The Biggest Mistake People Make When Learning Torah

I should say to say learning to learn easy is an oxymoron, meaning it can never be. It's not supposed to be easy. The whole point of the Torah is a mala Torah. What's a mala Torah? The toil of Torah, the difficulty of Torah. And there's even levels of learning Torah where a person gets more reward or less reward based on his amal. Meaning if you're learning my shiur, certainly it's Torah, certainly it's going to help you, but certainly it's much easier to learn by listening to me speak than you opening the books that I read and reading it yourself and breaking your head to try to figure out what it actually says. It's much easier to listen to me talk than to open a Gemara and start figuring out what it says. So the reward for the shiur is going to be certain level, the reward for Gemara is going to be certain level, but at the same token not everybody's on the level to learn Gemara or learn poskim or learn different things and and certainly not everyone is in a position to do it at every time during the day. When you're driving in a car, you can't learn Gemara. When you're you know, when your head is not so clear, you can't learn. So there's a time and a place for everything. Everything has a reward. There's a bigger reward for more difficulty, but nonetheless, if the Torah that you're learning is not affecting your life in a positive way, it's not getting you better, then it means there's something wrong. So whether it's the books or it's the shiurim or it's the One mistake that a lot of people make is they shop around with videos. They listen to 15 different rabbis based on what's recommended by Rabbi YouTube today. You know, whoever whoever recommends I'm going to watch I'll press I'll press play on press Oh, I like this thumbnail. Let me pick this one. Oh, I like this headline. Let me pick that one. That's a mistake. Why? Person that should have a consistent source of where they learn. Why? Cuz different rabbis have different strategies of how to communicate, what to communicate. So you don't want to necessarily treat the your your learning like it's a shopping list for Shabbat. Uh that's number one. Second thing is is that it all depends on how much time a person has in learning every day. If a person has, for example, only an hour a day to learn, it's very very different than a person has 4 hours a day to learn. Why? An hour a day, I'm not going to tell the guy to learn three different subjects. Most most that I would recommend for somebody like that is two subjects. That's the most. Why? He's got an hour a day. And in reality, in the hour a day, he's just going to get a little bit just to keep him like from jumping off of the the Emunah bridge. He's not going to get him more religious. It's just simply going to keep him there. You're not going to get far with an hour a day. You'll stay where you are, but you're not going to get far. And that's assuming that you actually do the hour a day dedicated. But if a guy is learning 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours, for sure this person is supposed to be growing. But that still doesn't mean that he should be learning 15 different subjects. So if they're learning Mishnah, let's say they learn for half hour hour a day, 2 hours a day, whatever it is, that's good. But if they have that kind of time, they should also start learning some books. And as far as what kind of books depends on the person. If it's a brand new person, I wouldn't recommend for them to learn Gemara. Unless they have somebody that's going to teach them Gemara. But if they're learning on their own, I wouldn't recommend for them to learn Gemara. I would recommend for them to learn some of the other stuff. First of all, learn the the Chumash with basic commentary, then you can go into some more Midrashim like Meam Loez. You can go into a things that are going to explain to you what you know, basic mitzvot you have to do with every single day as basic halachot. So again, it all depends. There's no one-size-fits-all. It all depends on who, what, when, and how. Now, as far as if let's say for example, a person like yourself is religious for let's just call it 5 years, and he has 4 hours a day to learn. And 4 hours a day to learn, certainly if you were spending an hour a day learning my children, that's very good. You could spend, let's say, 2 hours a day learning a Gemara. And another hour a day, depending on a specific need that that you would have. Most of the time it's going to be a lot you know, during that last hour of the day. But as far as you know, somebody else that's also religious 5 years, I would tell him potentially something completely different. You know, so for you I think I already gave you something. I told you that whatever you were doing was okay. But the point is is that if a person is brand new, you have to give him something that's relevant to brand new. If a person, you know, is a drug addict, you give him something for the drug addict. If a person is a womanizer, you give it to the something for the womanizer. If a person is a gambler, you give him something for customer for gambler. Why? Because each one of them needs a different medicine. And each one of them can handle a different medicine. The guy that did drugs, he can't learn Gemara right now. Why? His mind is too much the fool. It's too much too much, you know, garbage went into this for his for his mind to learn Gemara. But it doesn't mean he can't learn. He could certainly learn. He could learn some that's basic that's going to take tell him yes or no. He could learn some basic Musar that's going to simply tell him that he should stay religious, get closer to Hashem, work on himself. He could learn some things about he could learn certain things that he could handle. But if a guy is a rocket scientist, like we had I think last week or week before, one guy that came here, I think he was your friend from Israel. That guy just from basically listening to first of all how fast he speaks, which is like amazing. And also how clearly he speaks. He knows what he's talking about. That guy, if you tell him, "Listen, watch shuir all day." you're wasting his time. Why? He has a very developed mind. He can go far if he pushes himself. Now, if he has a problem of laziness, then you can't tell him, "Listen learn Gemara all day." Why? He's lazy. So, what do you got to do? You got to do mix. An hour of shuir, an hour of Gemara. Why? To get you in. Get you in. Get you addicted to the Torah again and then eventually more and more and more and more difficult Torah. So, everybody got to customize it to them. That's one of the points of having a rabbi. Where he knows who you are and what you are and he gives you guidance. Yes, we have a Every Jew must remember that he is a Jew and she is a Jew. We do not celebrate non-Jewish holidays even if they seem harmless. It is a zilzul, a disrespect to the Torah and it [music] leads to chillul Hashem, a desecration of God's name. Stick to our holy Torah and our own holidays. That is the path of a true Jew.