The verse states concerning the Ark: “From within and from without you shall cover it” (Exodus 25:11). Rava said: This alludes to the idea that any Torah scholar whose inside is not like his outside, i.e., whose outward expression of righteousness is insincere, is not to be considered a Torah scholar.  (Yoma 72b:9)

Upon seeing this Chazal cited in the gemora, it occurred to me that perhaps the Torah should have stated the opposite: We should have been commanded to construct the aron of 100% pure gold! Instead, we have a wooden aron with a fake overlay on the outside and a fake overlay on the inside – and yet Chazal learn from here that our thoughts must be the same as our expressions!

Reb Chatzkel Abramsky learned in the yeshiva of Novardok as a teenager. As he was learning one day, the Alter of Novardok came over to him and said, “Chazal say that a person should learn lo lishma (not for the proper reasons) and through this, he will eventually come to learn lishma (see Nefesh HaChaim). However, this is not the simple reading of the words, for it says ‘l’olam’ meaning ‘continuously’! Therefore, learning shelo lishma is not just a means to the end of learning lishma. Rather, a person should never give up learning shelo lishma.”

After saying this, Reb Chatzkel added, “I adopted this philosophy and with this approach I was successful as the Dayan in London and authored the sefer Chazon Yechezkel.”  But what exactly did the Alter mean when he said, “to never give up learning shelo lishma”? Reb Chatzkel never explained it.

There is another question which I have: How can a person always be genuine if sometimes he does not feel like it? In fact, the sifrei halacha say that a chazan on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is permitted to cry false tears in order to get the congregation to pray with more concentration and feeling. It seems to me that this flies in the face of the aforementioned teaching of Chazal.

I would like to suggest as follows: People are human and as great as they may be, they still have human frailties. This may sound simple to you, but the Mishneh in Pirkei Avos (2:4) had to remind us of this, “Do not trust in yourself until the day of your death.” In fact, Chazal are full of many circumstances where men, who were righteous men of piety for many years, fell into the abysmal abyss. There was even a High Priest who one year entered the Holy of Holies and came out alive, and the next year became an apikorus. How does this happen? The answer is that everyone is human.

It seems to me that there are those who think that after achieving a certain level of piety, the evil inclination will not bother them any longer. We must be aware that as humans, the evil inclination is always there, and one who is greater than his friend will have an even greater evil inclination! (See Gemara Sukkah 52A) (However, that evil inclination may be very sly and disguise himself as a mitzvah.)

Perhaps the Alter was saying, “Do not forget that you are human, and you must address the evil inclination sometimes, giving it its needed amount of service (the sa’ir l’azazel from the Yom Kippur service). By keeping the evil inclination contained and never forgetting that it exists, the rest of our lives can be truly pure.

Returning to our original question about the Torah Scholar who must be true to his thoughts, this means that he has to use the frailties of humanity in the service of Hashem. The wood sandwiched between the gold symbolizes the physical human which can grow – wood is a living thing – and must be sandwiched from both sides to protect it – referring to different actions a person must do that are directed by the Torah.

Chazal tell us that when the Jews bowed down to Haman, they did not mean it earnestly, yet they were punished for it even though it was not genuine. However, what saved them at the end was becoming genuine once again, through fasting, davening, and repenting. We should take this lesson into our lives and strive to do things in a totally genuine way. Let us start with the Simcha of Purim and try to be totally genuine on the inside and the outside.