Chasidut sobre Provérbios 26:40

Laziness is the most harmful and common illness in youth. Yet, like most other illnesses, it too varies among different youths. There is a lad who is totally lazy: He loves to sleep and walk idly, and any work is a burden to him. He has various excuses for everything, as stated in the verse (Proverbs 26:13 ), "A lazy man says, 'There’s a cub on the road, a lion in the squares.'" He is always righteous in his own eyes, since he is full of excuses. And he always finds the shortcomings of someone better than himself who works. That way, he can justify himself in his heart and not be embarrassed or jealous about not working as hard as him. And even if he will occasionally redouble his efforts and take measures to work, he will quickly waver. He will study consistently only for a week or two at the beginning of the winter or summer (semesters), but no more. If you, God forbid, have such a bad trait, please remove it quickly. Remove it and take it out from its roots. It is disgusting and disgraceful, and it destroys everything like rot inside the bones.

The wise man went to that country. He came to the realization that he must come to know the essence of the country (in other words, the "thing" of the country; how the country works). And how can he find out the country's essence? — by way of the country's jests [Yid. katoves < Slav. katavasnik prankster < Gr. katavasis descent]. Because when one needs to know [the essence of] something, one must know its jesting. For there are many types of jesting: there is one who really wants to smite the other with his words, and when the other takes notice [lit. "looks around"] he says to him, "I am joshing! (Ikh treyb katoves, lit. 'I drive a jest')" as in the verse, "Like one who wearies himself shooting firebrands... and says, 'Am I not joking?'" [Prov. 26:18-19], and so there is someone who really means a jest but still harms the other with his words. Thus there are several kinds of jesting.