Machshavot HaLev - Yeshivat Lev HaTorah

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בלה תובשחמ
idea! “I swear in the name of Hashem (he dosen’t say bli neder) that tomorrow I
will wake up on time to say shema.” If he happens to be learning Nedarim (shout
out to Marc Merrill - who always wakes up on time) then our oath taker is fully
aware that his words will have no consequences according to the Ramban. After
all, this is a sh’vua on a mitzvah, which is not chal (effective)! So when the alarm
goes off in the morning, since thoughts of his masechta are going through his
dreamy head, he will hit snooze until the princes wake up. If so what is the point
of the sh’vua?
In his youth the Steipler, Rav Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky zt”l, answered this
question in a rather clever way with an important insight into human behavior.
He points out that it is natural for a person to try to make life easier for himself.
When there is a challenging mitzvah, a person will seek a heter to avoid doing the
mitzvah. He will come up with all sorts of reasons to justify why it’s okay for him
to slack off. We are all good people and would never blatantly cast off the yolk of
Torah and mitzvos. But what we are willing to do is to fool ourselves that we are
patur from the mitzvah for some reason or other.
The Steipler explains that if one views mitzvos as optional and not as an obligation,
as far as Hilchos Sh’vuos are concerned the mitzvah becomes a devar reshus, an
optional act. And while the Ramban says that a sh’vua cannot apply to a mitzvah,
neither to obligate him to bring a korban nor to receive lashes, in this man’s
views the mitzvah is only a reshus, an optional act. Accordingly, a sh’vua will be
binding on this mitzvah much as it is binding on any non-mitzvah. Going back
to our example, even though a sh’vua to say kerias shema cannot work because
it is a sh’vua on a mitzvah, since our bachur holds that saying shema on time
doesn’t apply to himself, it becomes a devar reshus and his statement, “I swear in
the name of Hashem that tomorrow I will wake up on time to say shema,” will in
fact be a binding oath! (For further discussion see the Kehillos Ya’akov, Nedarim
siman 10.)
This important insight of the Steipler Gaon is relevant to many decisions we make
on a daily basis. If we are confronted with the need to find significant time to
learn Torah we hold that we are patur from learning because we are involved in
earning a parnasa. If we don’t want to feel obligated to help a poor man we will