Why Understanding Is Worth More Than Wisdom

“The beginning of wisdom: acquire wisdom. And with all that you acquire, acquire understanding.” A Question to Begin “The beginning of wisdom: acquire wisdom. And with all that you acquire, acquire understanding.” At first glance this is hard to understand. King Solomon already said, “The beginning of wisdom: acquire wisdom.” So what do the next words add: “And with all that you acquire, acquire understanding”? Isn’t understanding already part of wisdom? And there is a second question. Wisdom is the higher of the two. So why does he use the word “acquire” for understanding in particular? “Acquire” is a word of hard work, of earning something and making it yours. The answer holds a great new idea. Wisdom is given to you. Understanding has to be earned. A Generation That Knows Everything and Understands Nothing Try to think about this, my friend. No generation ever had as much knowledge within reach as ours does. Every question gets an instant answer. Every topic has a class ready and waiting. Every short Torah thought for the Sabbath table is one click away. And still, does anyone feel that he understands more? That he has more inner feeling for what he read? That the words go down deeper into his heart? The Talmud says: “If someone tells you, ‘I worked hard and I found,’ believe him.” Notice the order. First comes “I worked hard,” and only afterward “I found.” A find that comes without hard work is not a real find. You found the thing, but the thing did not find you. The mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger by pushing against resistance. When everything is explained to a person in seconds, with no effort at all, he receives the “wisdom”: the raw point, the outside knowledge. But he has not earned “understanding.” And the worst part is that he does not even know what he is missing. He will go looking for an answer to his emptiness, and he will come back with more information. Wisdom and Understanding: Two Different Powers Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, explains that wisdom and understanding are two separate powers of the mind. Wisdom is the “first point.” It is the flash of insight, the raw knowledge, what we receive from outside. Understanding is different. It means “to understand one thing from another.” It is the process of widening that first point, bringing it inside, and digesting it in the mind. When we eat food, the body takes in the raw material. But if the food is not digested, it does the body no good. It is exactly the same here. Wisdom without understanding is food that was never digested. You have the Torah thought, but the Torah thought has not become part of you. The holy Zohar, the classic book of Jewish mysticism, hints that understanding is called “mother.” It is the power that gives birth and helps things grow. It turns the seed of wisdom into a living plant that bears fruit. The Struggle We Need: Crushed to Give Light Olive oil is a well-known example. It is precisely the “crushed” olive, the one that was pressed and broken, that gives pure oil that shines. An olive that was never crushed gives no light. The struggle of the mind works the same way. It means effort and difficulty. It means sitting with a topic you do not understand, from early in the morning until late at night. This is the crushing we need. It draws the light of understanding out of the raw point of wisdom. Without this crushing, the point stays whole, and it stays closed. The Talmud tells about Rabbi Preida, a sage of the Talmud. He taught his student every lesson four hundred times. Once, he taught a lesson another four hundred times. Today a class is measured in minutes, and the number of times we go over it is zero. We trade depth for breadth. We trade real learning for knowing a lot of facts. The Spiritual Danger of Our Time My friend, the young married man who sits in the study hall: there is a huge difference between hearing a class while you drive and sitting with a study partner for a full hour over one teaching. There is a huge difference between scrolling for a Torah thought for the Sabbath table and studying that same idea in depth all week long. The first brings wisdom. It is outside knowledge that only surrounds you. Only the second brings understanding. It is inner knowledge that lives inside you. The real danger is not that we do not know. The real danger is that we do not feel what is missing. A person can study for years, hear hundreds of classes, and know Jewish law and Hasidic teaching very well, and never once taste the life inside them, the “vitality and spirituality” within them. This is not because the Torah is hidden from him. It is because he never worked to bring it inside.