Is There a Disconnect between Torah Learning and ... - Hakirah.org

44 : Hạkirah, the Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought
property of a fellow Jew, how would declaring their hands ritually
impure stop them? Perhaps they will just as likely ignore the laws of
ritual purity and continue doing the service with impure hands?
Tosfos answers that even wicked people רשעים)‏ who ignore the
prohibition against damaging another person) take the laws of ritual
purity seriously. As support for this, Tosfos cites an anecdote related
by the Gemara in Yuma 23a in which a young Kohen stabbed another
young Kohen who was in competition with him as to who would get
to do the service. The Gemara relates that in the ensuing commotion
the wounded boy’s father came running, and all present, including
him, showed more concern with extracting the knife out of the still
live body before the boy died and contaminated the knife, than they
were with the act of murder. The Gemara in Yuma in fact declares that
“the purity of the temple vessels weighed more heavily on them than
did murder.” In the words of Tosfos:
משום חשדי כהונה – וא"ת כמו כן לא יחושו לעשות בטומאה י"ל דאף לרשעים
חמירא להו טומאה כדאמרינן ביומא ‏(דף כג.)‏ ללמדך שחמורה עליהן טהרת כלים
יותר משפיכת דמים.‏ ‏(תוספות פסחים דף פה/א)‏
Rebbe Shlome Wolbe ztz”l in a shmuess titled " " “On
Frumkeit,” 46 offers some explanation for this phenomenon. In this
shmuess he puts forth the thesis that there is a basic instinct, inborn in
all creatures, each according to its level of ‏,נשמה to be “frum,” i.e. to
want to come close to one’s Creator. Frumkeit is not ראת שמים , it is
not a חסידות ‏,מדת nor is it
. It is simply an instinct, and
like all instincts it is egotistical, i.e., concerned only with its own
satisfaction, unthinking, and given to satisfaction through fantasy.
The satisfaction of this instinctual drive, he writes, serves as the force
behind many people’s mitzvah activities, and in a positive way, serves
to help us carry out mitzvos in spite of hardships. However, because
of its egotistical and unthinking nature, one cannot build one’s
service to Hashem on this instinct. The frum instinct, no less than any
other instinct, must be harnessed, and must be guided by rational
thought, i.e., by Torah knowledge and halacha. If not, it will seek
י
‏,על פרוְּמקייט
דקדוק במצוות
46 Later written up as an article in ‏,הבאר a Torah journal published by
Yeshivas Be’er Yaakov ( ‏"ו ), and still later
published in a somewhat digested form, but with some additional
‏.עלי שור חלק ב insights, in
כ ‏"ה אלול תשל"ז חוברת ט