[.ליגמר איניש אף על גב דמשכח ואף על גב דלא ידע מאי קאמר ׁׂ[עבודה זרה י''ט
In one place the Talmud says to finish the book even if you forget and even if you don't understand. In another place it says לעולם לגרוס איניש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר
("Always one should learn fast even though he forgets and even though he does not know what he is saying.")
And it brings it from a verse גרסה נפשי
I had a lot of trouble with this idea.
Where I was learning Torah, they were definitely emphasizing learning in depth. And would spend a week or two of learning on one page of Talmud.
Eventually I began to see the wisdom of their teachings me in depth
I believe that if I had not gotten the idea of how to do it then, I never would have gotten it.
Where ever I have gone in the world, I have noticed that even among people that learn Torah, few have any idea of how to learn. The most simple basic concepts of Talmud are foreign to them because they never learned with any rigor.
But I do think this fast learning part of Talmud is also important.
And I have applied the idea of fast learning to other areas of learning that I have had to do when I went to Polytechnic [a branch of NY University].
So my idea is for people to get themselves a whole set of Talmud and go through it, with all of the Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot, and Maharsha.
I don't remember exactly but I think this used to take me one simple half hour per day.
[People would positively make fun of me when they saw I was trying to learn fast. In those days, I was not even going very fast. I was doing tractate Ketubot and I would say over the "shtikle" paragraph twice or more and then the Tosphot twice, and go on. And there were a few chapters I also did with the Tosphot HaRosh when I did not understand Tosphot.] But that was still way too fast for most people's taste. {Today what I was doing would be called learning in depth! You see how far this generation has fallen!! Nobody even knows anymore what real learning in depth is.}
In one place the Talmud says to finish the book even if you forget and even if you don't understand. In another place it says לעולם לגרוס איניש אע''ג דמשכח ואע''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר
("Always one should learn fast even though he forgets and even though he does not know what he is saying.")
And it brings it from a verse גרסה נפשי
I had a lot of trouble with this idea.
Where I was learning Torah, they were definitely emphasizing learning in depth. And would spend a week or two of learning on one page of Talmud.
Eventually I began to see the wisdom of their teachings me in depth
I believe that if I had not gotten the idea of how to do it then, I never would have gotten it.
Where ever I have gone in the world, I have noticed that even among people that learn Torah, few have any idea of how to learn. The most simple basic concepts of Talmud are foreign to them because they never learned with any rigor.
But I do think this fast learning part of Talmud is also important.
And I have applied the idea of fast learning to other areas of learning that I have had to do when I went to Polytechnic [a branch of NY University].
So my idea is for people to get themselves a whole set of Talmud and go through it, with all of the Gemara, Rashi, Tosphot, and Maharsha.
I don't remember exactly but I think this used to take me one simple half hour per day.
[People would positively make fun of me when they saw I was trying to learn fast. In those days, I was not even going very fast. I was doing tractate Ketubot and I would say over the "shtikle" paragraph twice or more and then the Tosphot twice, and go on. And there were a few chapters I also did with the Tosphot HaRosh when I did not understand Tosphot.] But that was still way too fast for most people's taste. {Today what I was doing would be called learning in depth! You see how far this generation has fallen!! Nobody even knows anymore what real learning in depth is.}
