My basic feeling about Torah is to have a fast session and an in depth session.
The fast session should be to get through the Written and Oral Law a least once completely.
That is the Babylonian Talmud with Rashi, Tosphot and Maharsha. Every single last word.
Next step is do the same with the Jerusalem Talmud with the three commentaries on the page.
Next the Tosphta with the Chazon Yechezkiel.
Then the Sifri and Sifra. An hour per day on this will get you through this in a few short years, and you will have plenty of time to do university too.
That is the entire corpus of the oral law that was handed down generation after generation.
However Zohar and later Halacha writings are good to learn, but they are not the Oral Torah.
Maimonides wrote, "Just like you can't add to the Written Torah, so you can't add to or subtract from the Oral Torah."
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The Shulchan Aruch is a book written by Joseph Karo (as an abridged version of his large work the Beit Joseph). The Shulchan Aruch on the printed page has a few large commentaries on it e.g. the Shach, Taz, Magen Abraham etc. It would usually take about forty minutes to go through one page even if you are reading very very fast. Go really fast.
After you have finished the book once fast you go back over it and the second time you will understand more than you did the first time. And then you do it again a third and forth time etc.
I have found this to be helpful when it came to my having to go to collage to get an education.
I applied to Polytechnic Institute of New York University and they gave me a small sample test in Math to see if I could go to Calculus the first year, or if I had to take remedial course. I had no idea which side of the paper was up. So I got a textbook that covered basic algebra, trig, vectors, matrices etc and just plowed through in is the way that he said and believe it or not when I took the exam I got all the questions right!
[I was in Uman, for three months before I took the test. The fast session I did in my spare time from Rosh Hashanah until the end of the festivals. Then I reviewed, reading every chapter, plus the exercises. Plus I did a Calculus text which was great, but oriented towards economies. So when it came to right hand sums of Riemanian integrals I was lost, and unprepared.]
(Since then I went on doing the same kind of learning--saying the words and going on, and no repeats until I get to the end of the textbook. )
[During my university years I learned saying the words of every textbook forwards and backwards--twice. This I based on an idea I saw in Isaac Luria (The Ari'zal) and Moshe Chaim Lutzato (The Ramchal). Later I decided it was just taking too much time to do everything that way, and I went back to the approach of the Talmud in Shabat לעלם לגרס אינש עא''ג דמשכח ועא''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר
This approach is gone into detail in אורחות צדיקים a classical Musar book
My basic point here is that learning Torah does not depend on place, but on commitment. Like it says in the prayer in the morning right before the Shema "unite our hearts to serve you". When one unites his own heart to learn Torah he can succeed. But I think it is best to do this only at home or else in a place that is devoted only to Torah learning. Otherwise one will be distracted.
My impression of local synagogues is that they are in general not good places to learn Torah. Learn at home.
The fast session should be to get through the Written and Oral Law a least once completely.
That is the Babylonian Talmud with Rashi, Tosphot and Maharsha. Every single last word.
Next step is do the same with the Jerusalem Talmud with the three commentaries on the page.
Next the Tosphta with the Chazon Yechezkiel.
Then the Sifri and Sifra. An hour per day on this will get you through this in a few short years, and you will have plenty of time to do university too.
That is the entire corpus of the oral law that was handed down generation after generation.
However Zohar and later Halacha writings are good to learn, but they are not the Oral Torah.
Maimonides wrote, "Just like you can't add to the Written Torah, so you can't add to or subtract from the Oral Torah."
.
The Shulchan Aruch is a book written by Joseph Karo (as an abridged version of his large work the Beit Joseph). The Shulchan Aruch on the printed page has a few large commentaries on it e.g. the Shach, Taz, Magen Abraham etc. It would usually take about forty minutes to go through one page even if you are reading very very fast. Go really fast.
After you have finished the book once fast you go back over it and the second time you will understand more than you did the first time. And then you do it again a third and forth time etc.
I have found this to be helpful when it came to my having to go to collage to get an education.
I applied to Polytechnic Institute of New York University and they gave me a small sample test in Math to see if I could go to Calculus the first year, or if I had to take remedial course. I had no idea which side of the paper was up. So I got a textbook that covered basic algebra, trig, vectors, matrices etc and just plowed through in is the way that he said and believe it or not when I took the exam I got all the questions right!
[I was in Uman, for three months before I took the test. The fast session I did in my spare time from Rosh Hashanah until the end of the festivals. Then I reviewed, reading every chapter, plus the exercises. Plus I did a Calculus text which was great, but oriented towards economies. So when it came to right hand sums of Riemanian integrals I was lost, and unprepared.]
(Since then I went on doing the same kind of learning--saying the words and going on, and no repeats until I get to the end of the textbook. )
[During my university years I learned saying the words of every textbook forwards and backwards--twice. This I based on an idea I saw in Isaac Luria (The Ari'zal) and Moshe Chaim Lutzato (The Ramchal). Later I decided it was just taking too much time to do everything that way, and I went back to the approach of the Talmud in Shabat לעלם לגרס אינש עא''ג דמשכח ועא''ג דלא ידע מאי קאמר
This approach is gone into detail in אורחות צדיקים a classical Musar book
My basic point here is that learning Torah does not depend on place, but on commitment. Like it says in the prayer in the morning right before the Shema "unite our hearts to serve you". When one unites his own heart to learn Torah he can succeed. But I think it is best to do this only at home or else in a place that is devoted only to Torah learning. Otherwise one will be distracted.
My impression of local synagogues is that they are in general not good places to learn Torah. Learn at home.
