From – The Path of the BT by Rav Itamar Shwartz.

As we mentioned, a person is divided in general, into three parts: actions, feelings, and thoughts. Often a person’s feelings seem very positive to him, even as his outward actions tell a different story. How many secular Jews say, “In my heart, I serve the Creator. I am a good Jew.” He helps everybody, even thieves. In his heart a person thinks that if he has good feelings, everything is fine.

Chazal said,[7] “Anyone who is compassionate to those who are cruel, will end up being cruel to those who are compassionate.” But what can I do if I feel in my heart that it’s good to be kind to those who are cruel as well? Is that a good feeling, or not? According to my logic, is it good to have mercy on a cruel person? Sure. Such a person is the most miserable person around. He is cruel! He is terribly unfortunate.

But Chazal teach us that a person should not always go where his natural instincts may lead him. The emotions need another source of direction. How do I know which feelings are positive and which are negative? According to how it seems to me? Not at all. If there is no brain, then the heart is not a true heart either. The emotions, too, are not the proper emotions. In order to know whether our feelings are correct, we need to learn, and if we learn, we will know what our feelings should be. In that case, let us begin with the learning.

An average person living in our world, whose place is not in the beis medrash, who is not part of the Torah world, barely uses his mind. A majority of people, obviously, think about what to do, what not to do, when to get up, when to buy things and what to buy, but the brain is barely put to use. A small percentage of people study in various institutions of learning, and their brains are also at work. But how long do they “stay in” learning? Two or three years, maybe even four or five? During the course of a lifetime, are they constantly learning? It is very rare to find, in the outside world, people whose brains are working at learning during their entire lifetimes. In the best case scenario, they may be learning for several years.

On the other hand, a person who sits in the beis medrash, his brain must continue to toil until his dying day. There is never a time when he is exempt from studying Torah. Whether he is young or old, whether he is healthy or ill, as the Rambam[8] says, he must learn Torah until the day he dies.

In order to understand this, we first need to understand the power of Torah learning. So long as a person is on the outside of the Torah world, he has no inkling that to become part of that world involves building a world of the intellect.

He thinks that to become a baal teshuvah means to do whatever must be done. Whatever the Rav tells him to do, he’ll do. It would be wonderful if everyone did that! But that’s only a small part of becoming a baal teshuvah. You cannot remain bound to the Rav like a child tied to his mother’s apron strings; obeying everything he says. In the beginning he will tell you what to do, but little by little, you must build and begin to think yourself.

When you enter the world of Torah, it’s not only a change in what to do and what not to do, as we mentioned earlier. An additional, basic change (that must be made) is to understand that “Yisroel were His first thoughts to be created.”[9] Chazal said, “Who did Hashem, so to speak, think of to create first? The Jewish Nation.”

In other words, the power of the Jewish nation is that they are ‘the first of the thought.’ They are the true power of thought that exists in Creation! That is the secret of the holy Torah; that it is the wisdom of the Creator, given specifically to the Jewish nation.

The Torah is made up of three parts. One part of Torah is the commandments that a Jew must fulfill. That is the aspect of fulfilling the Torah in action. The second part of Torah is to study it. The Torah is wisdom, it is a body of knowledge. The third part of Torah is to build the emotions based on true thought patterns.

Entrance into the world of Torah is, on the one hand, entrance into a world of action. What must I do, and what is forbidden to me? That is true. But another part of the world into which he has entered, which is often unclear at the beginning of the path, and is also often unclear in the middle of the way, and even sometimes until the end, is that he has entered a world that builds the power of thought in a person.

It is clear that entrance to the world of Torah means building something new in the brain. This is similar to building a new home. Everyone, upon entering the world of Torah, whether he is a young child growing up, or someone who has led a superficial existence, and then enters into it, must understand one principle. On the one hand, we must build up our active fulfillment of the laws– what is permitted, what is forbidden, what are we obligated to do. On the other hand, he is building a new home! In the words of the passuk,[10] “Through wisdom is a house built.” In a deep sense, building the mind of a person is like building a home inside of him.

To build a brain means that a person understands, first of all, that the business of Torah is not only to learn in order to do, although it is the main thing. In addition, however, he understands that he learns in order to build his intellect.

In July 2009, my Partners in Torah chavrusa wanted to learn Gemora. We started learning the second perek of Bava Metzia about returning lost objects. We used Art Scroll for the basic flow and translation and then we discussed in depth on each step of the Gemora. It caused a good deal of brain pain and he enjoyed it.

Here is the outline I prepared when we got started.

1) Purpose of Torah Study
– Understand the practical law and the commandments
– Seeking the essence, relationships and connections of all things, in every area of life, in this world and beyond.

2) Components (See Appendix)
– Written Torah – 24 Books – Torah (5), Prophets (8), Writings (11)
– Oral Torah – Mishna, Talmud
– Commentaries, Halachic Works

3) Chain of Transmission
– Moshe, Joshua, Elders, Prophets (Described in the 24 books of the Written Torah)
– Great Assembly, (transition from Written to Oral Torah)
– Tannaim (literally the “repeaters”) are the sages of the Mishnah (70–200)
– Amoraim (literally the “sayers”) are the sages of the Gemara (200–500)
– Savoraim (literally the “reasoners”) are the classical Persian rabbis (500–600)
– Geonim (literally the “prides” or “geniuses”) are the rabbis of Sura and Pumbeditha, in Babylonia (650–1050)
– Rishonim (literally the “firsts”) are the rabbis of the early medieval period (1050–1550) preceding the Shulchan Aruch
– Acharonim (literally the “lasts”) are the rabbis of 1550 to the present.

4) Two Elements of Talmudic Study
– Understanding the steps of the discussion as described in the Elements
– Trying to discern new insights and a deeper understanding of the principles (Havana)

5) Seven Elements in the Steps of Talmudic Discussions
– Statement – an idea is expressed
– Question – requesting for information
– Answer – responding to a question
– Contradiction – disproving a statement or idea and totally refuting it
– Proof – presenting evidence from which the truth of a statement or idea is apparent
– Difficulty – pointing out something untrue or unpleasing about a statement or idea
– Resolution – turning aside a difficulty against a statement or idea

6) Understanding the Steps
– A Gemora statement consists of a subject and a predicate, which is information about the subject. For example, Women are obligated in the mitzvah of kiddush. Women is the subject and “obligated in the mitzvah of kiddush” is the predicate”.
– The Gemora often chooses unusual cases to highlight the boundaries of the subjects and predicates and the principles involved.
– Rashi’s commentary helps us understand the cases and the steps.

7) Deeper Understanding
– Torah learning often involves reconciling contradictions within the Gemora.
– Tosfos’ commentary points out additional contradictions from other Gemoras and reconciles contradictions.
– This process of reconciling contradictions gives us a deeper understanding of the principles.

Originally published July, 2009
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Appendix (Mostly from Wikipedia)
Read more Introduction to Learning Gemora ›

The following story appeared in Rabbi Frand’s parsha archives: http://torah.org/learning/ravfrand/5758/vayikra.html

I will tell you over a story that I heard from a prominent individual who works in Jewish Outreach.

When he was he was newly married, and studying at a Rabbinic seminary in Israel, he couldn’t afford an apartment in the desirable sections of Jerusalem. Therefore he bought one in what was then an outlying section, in a building where he was the only observant, religious Jews. All of the other residents were Israelis who were not religious. He went over to them and started building relationships. He invited every one of them to come once a week to his apartment to learn. After trying, he finally got several to come to learn, but he had not picked a topic.

What would he learn with non-religious Israelis? In a certain sense non-religious Israelis are even more removed from Judaism, and have more negative attitudes towards Jewish learning, than unaffiliated Jews in America. So he deliberated his options: something philosophical, like Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed, or a work which discusses the Jewish faith in comparison to others, like the Kuzari… he didn’t know what he was going to learn.

He went to morning prayers and there, as Hashgocha (Divine Providence) would have it, he met the famous Uri Zohar. Uri Zohar was Israel’s foremost entertainer: comedian, television game-show and radio talk-show host, social satirist, movie star, and film producer, and an icon of modern Israeli secular society. Then, in the midst of his career, he turned towards religion, eventually becoming fully observant. [For more information, read Waking Up Jewish by Uri Zohar, which is available through Genesis Judaica.]

He asked Uri Zohar what he should learn with these neighbors. R’ Uri asked him, “What are you learning in Yeshiva?” The Rabbi responded that he was learning Bava Kamma. Uri Zohar told him “Learn with them tractate Bava Kamma”.

The Rabbi looked at him incredulously and said “Bava Kamma? The ox that gores a cow; The Pit; The Ox; Fire that damages?… This will turn people on to Judaism?”

To which Uri Zohar responded “My dear friend, you don’t believe in Torah! If you can question and doubt that learning with them tractate Bava Kamma is going to bring them back — then you don’t fully believe and appreciate the power of Torah.”

Learn pure, unadulterated, “the Four Major Types of Damages” (Arba avos nezikin). You do not need to learn philosophical works such as Kuzari and Moreh Nevuchim. Learn about the Ox that gores the cow. It does something to the soul. It is mystical. It is magical. It is the nourishment that the soul thirsts for, and a teacher needs nothing more.

To this day, what does the Rabbi learn with beginning adult students? Tractate Bava Kamma.

That is what this Medrash says about Aharon. He returned sinners to Torah study. The power of Torah will prevail.

Ad kann l’shono (end of his story).

I am afraid that I share the same doubts with the Rabbi in this story. Having grown up on the Talmud since grade school, I don’t have the perspective of being exposed to it for the first time as a thinking, questioning adult, and it does surprise me to hear that learning “Arba Avos Nezikin” as someone’s first exposure to learning Torah would stir their soul. This represents a significant paradigm shift for me. So I would love to hear corroboration, comments or otherwise from those coming from a different perspective than me.

Originally published on Feb 19, 2009

In Derech Hashem, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (Ramchal) explains that the most powerful positive spiritual influences are brought into this world through the learning of Torah. The deeper one understands Torah, the more powerful the spiritual influence brought down. One of the primary ways to get a deeper understanding of Torah is the learning of Gemora.

If you would like to enhance your Gemora Learning Skills there are some new tools to help you. The first one is the release of the Way of Torah, which contains new translations of three of the Ramchal’s works on learning, thinking and speaking in one volume:
The Way of Reason
The Book of Logic
The Book of Words

The book was translated and annotated by Rabbi David Sackton and Rabbi Chaim Tscholkowksy and contains many colored charts and an extensive glossary to help you learn these invaluable works. At a 1ist price of $39.00 the sefer is a must have and you can purchase it from Feldheim directly for $35.99 or from Amazon at list price.
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Rabbi Tscholkowsky has just release a free new Android and Apple app aimed at making Talmud study fun. It teaches the 350 main Aramaic terms used in the Talmud and can be played in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Hebrew. Here is the link for the Android App. For the iPhone you can search the App Store for Talmud Quest.

Please leave a favorable comment on the app site. If you know anyone who would be interested in the app please forward them the links below. The app was designed to play on any screen resolution from 800×480 and above. Rabbi Tscholkowsky would enjoy hearing your comments about the app at ravchaim@gmail.com.
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Rabbi Tscholkowsky also has a site called www.learntalmud.org where there are tens and tens of free videos on
Introduction to Talmud
Ways of Reason
Book of Logic
Book of Rhetoric
Ways of Talmud

Thanks to Rabbi David Sackton and Rabbi Chaim Tscholkowksy for these wonderful works to enhance our Talmud learning.

Many observant Jews believe in the primacy of Torah and the necessity to never stop learning and growing. However, it’s often hard to find the right class at the right time by the right teacher. If you’re looking to learn the Parsha, your problem is solved. You can find yourself an Internet Parsha Rebbe.

I’ve been listening to Rabbi Ari Kahn for over a year. I love his breadth of sources, his choice of topics, his development of the shiur and the fact that his New York sense of humor is still intact many years after leaving the American shores for Eretz Yisroel. I also really appreciate that he makes his shiurim easily accessible for free on his web site.

Even though I don’t commute to work, I get to listen to 2-3 of Rabbi Kahn’s shiurim a week on the way to and from Shul and while stretching and getting dressed in the morning and evening. I’ve also added Rabbi Daniel Feldman and Rabbi Herschel Schacter who have many free shiurim available on that treasure house, known as YUTorah.org. There are 10s of speakers there, each with their own style, delivery and approach to teaching parsha.

If you like a fast paced, Chassidish sourced shiur, you might want to try Rabbi Sitorsky. Another good free source with a variety of speakers is Torah Anytime. Google will direct you to many other free Torah mp3 sites, as well as sites that still charge.

Hearing a parsha shiur from a teacher is a fantastic way to learn and with the great availability and affordability of audio on phones and other portable devices, why not sample a few shiurim to find your personal Parsha Rebbe.

Hashem says hello by stopping the rain at the start of the program.
All the rest is commentary.
Now go learn.
Daf Yomi begins the next cycle with Berachos 2a on Friday Aug 3rd, 2012.

I signed up this year to participate in a Bet Midrash program for international students studying abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The program pairs local English speakers with students to study in a one-on-one chevruta. I had participated in a similar program as a young professional back in Washington, D.C. and got so much out of it that I committed to studying full-time for a year in Israel. Feeling like I also want to share Torah with others, I was excited for this opportunity. Plus, I’ve been looking for a weekly chevruta anyways.

It turns out that there is another program that also sets up students with a chevruta, but it pays them and their partners to learn. I’m familiar with this arrangement. I recall being approached as a college student to participate in a weekly learning program, at the end of which I would receive $800. Not bad money, especially for something I was interested in. But, the money offer turned me away. I’m suspicious of a product that can’t sell itself!

In encouraging fellow Jews to come closer to Torah, why do we feel we have to provide a financial incentive? I’ve heard two basic arguments:

1-Busy people need to choose wisely how to spend their time, and if you offer a financial incentive, it allows them to dedicate time to Torah instead of a part-time (or full-time, but I’ll get to that later) job.
2-Paying a stipend for someone to learn is widely accepted in the secular world (academic scholarships and stipends), so why should it be so for religious studies?

I haven’t had an answer for a while, though my gut instinct still wouldn’t accept it. Here is what I think makes offering money for Torah study problematic:

1- While it’s true that we need to be judicious in how our time is spent, $800 really wouldn’t offset the income from a small part-time job, and there are a lot of things one can learn from working, especially when studying already all day long.
2- Torah study in and of itself is free. There is no cost to going to a local synagogue, private or public library, and sitting down with a sefer, or reading many Torah articles online or listening to shiurim. In fact paid shiurim are a pretty modern phenomenon (I’m not against those by the way).
3- Paying someone to learn full-time requires its own discussion, but I believe that the kollel lifestyle of learning all-day long, for protracted periods of time, especially at the expense of serving in the army in Israel, is against what the Torah explicitly says. (Let the barrage of comments begin!)
4- Paying someone to study Torah is different than an academic stipend, because academic stipends are conditional – you need to be receiving certain grades, produce a thesis (which then becomes property of the university), etc. Paying someone to study and expecting nothing in return than to listen to the material provided, is different.
5- When you’re paid, you’re beholden. There are 70 faces to the Torah, and when one explores freely, they have access to 70. When you’re paid to come to shiurim, you’re going to be fed a certain outlook, and it’s more difficult to challenge someone when he is holding a check.

Not everyone is going to buy, but I believe that the Torah sells itself. By being a mensch, a good person whose ways are influenced by the Torah’s teachings, and by opening up our hearts and our homes to fellow Jews, many will be attracted in a much more authentic way.

By Ilene Rosenblum

Compared with 2009, in 2010 I was a total Torah study slacker. On the one hand, I know that I need to, well, cut myself slack. I’m a working woman, and a kallah at that! It would seem though, that now, more than ever, would I need some structure and guidance that I’ve found in the past from the wisdom of tradition.

Part of it is also burnout. At the end of a long day in front of a computer screen, I don’t want to stress my brain more by pulling apart some text, or listen to a shiur. In fact, even when reading an interesting novel or non-fiction book in English, I find myself dozing off, usually after no more than 10 minutes. Blame it on insufficient sleep or an inability to sit in front of a book and concentrate on that one task, in the age of internet interactivity, but it’s my reality.

There’s another issue at stake too. Given the time crunch and lack of focus/sleepiness, what do I do with my limited resource for printed media consumption in my spare time. Part of me feels that I should study some more Torah, as part of my wanting to become more knowledgeable about Jewish practice and being able to make educated decisions about what I do or don’t do. Another part of me says די כבר, enough already. You went and made some pretty drastic lifestyle changes and live in an environment with mostly observant Jews. Shouldn’t you learn about something else?

The question is “why?” My secular, liberal arts education would tell me that it’s important to understand and appreciate people of different cultures, who live differently than you do, and to have a working knowledge of politics, literature and science. But, day-to-day, it doesn’t matter to me much whether I can tell you about the British government or have read One Hundred Years of Solitude (I tried, but boy was it difficult keeping track of multiple characters with the same name!)

If I want to study Torah, and only Torah, why not? In fact, there are those who claim that the knowledge and wisdom imparted in the Torah is so vast that it is all-encompassing. That is in part why ultra-Orthodox men will sometimes not learn more than a rudimentary level of mathematics, science, foreign languages, and so on (Women are not obligated to learn Torah and some need to learn secular work skills in order to find jobs to support the family.) Learning something else would be bittul Torah, wasting time better spent in Torah study.

To what extent do we learn something new from reading the Torah through each year and bring something new to it ourselves? And to what extent should we be spending time spreading our reading wings to texts never encountered before?

Our sages teach that there is endless wisdom in the Torah. A section of the Talmud, Pirkei Avot, Ethics of Our Fathers, says that you can find countless chiddushim in the Torah.

בן בג בג אומר הפוך בה והפוך בה דכולה בה (פרק ה משנה כב)א

It’s true that many of the laws and stories encompassed in the Torah’s teachings, particularly in the Gemara, seem to impart a much more advanced level of knowledge about human biology, psychology, and even hard science than contemporary documents and that they might be considered even “progressive” by the standards of non-Jewish cultures at the time they were penned. But are we not supposed to explore God’s creation for ourselves?

There is so much Torah I wish to study. I haven’t even gone through what I consider to be the very basics of studying the books of the Tanach. But at the same time, delving into minutiae of halachic debate or reading ancient stories doesn’t always seem like the most valuable use of my time. Were I to only study Torah, I would be ignorant of a lot of the world around me. Some would find that to be a good thing.

I’ve wondered quite a bit how much the experience of growing up in Israel is different than growing up in the United States. For one thing, how is it that all of your schoolmates and neighbors are Jewish? If you study Judaism all day long, are around Jews all day long, and you’re hardly exposed to other types of people, or at least people of other races and religions, what happens when you go abroad? What happens to your intellectual development and decision making? Is your religious faith and observance strengthened or weakened?

I’m really grateful to be living in a country and a more specifically a city where I can easily meet friends for a kosher lunch and the buses wish you a Purim Sameach during the month of Adar. It’s hard to ignore the Jewish cycle here. But I’m also thankful for having the experience of having to make a real sacrifice in order to find kosher food, go store-to-store hunting down candles, and to incorporate Judaism into my life when the world around me doesn’t stand still on Friday night.

Ilene writes at www.ilenerosenblum.com/blog.

The new Mishanayos Yomi cycle start on Sunday July 4th with Masechta Berachos.

You learn 2 mishnayos a day and you can finish all of Shas in 5 1/2 years.

It’s not hard and it’s a great accomplishment.

There are audio files here which take only 5 minutes per day.

Rav Grossman also has audio files of the entire Mishna.

And here’s the schedule for the remainder of 5770.

The http://www.mishnahyomit.com/ site also has some good resources.

You can download the entire Blackman translation of the Mishnayos at HebrewBooks.org.

Here’s the entire Mishna online in Hebrew.

Why not start now, you won’t regret it.

Rabbi Shimon Green gave a unique shiur on loving Torah and helping our children love Torah. You can download it here.

True Torah is pleasant to learn. Locking our children into Torah is not a true path. Torah is sweet and pleasant when properly taught and understood.

Humility is the starting point of learning. When somebody disagrees with our ideas, our starting must be to try and understand that person’s point of view. A true ben Torah is always interested in what the other person has to say.

Torah has the ability to connect us with that which is greater than us, namely Hashem. Torah can constantly expand us.

Please listen to the entire shiur.