My basic approach to Torah has become a kind of forty days in a row kind of approach. That is to take one crucial area and to review it forty days in a row. This seems to work for me. I did this with difficult Tosphot and with a few chapters of Reb Chaim Soloveitchik's Chidushei HaRambam.
But I do not think this takes the place of בקיאות (or fast learning) in which one just says the words and goes on.
It is a good idea to have a kind of Beit Midrash [[study hall]]kind of situation --a place where one can go to learn Torah without distractions in order to be able to get through the entire Written and Oral Law at least once during one's lifetime.
That is the Old Testament, the Gemara Rashi Tosphot Maharsha and Maharam from Lublin, and the Yerushalmi with the Pnei Moshe.
This is what in fact was the functioning yeshiva in Eastern Europe. It was simply the local synagogue which after the prayers in the morning the teenagers would stay and learn Torah the whole day until they got married. [Reb Chaim from Voloshin changed that to make yeshivas into private institutions in order not to have them subject to the local authorities.]
The problems that Reb Chaim had to deal with are well known when a synagogue and beit midrash [study hall] are mixed. There is constant tension. The trouble is the making of yeshivas as separate private institutions got its own set of problems. Instead of solving the problems it just created a new set.
My basic impression is that yeshivas of the type that I went to are great places--the is the normal Lithuanian type of Musar Yeshiva. The best examples are the NY's Mir and Chaim Berlin-- and Ponovitch in Bnei Brak.
[I am not sure how this could for people far from authentic Lithuanian kinds of places. Most yeshivas sadly are pseudo yeshivas. I would not step foot in most of them. It is like, "If you don't have water to drink, would you drink poison instead?"]
But I do not think this takes the place of בקיאות (or fast learning) in which one just says the words and goes on.
It is a good idea to have a kind of Beit Midrash [[study hall]]kind of situation --a place where one can go to learn Torah without distractions in order to be able to get through the entire Written and Oral Law at least once during one's lifetime.
That is the Old Testament, the Gemara Rashi Tosphot Maharsha and Maharam from Lublin, and the Yerushalmi with the Pnei Moshe.
This is what in fact was the functioning yeshiva in Eastern Europe. It was simply the local synagogue which after the prayers in the morning the teenagers would stay and learn Torah the whole day until they got married. [Reb Chaim from Voloshin changed that to make yeshivas into private institutions in order not to have them subject to the local authorities.]
The problems that Reb Chaim had to deal with are well known when a synagogue and beit midrash [study hall] are mixed. There is constant tension. The trouble is the making of yeshivas as separate private institutions got its own set of problems. Instead of solving the problems it just created a new set.
My basic impression is that yeshivas of the type that I went to are great places--the is the normal Lithuanian type of Musar Yeshiva. The best examples are the NY's Mir and Chaim Berlin-- and Ponovitch in Bnei Brak.
[I am not sure how this could for people far from authentic Lithuanian kinds of places. Most yeshivas sadly are pseudo yeshivas. I would not step foot in most of them. It is like, "If you don't have water to drink, would you drink poison instead?"]
