Nibbling the edges

 Those who know know. Those who don’t yet know really ought to try it.

I’m speaking here about that delectable experience of tasting — even just nibbling around the edges of — the multitude of Torah that exists regarding a Yom Tov specifically in the days leading up to that Yom Tov and of course throughout the holy days of the Yom Tov itself. It’s an experiential delight without compare one that words mere dry one-dimensional words simply cannot convey.

The Torah I speak of comes in so many different flavors: lomdus halachah machshavah drush and various combinations thereof. There is a huge and still-growing treasure trove of thousands of seforim in each of these areas by hundreds of mechabrim in many different historical eras from Matan Torah up to and including this very year each with his own unique style based on his acquisition of Torah which can be yours too if only you make it so. The main thing is not to be left standing at the counter so to speak nonplussed by the array of choices but instead to make a selection and plunge right in. You’ll never ever regret it.

But there’s more to this still. For a long time I have had a certain experience when Yom Tov — it makes no difference which one — comes around. It is an experience in which the boundary between the intellectual and the sensory fades and those two normally distinct areas of human perception meld together.