QUESTION:
When is it prohibited to learn Torah shelo lishmah? Aren’t we all learning shelo lishmah…? And how can a person work on lishmah and eliminate shelo lishmah?
ANSWER:
Tosafos says that it is only forbidden to learn shelo lishmah when one learns in order to be mekanter, when he learns in order to challenge others and prove them wrong. But there is no problem with learning for kavod (honor), and we rely on this view of Tosafos on a practical level. But in each thing we do, we should try to do one small degree of it with a bit of lishmah, and we should also have an aspiration to minimize our shelo lishmah and increase our lishmah.
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