Mishlei is a book of philosophical poetry, relating to the deeper messages of our lives. A proper understanding of its themes - religiosity, wisdom, personal growth, and the relationship among them - can only be understood through a careful literary analysis of the poetry.
We begin the first shiur in this series with the very beginning of the book: the first of the set of short poems. We set out to understand how the key themes of wisdom, ethics, and justice are expressed through these poems.
short ideas that look so easy, so obvious, so accessible, that until you analyze them you don’t realize how much effort is necessary – in order to expend those efforts effectively, one needs to have yirat Hashem at the head of it all.
What does the first part of Misheli tell us? In the various stages of development, there are different types of wisdom, different aspects of one's personality. Wisdom will touch you on whatever level you have attained and will move you ahead – but only if you are willing to approach it with Yirat Hashem (Fear of God) and humility -not as the chacham (clever one) but as the navon (discerning one).
