“The sages have been well aware of the many sides of Torah.
Whether it is an elixir of life or an elixir of death depends on whether the person who occupies himself with it is pure in heart and is open to receive what it confers...
...How does the elixir of death operate?
It does not occur when someone makes an error in Torah.
It happens when a person tries to fix it up or when he finds all sorts of wonderful things in it and makes them his own.
Gradually the book becomes adjusted to him, becoming his Torah.”
--Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From "The Elixir of Death," p. 201 and 206 in In the Beginning by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
