This is another guest post from Shulman. I have a lot to say about it. I strongly disagree in many ways. But its worth reading! - Ash
I guess this is kind of a response to a Derech Agav's post (I love his writing btw - subscribe), as I commented there.
Every so often you hear the same kinds of questions about the yeshiva system, even from people who truly care about Torah, and - imo - it comes from lack of understanding about what the Yeshivos are trying to accomplish. Things like:
1. Guys do their time in yeshiva, but by the time they get married, their wives know hilchos Shabbos better than they do. It’s embarrassing tbh.
2. Even within the areas they did spend time learning, they don't remember much. Sure, they come out with some nice yesodos and chakiros about why mamon hamazik is chayav and how migo and chazaka work, but isn't the point to become a broad, well-rounded talmid chacham? Where are they all?
3. What happened to Nach? What happened to bekius? Torah is bigger than the first twenty blatt (halevai) of the seven yeshivishe mesechtas!
And the list goes on; I'm sure anyone here has heard the hundreds of complaints.
I'm not writing this to dismiss those questions. They're real and they shouldn’t be ignored. And I’m not someone who dabbles in apologetics, pretending problems are actually virtues just to defend the system. But once we understand what the yeshiva is really trying to do, specifically, what learning b'iyun is about, the picture should at least become clearer.
I'd like to try and explain, in a coherent manner, the importance of iyun hatorah and what the yeshivos are trying to accomplish.
So let's start at the root.
What is Torah really?
To understand what the yeshivos are trying to teach, we need to understand what Torah itself is.
At its core, the Torah is a rulebook, Hashem's rulebook, of how He wants us to live our lives. Do this; don't do that. As such, our job - as the people of the book - is simple: Know the laws. Follow them. The best Jew is the one who knows halacha best and keeps it best. Learn Mishna Berura, master Aruch Hashulchan, and then live by what you know.
Incidentally, according to this, it doesn't so much matter what Hashem actually says. The point is that we are His servants and whatever He says we will do. If He said we should stand on our heads for an hour a day, so we will do and so we will listen. If He'd said to play basketball all day, so we shall do and so we shall listen. It happens to be that instead, He told us to blow a ram's horn once a year, sprinkle a cow's blood on the holy altar and wear black, square phylacteries with a four headed Shin on one side. That's what He told us to do in His rulebook. And the point is: Know the laws. Follow them.
This guy says it best:
According to this view (which is undeniably true), the yeshiva system is missing the boat. Because many guys walk out without knowing basic halacha. If the Torah is instructions, what's up with us, what are we doing?
But the Torah isn't just a rulebook.
It’s more than that. And this is the first major point the yeshiva system is built on.
The truth is that if the Torah were a rulebook, then it's not just the yeshiva system that failed - the entire structure of the Torah failed miserably. The Torah itself, but especially the Gemara, wasn't written like a code of law. It doesn't lay things out clearly. The Mishnah records both sides of the debates and is extremely cryptic and purposely vague. The Gemara opens them up through layers of questions, proofs and challenges. But it's messy. And it goes off on really wild tangents. It’s not a manual. And that’s the point.
Because the purpose of Torah isn't just to hand you a collection of rules, maskanos. It's a system of how to derive halachos. And every serious posek in history went through that process.
Why don't we just open a Mishna Berura and learn as much halacha as possible? Well, the Mishna Berura himself didn't write his sefer by learning from another Mishna Berura. He worked through the sugyos, the Rishonim, the Acharonim, and came to clear conclusions based on his detailed analysis of each point.
That's what iyun is. Learning how to think through the sugya, uncover its yesodos, weigh the sevaros, understand the flow, ask the right questions, and so on. Iyun is swimming in the depths of the Yam HaTalmud and coming out with true clarity, not just lists of halachos.
What yeshiva is really about
The purpose of a yeshiva is to teach you how to learn like that. Not just to know the answer, but to understand where it all comes from. Yeshiva is a place to train to become a true talmid chochom and posek, not to just an encycolpedia.
In short, the Torah is ultimately a rulebook, true. But Gemara, the core of our Torah, is complicated. So it often takes a couple of weeks to work through a sugya, to learn through an amud properly. Each Rishon was doing nothing other than working through the difficulties in the Gemara itself. And we are doing nothing but understanding their approaches in the very gemara.
So what are we doing in yeshiva? The answer is simply: we are learning Gemara.
Yes, the gemara is complicated, so "learning Gemara" is a process, but we are absolutely doing nothing more than that.
We aren't supposed to just "trust" the Mishna Berura; we are supposed to get there the same way he did and understand Hashem's Torah. By learning Torah properly.
Sure, this comes at a cost. Most guys don't learn enough Nach. Most guys don't know enough practical halacha by the time they leave. That's a weakness in the system, one I don't condone. Everyone in yeshiva should optimally find time for a seder in practical halacha. But it's a "calculated weakness." There is a goal, and we can't do everything at once, so the bulk of time and energy is spent working towards that goal, by focusing on the core, which is iyun.
Of course, since yeshiva is a system, that means that it is far from perfect. There are yeshivos that do it poorly (don't get me started). There's often not enough hasbara about what the goal actually is. Other areas of clarity in a sugya are ignored (even basic bekius within the sugya is too often ignored) and these are actual problems. And so on. But I don't see a better way. So we keep the system - and we should go through it properly, have better hasbara and not ignore the other important areas of learning and living the Torah.
So yes, step one is: Know the laws. Follow them.
But step two is much more: Understand the laws. Understand the reasoning behind them, the sevara, the structure. This allows a system of law instead of just a book of laws.
Why this step is important is for a number of reasons, but the bottom line is: this is the way the Chachmei HaTalmud structured things, and really, how Hashem designed the cryptic nature of the Torah itself. Exploring the reasons requires a whole other post (I don't want to lose the flow or be too lengthy here), but the facts are: Hashem gave us a complicated code book to figure out, and it's our pleasure to crack the King's codes.
But - we can't stop here. There's still one more step, which is even more personal. I'll be brief because we are already running long.
Step three is that knowing Hashem's Torah is knowing "Him."
Here's a simple mashal:
Imagine you're on a date with your soon-to-be spouse. Over the course of the conversation, you find out a bunch of little things: He likes chocolate cake. He prefers old MBD to Shwekey. He wants a large family. And so on.
You go home and jot it down:
Name: Shmuel
Prefers chocolate cake
Likes 20th century MBD
Wants to raise a big family
Technically, this is just a dry list, a collection of data. But in the context of a date, a relationship, it is so much more than that. Knowing that this fellow, Shmuel, likes chocolate, while a may be a tangential sidebar about Shmuel in the greater scheme of things, you now have a better understanding of "Shmuel." He has personality, he has opinions about cake.
That’s the difference between secular law and Torah. In American law, the rules are just policy - what's better or worse for society. but with Torah, every halacha is an expression of His ratzon, which tells us who He is. This is what is meant that the torah is a "Toras Chaim," a living torah.
By knowing that Shabbos is important to Him, we now have a deeper understanding of "Him." Ultimately, through the learning of sifrei penimius, we can get an actual appreciation for the importance of Shabbos and Basar B'chalav and Shechitas Chutz, but even before that point, just knowing His law, we can see what He is about and understand "Him" better.
So yes, the Torah is a rulebook. That's what it is at its core. But it's a rulebook with a system, a method to extract those rules. A method that takes time, effort and diligence.
And finally, as we learn the rules in the way he wishes us to, we are beginning to understand Him. And that's a relationship.
As the Brisker Rav famously put it:
"When we daven, we talk to Him. When we learn, He talks to us."
And that's why Torah b'iyun is so central. It's a Jew's lifeblood.
Other Shulman posts:
Regarding the second point, that yeshiva is meant to teach the system that leads to the bottom line halacha, and iyun teaches the skills needed to analyze topics in a deep way so you can think like the poskim - i guess this would depend on the derech ha'limud, but to me this doesn't sound like classical lomdus.
Lomdus is great at breaking topics down analytically and weighing different ways to understand them - but not necessarily good at choosing one approach over another. It also doesn't usually include showing how to weigh practical psak factors like shas ha'dchak and communal norms, or how to deal with the development of a topic over time and how much weight to give shitos of different baalei mesorah. Also, shiurim generally don't even include a survey of how topics come out halachah l'maase after the initial analysis.
These would be important if the goal was developing the skills to become a posek like the mishnah berurah, but not really relevant if the goal is pure analysis; the fact that they generally don't feature in your standard shiur would indicate that the goal is more the latter, less the former.
Just to compare, R' Shmuel Phillips in Talmud Reclaimed suggests that learning is meant to teach us the analytical skills needed to eventually reach pardes (not endorsing, just using as an example). The issues above would make me think that a yeshiva is more aligned with his goal than with the goal you're describing here, as the pure analysis and lack of focus on development of the bottom line psak would align more with his approach.
ok I couldn't get past that first image. Sigh. "she doesn't come to his ankles" women make sure you know your place!