Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz

So is it asr to learn while lying down?

It's not asr to learn while lying down.

But certainly there is an understanding that Torah is supposed to be taken seriously.

There should be a certain level of amelos that's put in to learning Torah.

So it's not appropriate that that's the way a person would be learning.

Now, obviously...

The B'ditchever would look at someone lying down and learning Torah and say, he wouldn't say, ah, terrible, this is how they learn.

He would say, Rabboni Shalom, look how great your people are.

That even when they're lying down, they're learning Torah.

Which is, you know, it sounds cute, but there's...

There's a great deal of truth to that, meaning the concept that when you're lying down, sometimes a person needs to rest a little bit.

So what are you going to occupy your mind with while you're trying to rest and trying to fall asleep?

So you could occupy your mind with nonsense or with nothing, or your last few words that you're reading before you fall asleep could be Devar Torah.

So even though your core Talmud Torah has to be Be'er Beret HaZubaziah,

It's not such a bad idea, probably, that if you happen to be lying down because you need the rest, not because that's how you learn, but because it's time to lie down, to have a little bit of Torah on your mind while the person is...

while a person's lying down.

So I don't think that that's such a bad thing.

In general, it's probably not, I've shared this many times, that it's a good idea to have a makhshava of Torah in your mind.

that you walk around in your mind thinking of something and learning.

And that for sure, you're allowed to be Mahara B'divri Torah while lying down without any question.