What You Need to Know to Succeed in Torah Study

This week I had a shocking experience. I sat next to a Jew who was suffering from a particular issue and attended a class where the rabbi delivered a d'var Torah (a word of Torah) which was truly from the heavens, providing a direct and precise answer to that Jew. I was really amazed by this divine providence, but unfortunately, that Jew did not grasp the innovation, depth, or power. He treated the words as a 'vort', a nice d'var Torah for the Shabbat table, and didn’t realize that these were the words of the living God, and if he just treated them accordingly, it had the potential to change his entire approach to life!

I quickly realized that I, too, am guilty of the same lack of seriousness, and there are times when I am also not open to truly hearing what the Torah is saying. I can judge myself favorably (I'm pretty good at that), and argue that we are a generation too used to floating slogans, superficial expressions, a generation used to flyers and vorts, treating them as mere puns and anecdotes without understanding their deeper meaning and failing to be impressed by their profound significance.

How can we truly succeed in making ourselves drum-roll before a d'var Torah, whether it’s on the weekly portion, Talmud, Rashi, ethics, or Chassidut. Every d'var Torah is the word of Hashem, and when we prepare ourselves to realize that what we are learning can help us merge with the divine Torah and acquire supreme knowledge! This is no simple task as there is an evil inclination that tries to interfere with the internalization of Torah.

The Sages taught us 48 attributes with which the Torah is acquired, but for me, the rabbi who imparts this in an organized, clear manner and who has been teaching for decades is Rabbi Haggai Mazor. We'll try to summarize 7 rules from his teaching that could help us learn correctly and make Torah study personal, experiential, internal, and high quality:

1. Listen – Be silent and listen to what you hear.

When encountering new information, prior knowledge based on life experience, insights, and inner truth surface and emerge. This is normal; your intellect is your tool that distinguishes and sets boundaries, and is an essential condition for understanding and connecting to information. It is not correct to advise not to use prior life knowledge, but when approaching Torah study, the Torah teaches us to put all previous personal baggage on STAND BY mode, and simply try to truly listen to the new information and allow the words of the Gemara – Rashi – Tosafot lead.

To succeed in this, one must first get used to silence. A person finds it very difficult to listen when busy expressing clever thoughts and opinions. Even when they are silent, they are really busy thinking about what to say or how to respond.

This phenomenon is called 'selective hearing', where the listener chooses to ignore some of the information. They don’t do it deliberately but they truly don't hear part of what’s being said. When the speaker is delivering unimportant information, there's nothing wrong with that; we all filter out irrelevant information, but when the speaker is the Creator of the universe trying to reveal His Torah to us, selective hearing causes us to miss out in a big way.

2. When approaching the Torah, focus simply on the text before you. Disregard everything else.

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Just as coachmen put blinders on horses, so that they focus on the path ahead and are not confused by their surroundings, so too must one approach every Torah topic, without prior knowledge, only with the data before you, not trying to make sense of the information– but to simply to concentrate on understanding what is being taught. We must release from intellectual rigidity in order to remain focused.

We all have filter mechanisms that we acquired throughout our lives. This mechanism causes us not to see, hear, or accept what doesn’t fit into our fixed templates. These mechanisms are not superfluous – they help us cope with the flood of information the world presents us with. But when we pass the words of Torah, the words of living God, through these filters, the unfortunate result is a kind of distortion of truth. The only way to deal with this is to silence and quiet these filters.

3. Don’t be a 'thinker'. Try to study the things as they are written, free of any initial understanding.

Prepare yourself for the fact that the insights you are learning now are a novelty you have never heard before, and do not integrate with your previous knowledge. This is no simple task as you must silence the voices of all the Torah innovations and insights conceived elsewhere. It is necessary to silence not only your mouth, but also the thoughts in your head so that we can understand the information and relate it to another. Any shortcut through this necessary stage will cause the Torah to become academic knowledge with no real impact.

4. Listen completely.

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The greatest obstacle and impediment to silence and listening is speech. A person who is busy talking, in expressing themselves, with all their thoughts on what to say and how to say it, generally doesn’t hear what’s being said to them, as it’s stated (regarding the prohibition on blood, Chullin 113): 'Because they are busy avoiding, they don't absorb.' Our teachers concluded the matter saying (Avot 3:13): 'The fence around wisdom is silence.' Without silence, one cannot hear!

This is such a simple foundation, yet so easily overlooked. Most people are busy expressing what they have to say. Even when listening, they are only organizing their thoughts for their response- they are not free to listen. Their attention is not dedicated to what is being said to them and they therefore do not hear what is truly being communicated.

To truly connect with another, it is necessary to listen not only to what is said but also to what is not said, and this adds an additional dimension to listening, a deeper layer of emotions, all of which requires silence.

5. The shoehorn of listening.

This excellent ability to listen must apply not only to the words of people but also to the words of Torah, which can easily be manipulated to support one’s own views and deep thoughts in a way that makes sense to the individual. But the Sages (Sotah 11a) say that anyone engaged in building is impoverished, and perhaps their intention implies that a person who does not constantly reevaluate, but only seeks to engage in building upon existing theories, becomes impoverished, remains stuck, and misses the most excellent growth opportunity in the world.

6. Plastering course.

Anyone who does not approach learning with an attitude of knowing and understanding something new that will change the world, plasters the words of Torah before them into the familiar existing templates, and prevents development and growth. This is a very disgraceful trait, and it requires a lot of skill not to sin in this way.

7. Smoke machine.

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It's possible to walk away with the bottom line of every Torah lesson, but if this is our approach then we miss out on the journey. It would be like condensing a long book (or film) into two lines: 'The good guys won.' But what happened in the middle? All the experience, the details of the story and the ups and downs are overlooked. This approach trivializes the Torah because by learning, we are connecting to the Creator and developing a personal connection to its teachings.

My suggestion – next time you hear a d'var Torah, try to relate to it according to these rules. We would be glad to receive feedback with your comments about your experience.

Good luck!

Published on Maane