54) KEEPING THE PRIMARY, PRIMARY:

It is sometimes very difficult to know from whom to receive guidance. 

So we turn to the ‘pious’.  

But every teacher has an agenda. 

The problem is that it’s impossible to know which agenda is closest to the truth.

The Kotzker Rebbe said regarding the ‘pious teachers’: “They turn the Secondary into the Primary, and the Primary into the Secondary.”

You know you’ve found your teacher when you walk away with the Primary remaining Primary. 

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36) Sometimes The Yetzer Hora Is The Beis HaMedrash:

The Kotzker Rebbe explained that the evil inclination is very devious. It doesn’t only try persuade us to commit sins. It also sometimes persuades us do to mitzvos, but for the wrong reasons.

It requires acute spiritual and psychological awareness to recognize the latter[1]. This is because religion is often a great mask, preventing us from dealing with deeper problems lurking within.

The Kotzker Rebbe once met a student in the Beis HaMedrash (study hall) and asked him what he was thinking. The student responded that he was thinking about this exact concept; - to which the master responded; “Good on you”.[2]

Kotzk was known to acknowledge the great irony that acts of religious piety are often rooted in spiritual pathology.

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[1] This is based on a typical Kotzk technique of re-reading verses of the Torah. Thus ‘Im bamachteret yimatzei haganav’(Shemot 22:1) does not read; ‘If while tunneling (into a house in order to steal) the thief is found. Rather a comma is inserted after ‘bamachteret’, and the verse reads; ‘If one searchers diligently, one will find the thief (yetzer hara)’.

[2] Amud HaEmet p. 56 par. 4