The last lines of Koheles tell us that the most important thing in life is emunah. "The sum of the matter is to fear Hashem and to keep His commandments." It tells us also that emunah is not a mere feeling, not a momentary inspiration, but a product of keeping the commandments of which there are many types: duties of the heart, duties of the limbs, thought, feeling, and action, mitzvos between people, between man and G-d, between man and himself. Every day we keep many mitzvos and over a lifetime we grow to be people who fear Hashem. You cannot do it in a moment or overnight.
I learned none of this in BT yeshiva. Didn't learn about Hashem, emunah, or mitzvos. I learned only about one mitzvah - Gemara study. Even that one I didn't learn well because they leaped right into it without a very necessary overview. And I didn't learn about gradual development because we were expected to go from zero to 60 in a week's time.
I also didn't learn it after yeshiva in the local synogogue because there we had daf yomi and not much more, maybe a little mishneh berurah.
So it took me decades but I'm telling you what the Koheles tells us.
And I learned something else over the years, particularly from living in Israel. Anybody who doesn't know this purpose of life is a complete pain in the neck to himself and to everyone else for the Jew is built for emunah and the mitzvos. If he puts his primary energy elsewhere, he tears the world to pieces. Today, not knowing this is the norm, the abnormal norm, which is why we didn't learn about emunah in yeshiva.
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