What is Brain Exercise?

But the human brain has no equal among all animals and nothing even close to it. The brain, like the hand or leg, needs exercise to develop and maintain fitness. If you tie a hand without movement for two weeks, it will begin to atrophy. Only after the turning point in my life did I realize how little I had developed my brain and engaged in educational material.

 

A few hours of study constituted the school day at the gymnasium. That already included exercise. I see the neighbor children even today returning shortly after 12 and going to play soccer. The few homework assignments are drowned among the entertainment, games, and passive sitting for hours in front of the television. Even when I reflect on myself as a working person, I see the idleness of my brain.

 

 In my eight hours of work, I use the professional knowledge that I learned in the past. This does not advance me in terms of the brain. From the end of work until the start of the next workday, entertainment took the central place alongside the routine technical activities of life. Somewhere around the age of 25, I had actually reached the peak of my brain capacity and there I stopped.

 

 With a bit of bad luck, I would have ended my life in old age like this. But, *b'ezrat Hashem*, I was fortunate. This is the main line that characterizes the religious community. Today, I find myself in a "learning society." Anyone who counts the annual study hours of a child in my new community will be astonished. This includes Shabbat and holidays, Fridays, and various "vacations." The number of hours of brain activity that a religious youth undergoes until maturity does not fall short of that of a student after several years of university studies.

 

The quality of learning and the teaching methods in the religious school surpass those of the state schools. This conclusion was reached by Professor Iris Levin from the School of Education at Tel Aviv University and her colleagues, who praise in their research the method by which students learn the Talmud, stating that... they develop logical thinking abilities that surpass those of state schools ("Maariv," 29.1.98). The researchers recommend "taking elements from the religious education system and incorporating them into the state system."

 

I indeed started my learning course with a significant delay, but with effort and perseverance, I hope to compensate my brain for years of idleness and atrophy. A person must use their mind to assess situations, consider their actions, analyze possibilities, and determine their values. My mind has opened today to understand things I previously didn't know existed. My knowledge and intellectual ability serve me in managing my life properly. My brain is working!

 

When I am unable to solve a problem, even in a medical or business field, I ask a rabbi. Just hearing how he analyzes an issue and considers its sides using his mind trained in Torah study, is enough to make me want to reach that ability. The path is open to every person, and everyone is invited to try, just like me.