Pray for Learning

I have just come home from my son's end of year performance (and what a performance it was - don't ask. Just let me tell you that I love him a lot).

The principle spoke told a story about R' Shimon Shkop, who said that once, while learning in Volozhin, he was unable to understand a certain Rashbam on Bava Basra. He broke down crying at the frustration of not being able to understand it. The Netziv walked in, saw him crying, and came over to find out what the matter was. When he realised that he was crying because he didn't understand a piece of Talmud he asked R' Shimon to show him what the problem was. When he saw it, the Netziv said to R' Shimon - "Do you know how many heartfelt tefillos I said at HaRav Chaim's grave to understand this Rashbam?"

The message of the story was that a person has to pray for success in their learning.

Now I love this principle to bits (he reminds me of the principle of my primary school, who knew every student by name, as well as their parents, siblings and anyone else who mattered. He also used to play an indoor version of tennis with us kids after school - and he would win!). But at first I though that his message was wrong. If you have a problem with your learning - shouldn't you keep learning and thinking about it until you come up with a solution? Why is crying and praying the correct response? Surely Torah is only acquired through breaking your head over it until you understand it? (I once had a chevrura who had a theory that if you didn't understand a piece of gemara, you should read it over and over until it makes sense. We never had to read it more than 100 times!). Doesn't the Gemara in Megilla say that if a person claims they have worked hard and not succeeded in their learning that it means they didn't work hard? Doesn't this prove that praying is not part of the equation?

Then I thought about it some more (I was there for over 4 hours, so I had time to think). Perhaps my problem is that I think it is an intellectual pursuit to learn Torah (and I love it). Maybe my approach is wrong. Since it is impossible to understand Torah without help from G-d, maybe I should spend less time getting a headache over it, and more time saying tehillim! (It goes completely against the grain to even write those words).

So now I don't know. Obviously we are talking about some combination of learning and praying, rather than spending all day praying and expecting the Torah to appear by itself. But it is too late for me to think now. And I need your input. Can one learn Torah by learning alone, or does prayer need to be an integral part of the daily 'learning' schedule?

(BTW it is obvious to me that in any other subject you need to pray for success - I think anyone who has ever sat an exam will agree with me on that. But Torah is different - isn't it? And even in other subjects, surely doing the time studying and revising must count for something too??)

- Your thoughts please.

Good night.

Learning to Learn

I don't normally like discussing, or blogging, about politics, but the release of the Winograd report and the prime minister's immediate response are too good to pass up. Without wishing to discuss the findings and their implications I wanted to look at the learning process, and how that affects us.
The report was clear. It states:

4. This emphasis on learning lessons not only follows from our conception of the role of a public commission. It also follows from our belief that one of Israeli society's greatest sources of strength is its being a free, open and creative. Together with great achievements, the challenges facing it are existential. To cope with them, Israel must be a learning society - a society which examines its achievements and, in particular, its failures, in order to improve its ability to face the future.

5. Initially we hoped that the appointment of the Commission would serve as an incentive to accelerate learning processes in the relevant systems, so that we could devote our time to study all of the materials in depth, and present the public with a comprehensive picture. However, learning processes have been limited. In some ways an opposite, and worrying, process emerged - a process of 'waiting' for the Commission's Report before energetic and determined action was taken to redress the failures that have been revealed.

6. Therefore we decided to publish initially an Interim Report, focusing on the decisions related to the start of the war. We did this in the hope that the relevant bodies would take urgent action to change and correct all the implications.

In other words, the Winograd report was supposed to be an opportunity to learn. They published the interim report because they felt that their commission was hampering learning, rather than encouraging it. The entire purpose of this interim report is to allow for learning. (And remember that this commission was appointed by the Prime Minister as his advisory committee. They have no legal powers and cannot do anything except advise, which in their view means to facilitate learning).

What was the response of the Prime Minister? How will Olmert learn from the Winograd report?

Olmert said, he would work to implement the report's conclusions. He called a special cabinet session for Wednesday to begin the work, at which he plans to announce the creation of a special task to oversee the report's implementation, including both government officials and external experts.

The government's response to a report from a special task force calling on them to learn is ... another governmental task force to help them learn!!!!

A person is allowed to go on the path that they choose for themselves. If someone refuses to learn, they will find many ways to continue to avoid learning.

How often are we given the chance to learn, from our mistakes, from our successes, from other people. What do we do with that opportunity? Do we learn, and take steps to implement the conclusions that we reach, or do we set up another 'task force' allowing us to continue with business as usual and miss the opportunity for growth and personal development.

In my opinion the current Israeli government is not good for very much (like most of the previous ones), but what we can learn is what happens to someone who doesn't want to learn, who has too much vested interest to wish to make any real changes, to see clearly what fools we make of ourselves if we fail to learn while everyone else can see clearly what we should be doing.

Let's try to learn.