With Apologies To Paul Harvey

In his memoirs Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein tells of a student who left Volozhin. The student was capable and learned and the Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin) was reluctant to see him go.

The young man felt strongly that it was time to enter business.The Netziv asked him if he planned to study Torah on a regular basis. The boy answered in the affirmative, but this left the Netziv unsatisfied.

"You'e entering business," he said, "in your world nothing counts unless it's written down."The fellow was confused and asked if they were going to sign a contract. The Netziv explained that he wanted the boy to keep a written record of the insights that came to him as he learned. This would serve as a tangible record of how much he was accomplishing.

(This reminds me of something mundane I read; that if you're eating something with shells or bones you will eat less if you keep the shells or bones in the open. If all the chicken wing bones or peanut shells get thrown away, or if they've been removed beforehand there is no proof in front of you of how much you eat and people tend to lie to themselves.)

The young scholar agreed. As the years went on the man became successful in banking and continued to learn and to write. Eventually he published many volumes of his insights. These works were the Torah Temimah, Tosephet Bracha, and Mekor Baruch. The boy in the story was Rabbi Baruch haLevi Epstein himself! "And now you know the rest of the story."

This story came into my mind today. To some degree my Torah essays serve as testimony of my learning.