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6.8.21

 I wanted to mention a sort of odd kind of fact. That Shar Yashuv was and as far as I know still is a yeshiva where beginners start. The Mir in NY is considered the Ivy League. Especially when Rav Shmuel Berenbaum was there it had the reputation of being the place of the deepest learning. 

But Shar Yashuv had an aspect that the Mir did not seem to have. That is after the first year or two when I got out from the beginners mode and began to listen to Rav Naphtali Yegeer I saw this sort of intense focus on the depths of the Gemara and Tosphot. This was in stark contrast to the approach of the Mir which was based very much on Rav Chaim of Brisk which is global.

Both approaches are good, but it is from the first one that I began to see the depths of the Gemara. [I however only began to have both approaches reawakened in me when I began to learn with David Bronson in Uman. I had not forgotten the first approach but up until then I did not have the mental vessels to be able to see the depths of Tosphot on my own. Only when I began to learn with him and saw how naturally the sort of awareness of the infinite depth of Tosphot came to him--then I started to gain some sense of what it means to understand the Gemara with Tosphot in a deep way. I tried to relay that in my first little book on Bava Metzia