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Rabbi Chaim Walkin

Sefer Da’at Chaim

34th Ma’amar

Sefer Da’at Chayim

34th Ma’amar

Guarding a person’s inner righteousness.

The Midrash (in Midrash Mishle 28:6) comments on the pasuk (in
Kohelet 11:6) “In the morning plant your planting” as follows: Rebbe
Akivah said – I had twelve thousand pairs of students stretching from
Gavat to Antipras and they all died in my lifetime in the period between
Pesach and Atzeret…He said to them these first students died because
they had a jaundiced eye towards each other’s Torah learning.A You
– my current students – Don’t you be like them. Immediately they all
rose up and filled the entire Eretz Yisrael with their Torah.”
These words are beyond comprehension. That plague which killed
twelve thousand pairs of students of Rebbe Akivah was the final
calamity of a frightening period for the Jewish people had just ended,
and the Attribute of Strict Judgment was still hovering in the air over
society and the heavy mourning had not yet disappeared. Even more
astonishing is that the only direction emerging from Rebbe Akiva’s
Beit Midrash to his new students was – Don’t you be like them!” The
obvious question is - Were those words alone enough?! Didn’t the
times demand creating a brand new system?! Wasn’t there a need to
put into place new rules and implement new safeguards to ensure that
the cause of this terrible plague would never again recur?! There is no
doubt that this topic demands explanation.

The danger lurking within a person’s wanton
compulsive habits.

In opening up an explanation to this topic one must first introduce a
very basic truism which emerges from the study of the topic of “the

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