellectual understanding.

This illustrates a deeper understanding of what a child’s learning is supposed to be like: A non-intellectual point of understanding, where letters don’t necessarily combine to form any sensible words. A child begins learning when he has no daas, and his learning does not involve the use of daas. It is non-intellectual. Hashem made it this way on purpose, so that children will begin learning from a point where there is no daas, where letters don’t connect and words cannot be formed! Although they cannot comprehend this, their neshamos gain spiritually from this, like the Gemara that says, “Even if he doesn’t see, his mazal sees.”[8]

Why should children be shown letter combinations if they don’t form any words? What is the point of seeing all these different combinations of letters? We already explained the external reason for this, but the inner reason is because of what we have just explained now. We can see the concept explained in the sefarim of Rav Abulefia where many different combinations of letters are presented and they cannot form any words. When we read combinations of letters that can’t form words, although we are not doing this for the lofty purpose of accessing the spiritual, non-intellectual plane, we can still do so for the purpose of accessing the child state of learning, by combining letters that cannot really combine. By getting used to combing letters that don’t form any words, our ability to connect words together will actually become more precise.

Studying Letter Combinations of Each Word We Read

There is another point here to accomplish, which is deeper, and we will mention it.

Words are formed from letters, and letters are formed from nekudos (vowelizing). Some of our Gedolim emphasized dikduk (wording and pronunciation) and some did not place that much emphasis on dikduk.

There are certain instances where correct dikduk of a word will make a very big difference, such as when it comes to the mitzvah of erasing Amalek, where there is an argument in halachah if one needs to say the word zecher or zeicher, but in many cases there were commentaries of Gedolim which did not place emphasis on dikduk and they were not so exacting with their wording. Not only that, but sometimes they would even change the dikduk of the word in order to deliver a derasha on it.

On a deeper level, this is because there is a level above dikduk, as we can see that there are certain crowns (called tagim) placed atop letters. The words of the Torah contain taamim (enunciation), nekudos (vowelizing), tagim (crowns) and osiyos (letters).[9] The tagim (crowns) look like combinations of different parts of letters and for the most part they cannot be read. The reading of a word is not contingent on the tagim of the word. The tagim are the hidden part of a word. It is only the nekudos (vowelizing) which affects the reading of a word.

On an esoteric level, before the world became spiritually devastated, the world was a world of tagim, and after spiritual devastation occurred, the world became a world of nekudos (points). For this reason, there is a concept that one should connect himself to the realm above nekudos, which is the realm of tagim. From the perspective of the world of nekudos, we need to place emphasis on dikduk, and be exacting with wording.

Those Gedolim who placed absolute emphasis on dikduk had souls whose role was to fix the devastation of the world, and by correcting the dikduk, they were fixing the devastation of the world of nekudos. In contrast, those Gedolim who were not exacting with dikduk were those souls who were connected to the world above devastation, and that being the case, they were also above the need to fix devastation.

In short, nekudos (vowelizing of a world) is a product of the “world of devastation”, where each nekudah (point) stands by itself, because it is part of the world of the “breaking of vessels.”[10] All of the nekudos (except for those shaped like lines, which are patach and kamatz) are comprised of several points, implying division and separation, and therefore they are the root of devastation, for they represent a world of separation (or the “world of the breaking of vessels”). Their tikkun (repair) is when they become connected. One who is exacting with dikduk is fixing the devastation of nekudos. But the higher perspective is the world of tagim, where there are no nekudos.

However, although there are gains of connecting to the world of tagim that is above the world of nekudos, one cannot acquire the ability of binah without being involved with nekudos, and if a person spends most of the time studying tagim of words without nekudos, his ability of binah will be weakened.

All of these deep concepts were mentioned so that we can understand the deeper roots behind the practical aspect here, as follows. Practically speaking, when we learn, we need to get used to reading words with the awareness that each word is a certain combination of letters. Binah is about connecting together information, picturing it, and reflecting on it. We should specifically develop our binah further by taking letter combinations that don’t make any sense, and see how they can be combined to form different words.

If we take a word that’s already readable and understandable, we would be skipping over the stage of binah and we won’t develop this ability. That is why we should try this on combinations of letters that don’t make sense. You can do this either with Aramaic words (as mentioned before), or with letters that cannot combine to form any sensible words, and try to combine the letters. In this way, we can develop our power of connecting information together, with awareness that we are doing so, as opposed to the immature child level of this ability, where we were just swallowing words.

When one person practices this idea, at first it will be difficult but gradually a person will be developing the abilities in his soul, and the result of it will be that his ability of dikduk will become more precise, in all areas. He will become more precise and more exacting in his avodah, and when he analyzes the words of the Gemara, as well as in all other parts of learning Torah.

Of course, we will still need more than this ability in order to advance in our Torah learning, but this should be our starting point: Knowing how to build and develop a word from the start, which later will develop our thinking further.

The ability of binah contains three parts, as mentioned: hisbonenus (reflecting), chibbur (connecting information) and tziyur (picturing the information). The ability of hisbonenus is the most inner ability from all of these, and it known as “higher chochmah”, an ability to build and develop information from the root, a simplistic ability of connecting information together. It can be used on a practical level, as well as on a linguistic level, by combining letters together and thinking of different ways for combining letters.

The idea is that one should practice reading words by seeing them as letter combinations. Instead of trying to understand what the words mean when you learn them, which is hisbonenus, instead try to combine the letters and see the different combinations of the word, as you read each word.

There are different soul roots. Those who are more inclined to taamim (reasons) will have a harder time with combining letters as they read the words of the Gemara, and if one has a soul rooted in osiyos (letters) he will also have a difficulty with this, from an opposite angle. If one has a soul rooted in tagim, he makes more use of the ability of hisbonenus in order to know the dikduk of a word, as opposed to simply reading the words. But in either case, each person at his respective level should start to read the words of the Gemara with the awareness that each word is a combination of certain letters, and he should think about the different letter combinations in each word he reads.

With Hashem’s help, if we merit, we will continue with another lesson.