A Premature Depth

By Yaakov Eric Ackland

Imagine wanting to be a neurosurgeon and beginning by doing an extended and intensive study of the hypothalamus alone, rather than first studying general anatomy and the principles of medicine, and instead of even studying the general schema of the brain itself. Would you buy a lobotomy, let alone a sophisticated surgery from this person?

Imagine wanting to be a historian of the United States, and starting by spending a year learning all about the city of Cleveland, and the next year learning all about the city of Little Rock, and yet never picking up a general history of the United States, or even a volume about the states of Ohio or Arkansas. Will someone with this strategy ever attain any semblance of comprehensive knowledge, even in, say, 75 years of diligent daily study?

Imagine spending a year or two re-reading and studying Chapter 8 of The Brothers Karamazov both in the original Russian and in translation, along with dozens of commentaries on the chapter by the finest literary critics from the past 125 years without ever having read the rest of the book. Imagine taking daily classes on Chapter 8 given by a professor who had also never read the entire book, but had read chapters 12, 15, and 3 with commentaries. Are you at all likely to ever be able to truly understand the chapter, let alone the book?

These are all obviously poor strategies for success. For not only will one never achieve comprehensive knowledge by such narrow focus, one won’t even have true understanding of the area which he or she is focusing on, because context is everything.

Imagine wanting to be a knowledgeable Jew. Would you attempt a similar strategy to attain your goal? Alas, this same misdirected tactic of “learning in-depth” known as “b’iyun” learning dominates the yeshiva world, both for FFBs and BTs, children and adults. Ever since I became religiously observant, this has frustrated me. The narrow focus on “in-depth” learning (which is a misnomer, as there can be no real depth without breadth) over broad based (b’kius) learning is sadly a recipe for cumulative and individual inadequacy and relative ignorance.

The general disregard for serious study of Tanakh (The “Old” Testament) and Mishnayos (terse densely encoded statements of law) and broad-based Gemara (Talmud) study in favor of in-depth Gemara study is awry by almost any pedagogic gage. It’s putting the ox before the cart. It’s building a castle of sand. It’s like heaping cliché upon cliché in a futile struggle for clarity. We all know that Rambam wrote that first one should learn Chumash (The Five Books of Moses), then Mishnayos, and only then should one learn Talmud. Yet few do it this way, and consequently few ever attain anything resembling comprehensive knowledge and depth.

I think fondly of the 1963 World Book Encyclopedia set that my parents kept in the attic. My favorite thing was a multi-layered diagram of the human body. The base sheet showed the skeletal system. A transparent plastic sheet illustrated with the nervous system would be lain over that, and another sheet showing the musculature would be lain over that. It would have been futile to try to understand how the muscles work without understanding the systems underlying them: without the context. In an imperfect yet useful analogy with Torah, the Tanakh is the skeleton, the Mishnayos, the nerves, the Gemara the muscle, and the practical Halakha (Law), the skin.

To spend a year learning a chapter or two of a mesechta (tractate) without at least having a broad view of all of the Mishnayos of the Gemara is like reading a chapter of a great novel over and over without even having at least read the Cliff’s notes, let alone having read the novel. You might enjoy it, and you might find it intellectually rewarding, and you may feel that you’ve accomplished something significant, and you may even feel that you understand it, but the triumph is in significant part illusory, because you can’t contrast the fraction with the whole.

I’ve talked with Rabbis and others about this, and I’ve heard lots of explanations: how people need to get and stay interested and enthused and thus they need to get into the “heart” of Torah learning quickly, and stay there; how learning Gemara in-depth really trains one’s mind to think meticulously in a Torah way and how it reshapes character; and about the “weakness” of our generation and our “inability” to achieve anything like what our forefathers did. Some turn the question around and point to the Daf Yomi (program for learning a daily page of Gemara) as evidence of widespread and largely superficial b’kius learning, making it the sole representation of breadth learning. Many just say, “Both ways have merit. This way for this person, that way for another.”

Though there are truths in these objections, and though virtually all the people I’ve spoken with are respectable and vastly more learned and pious than I, these seem like weak answers to me. As I’ve illustrated, no matter how stone cold you think you have a line, paragraph, chapter, or masechta (tractate) down, you can’t really have it down if you don’t have comprehensive context. I agree that it is crucial to know how to learn in-depth, but it is more crucial to first have breadth of knowledge, for that’s what truly makes depth possible. Depth should be the ultimate goal, but real depth, not the shallow imitation.

Furthermore, by taking our eye off of the goal of broad mastery, we get bogged down in largely unquantifiable learning, which can be terribly discouraging. We begin to feel that no matter how much effort and time we put in, we’re really just treading water, barely moving forward or making progress, and that we’ll never succeed. B’iyun learning fails because the proper goal has been lost sight of from the very beginning. Even those with the greatest talent, enthusiasm, and diligence can’t succeed if they have been off-course since day one. By emphasizing b’iyun learning, the tacit message is that true mastery of the whole Torah is impossible and thus not worth aiming for. The bochur (student) is demoralized and hobbled from the get-go, even if he isn’t conscious of it.

I’ve found two excellent books which endorse and expound upon the urgent necessity of learning for breadth. The first is “The Meister Plan” by Rabbi/Dr. Tuvia Meister. In one small segment of the book he shows how one can create a plan for covering the entirety of Torah in 10 or 20 years. Although he doesn’t go into extensive detail about the process, there are a number of great learning tips. The focus of the book though is stock investment strategies.

The second book is thorough, inspiring, and walks you through the process of learning systematically with a broad-based approach in order to facilitate true long-term depth. It is called “The One-Minute Masmid,” and it is by Rabbi Jonathan Rietti. He shows the reader how, even if his or her time for learning is very limited, he or she can, through methodical, structured, daily study in very small chunks, steadily accrue the comprehensive broad-based knowledge of Torah that is every Jew’s heritage. (My use of the female pronoun is not so much my being pc, but a very deliberate indicator to women that although “The One-Minute Masmid” is written with the male Torah learner in mind, the strategies within this book are excellent for anyone wishing to build a solid knowledge base in any subject, Jewish or secular. (A great secular book on the subject of how to learn is “How to Read A Book” by Mortimer J. Adler.)

Most crucially and fascinatingly, Rabbi Rietti cites long passages from Torah sources as diverse and as great as The Vilna Gaon, Reb Shach, Reb Chaim Shmuelevits, Reb Yaakov Kaminetsky, Rav Moshe Feinstein, The Steipler Gaon, Reb Yoel Teitlebaum, Reb Yisroel Alter, Reb Moshe Chevroni, The Chofetz Chaim, The Ramchal, Reb Elchanon Wasserman, The Brisker Rav and more, all in strident advocacy for and defense of the primacy of b’kius learning, including mastery of Tanach and Mishnayos.

One such quote from the Vilna Gaon’s “Even Shlema”:

“First one must full his stomach with Tanach, Mishna, even if he doesn’t know how to explain each Mishna he should learn the entire Mishnayos, then he should continue to fill his stomach with Talmuds Bavli and Yerushalmi, the Tosephta, the M’chilta, Sifra, Sifri, and all the Braitot. Only after this should one engage in pilpul with his colleagues. This is the way of learning Torah. If one changes this sequence of learning, however, and learns first how to dive into pilpul without knowing a single Mishna properly, ultimately he will lose even the little Torah he heard in his youth.”

Finding these books has been tremendously helpful and motivating. They’ve enabled me to power on, albeit slowly and without a support network, to see that comprehensive knowledge isn’t an impossible goal, that I’m not alone in my perception of the misplaced emphasis of the current mode of learning, and that in fact I find myself in some pretty impressive company, such that I’d never merit to rub shoulders with in a million years. I do yearn to find a yeshiva or at least a Rabbi that takes individual students that learns this way, but am resolved to make the best of the way the world is, and still strive for and advocate for change. I don’t seek heated dialogue on this article so much as I hope that all who read this will read Rabbi Rietti’s book before responding hastily, reinvigorate their learning, and give copies to their friends and more importantly, to their Rabbis. As a final thought, the Chofetz Chaim, as quoted by Rabbi Rietti wrote, “One who invests all his energies and mind into mastering a specific area of the Torah while ignoring all other areas of our Holy Torah is likened to a person who spends his entire wealth on an expensive hat, and yet the rest of his body he leaves unclothed!” May we all have success in our learning, and not arrive in heaven virtually naked.

“The One Minute Masmid” is available only directly from Rabbi Rietti. You can contact him at jinsp@optonline.net

“The Meister Plan” is published by Mesorah Publications.

24 comments on “A Premature Depth

  1. I don’t see anyone addressing my point, so I’ll try to say it again, perhaps a little stronger:
    What is all this passivity, with regards to this, and many other issues?

    Why do we feel that we need someone to tell us what and how to learn?

    If we don’t convince ourselves that we are supposed to abandon our common sense, it will be obvious to anyone who tries to focus on some tiny detail of Torah without a broad picture that we aren’t getting anywhere, and we will use whatever means are available to fill that gap.

    If we don’t treat limud haTorah as just a mystical ritual but rather apply the same intellectual curiosity to it that we do to other fields (l’havdil), we will be motivated ourselves to seek out the most efficient way to increase our knowledge and deep understanding.

    (None of this is to say that we shouldn’t seek out advice from wiser and more experienced people, just as we do in every area of life. The point is that something is wrong when we wait for someone to give us a “derech halimud” instead of seeking it ourselves naturally.)

  2. Bob, Pain has different meanings in different contexts, for example physical pain is different than emotional pain. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say there is intellectual pain (and also spiritual pain). I would compare intellectual pain to the physical pain the triathalon athlete feels during their training.

    Pleasure is also used in different contexts. Physical pleasure differs from emotional pleasure. Intense Torah learning produces intellectual pleasure and spiritual pleasure.

    For both pain and pleasure as we go up the scale of human experience from physical to emotional to intellectual to spiritual the experience becomes more nuanced and subtle but it exists nonetheless.

  3. Bob, The brain pain, ie supreme intellectual challenge, is the pleasure.

    Rabbi Dessler has a piece in Michtav MiEliyahu where he points out that the current method of havana-based learning came about at the same time as the haskalah. He points out the chesed of Hashem in that there was now an intellectual equivalent to the secular learning of the haskalah. And you didn’t have to spend years to get to the havana-based pleasure.

  4. People will go the extra mile if there is pleasure in learning along with the pain. Learning with perspective can contribute to the pleasure.

  5. Ron, The goal is to get a person into the essence of Gemora learning which is B’Iyun with havana. This is possible even for BTs without the years of training, just bring your brain and be prepared to think until it really hurts.

    There are other issues such as independence and breadth surface-level learning, but according to many your true Torah learning is measured by your brain pain.

  6. Mark, I think you are describing a spoon-feeding process, which can be very satisfying, but does not lead to anything like independence. Which is, yes, a rather demanding measure. And one I do not claim to have achieved.

  7. Ron, I’m not sure whether competence is the right measure.

    My experience in my part of the world is that most Baalei Teshuva will never spent enough time in Yeshiva (4+ years) to reach high levels of Iyun learning.

    But not spending time in Yeshiva need not be a deterrent to using your mind for high levels of learning. If the background is presented properly and a few learning skills are taught, a person can get deep into a sugya in Gemorra.

    My experience is that most Gemorra classes are not taught properly with the teacher usually just going down the page with a very top-level (Art Scroll) understanding of the Gemorra.

    Rabbi Welcher says that real Gemorra learning begins where Art Scroll ends.

    In the class that I’m mapping out, Art Scroll could be used for the top level, but then it would go into the havana (deep understanding) with the Rishonim, Achronim and Roshei Yeshiva. Much of the learning would be outside the texts as it is in the Yeshiva Gedolahs.

  8. Mark is right. One needs to do both, and that is why it is almost impossible ever to be competent in learning without committing to some extended period of full time attendance in yeshiva.

  9. It’s not an “or” situation, it’s an “and” situation, we need to explore both depth and breadth.

    We need Ameilus B’Torah which means we have to work hard at it.

    Some portion of our Torah learning needs to stretch our minds to the fullest. Unfortunately there are not many venues we’re a BT who hasn’t spent 4+ years sitting in a Beis Medrash can get into the depths of Torah. But with the right teacher and the right approach I think it can be done.

    As I side note, I’ve also seen that most FFB Yeshiva graduates don’t stretch their minds when they leave Yeshiva.

    I’m in the very early stages of arranging an in-depth learning program which will stretch your mind. If you’re interested please email me at beyondbt@gmail.com.

  10. BT’s are a special case, in that they need to make up for lost time. However, jump starting the BT in Gemara-analytic skills without providing any breadth of knowledge is as problematic as providing the breadth without the skills.

  11. I would add one more point. IMO, the best texts for any beginning student are Chumash, Mishnah, Talmud as well the Siddur, Machzor and Haggadah .

  12. Charlie Hall-I have heard RHS make a similar point on numerous occasions. I would add that when I was in JSS we started with Chumash and Mishnayos with the Bartenura before proceeding to Talmud. Even the Talmud shiurim in JSS focused on getting the student the ability to make a leining on the Talmud, Rashi, Tosfos and Rambam. Very few Acharonim were introduced except if they shed light on the pshat of the Gemara or a Rishon’s comment. At our level, covering ground was a luxury, but then again, even in most yeshivos, how many blatt does one cover in a zman?O am aware of one yeshiva that was profiled in Mishpacha where the talmidim cover huge masectors and are regularly tested as well. Is it correct that more yeshivos are moving towards giving more, as opposed to less bchinos? i think that it can be argued that bchinos as well as chaburos are probably the best way of a yeshiva evaluating a talmid’s progress.

  13. I completely disagree with the premise of this piece. I have nearly twenty-five years of involvement in the issues of “learning how to learn” from the point of view of an educator, and I can testify that for baalei teshuvah in particular the b’kius approach you are advocating rarely bears fruit in our day and age.

    The fact is that (in the vast majority of cases) a beginning student today who does not devote a few years to an iyun shiur is simply not going to know how to learn. That’s the problem. I’ve seen numerous bright fellows that have covered every page in Shas and cannot independently make a proper laining (reading) of a daf Gemara on their own. Forget about Rashi and Tosafos! The Chazon Ish writes in an Iggeres that it doesn’t help to go through Shas if you learn the wrong Shas. You have to know how to learn first!

    Yeshivos today are focused on teaching a person how to learn, and the iyun shiur is the way that is accomplished. Rav Wolbe said the iyun shiur is no less than shimush talmidei chachamim, and the Gemara says: Shimusho yoseir m’talmudo—serving the Talmid chacham is greater than learning Torah.

    The letters from the gedolim that you mention are directed to advanced Yeshivah students and they say that a person must learn bekius *in addition* to the iyun. That’s why Yeshivos have a six hour bekius seder (afternoon and evening) as opposed to a four hour iyun seder.

    Also, the Vilna Gaon is talking about pilpul, as you mentioned. An iyun shiur is not pilpul, it’s in-depth learning of the pshat — trying to understand the pshat the deepest way possible, a far cry from pilpul.

    Granted, Rav Shach was always screaming that the bochurim have to finish the masechta. We have to know Tanach and Mishnayos. But the smart way to cut down the trees in the forest is to purchase the right axe, learn how to use it, and spend a good portion of your time sharpening the axe. With a dull axe and the wrong technique one is likely to become exhausted and give up quickly, or destroy more trees than the lumber he produces.

  14. Eschewing breadth in favor of depth is a relatively recent innovation, and I think is more prevalent in America than it is in Eretz Yisrael. In Europe, the Rav of a town was expected to be fluent in Shas — and there were many towns and many Rabbanim. Most of the “old timers” decried the practice. I know Rav Shach spoke about it constantly, and Rav Sholom Schwadron used to make the exact same point as Yaakov regarding a feeling of lack of fulfillment. I am a product of the “system”, but if I could start over again, I would do things differently.

  15. Some years back, my father told me he was interested in learning Kabalah, and my mother expressed an interest in Tanya. My mother did attend Beis Yaacov for a couple of years as a child, but mostly she was in public school, and my father attended a secular boarding school for the blind: neither was really raised religious or observant. I tried to be polite, but I suggested they start with learning the weekly parsha and, especially for my father, who has expressed an interest, halacha l’maaseh, before they jumped into esoteric topics such as Kaballah and Tanya. I’m not sure I was very convincing, though. Those sorts of things just have that magic aura around them that Torah perhaps should but apparently doesn’t.

  16. Ah, one of my pet peeves. What today’s yeshivot do in the name of ‘learning’ is implement a program that originally was intended only for people who were established and accomplished in their learning. The ‘yeshiva approach’ in learning was originally pursued by a fairly small group of people who were becoming ‘experts’, sort of like post-doc fellows. Rav Steinsaltz has a nice presentation of this which can be accessed through Rav Brovender’s ATID site. The Maharal, in Netiv HaTorah, is just another one of the giants who decried the abandonment of the order of learning as prescribed by Hazal themselves. When Rav Kook founded Mercaz Harav, he expected all applicants to display knowledge of the Tanach, 6 Orders of the Mishnah, and several masechtot of g’marah. This wasn’t a radical innovation, but an attempt to restore and re-establish norms presumed in the g’marah.
    For whatever my little word is worth, I want to heartily endorse this post’s basic premise.

    I would strongly add, BTW, that knowledge of HEBREW is critical. Someone who can only ‘translate’ is learning Torah at an arm’s distance. One of the basic assumptions in Torah is that Hebrew is really our language, that we speak and think in it. Too few of our educational settings are offering and encouraging an aquisition and use of Hebrew as a language, rather than just a learning tool. Not only did Hazal speak in praise of Hebrew as the holy language, a value in and of itself like any other value of Torah; there is a qualitative difference between people who learn smoothly and naturally in Hebrew, and people who remain ‘translators’ all their lives. By definition, if you have to translate, what you are learning has remained ‘foreign’. We should aspire to closeness, intimacy with Hashem’s Torah.

    May Hashem bless us with success in His Torah!

  17. I think YU’s Rabbi Hershel Schachter has been saying things similar to this essay for quite some time. Can anyone confirm?

  18. Yaakov wrote, “We all know that Rambam wrote that first one should learn Chumash (The Five Books of Moses), then Mishnayos, and only then should one learn Talmud.”

    I recently saw an ad in the (Monsey) Yated Neeman for a new Jewish elementary school in NY based on this systematic approach, as has been implemented in some schools in Israel. Rabbi Rietti is one of the administrators, in charge of general studies as I recall.

  19. Yes!
    In every Yeshiva I’ve attended, I had to beat the bushes to find a Chumash, Tanakh, or Midrash class. And I know of at least one classmate at my yeshiva High School who left Torah observance because we had so much totally irrelevant Gemarah stuffed down our throats – “irrelevant” in the sense that it was for us kids an empty intellectual exercise with no bearing on the hashkafa/personal issues with which we were then wrestling.

    Watching my BT friends and family jump headlong into this pattern of learning has been heartbreaking.

    I also think that a lot of our kosher-vs-yashar problems stem from the lack of grounding in Tanach and midrash/aggadah. There’s a reason our Sages put the aggadot in the middle of the Gemarah – but all too often, these passages are glossed over on the way to “meaty” passages that highlight intellect over intuition and introspection.

    The Culture of Humra has arisen largely because being a tzaddik has been equated with being clever. In reality, the two are not very related.

    The true tzaddik has subsumed discernment within a holistic perspective – but the current emphasis in Torah learning leads many talmidei chachamim to hone analytical, incisive modes of thinking that lead in the exact opposite direction.

  20. A very important issue, but perhaps you’re being a bit simplistic, and even the assumptions behind the analogies are not so obviously correct.

    The fact is that anyone studying the hypothalamus would be immediately motivated to read, in his “spare time”, say, a book on general neurophysiology or to find out about general anatomy. Same with history. It’s simply impossible to study about Cleveland without being automatically led to sources about American history in general.

    In the same way, I can judge the current system in yeshivos l’chaf z’chus and say that at some level it is assumed that the really interested student will be motivated himself to seek out broader knowledge in one way or another (as you have been yourself).

    At the same time, it has been said endless times that the yeshivos today are playing a different role than they did in earlier generations, and for the various non-intellectual purposes which the yeshivos are supposed to serve today, perhaps the focus on ‘iyun’ is appropriate.

    I’m not saying things are perfect today; far from it, but maybe the door hasn’t really been shut in front of the motivated individual looking for both broad and deep knowledge.

    (My 17-year-old son tells me of a number of bachurim in his yeshiva who, according to him, know Shas and much more. Whether he is competent to assess this I don’t know, but ‘bekius’ is certainly not unknown even today.

Comments are closed.