Importance of Chazara

There's a very real yetzer hara when it comes to doing chazarah. Sometimes chazarah is less exciting than learning something new. And there's a deceptive quality that when you learn something and you understand it, so it's very vivid and you can't really imagine that it's ever going to fade and you don't really feel the vital need for chazarah. So given that, and given the fact that the chazarah seems to be less enjoyable, less exciting, and there's so much more new to be learnt, there's a very strong temptation to keep going vaiteh rather than to try to do chazarah. The reality is that even though something is vivid b'shaato, so we all know from painful personal experience it doesn't mean that it doesn't fade, it doesn't mean that it won't fade. In general, it's attributed, not attributed, it's written, Rav Shlomo Zalman has it, the Baal HaTanya has it in his Kuntres Acharon in Hilchos Talmud Torah, that there are two elements to the mitzvah of Talmud Torah. There's a mitzvah to learn, but there's a mitzvah to know Torah. And what the way we attempt to ensure, at least to the best of our ability, that the learning results in knowing Torah, is through chazarah. A person learns, he learns, but that that should translate into knowing Torah, into אשרי מי שבא לכאן ותלמודו בידו, so the chazarah makes all the difference in the world between having learnt something, having spent the day learning, having spent a z'man learning, as opposed to now knowing a certain cheilek of Torah. And for that reason alone, that should be enough to get us to counteract the yetzer hara. There's nothing more frustrating, there's no greater sense of futility than to have had something and to have lost it unnecessarily. And that's enough to really energize us and get us to focus on chazarah. But the truth is that chazarah is also crucial in two other respects as well. Not only in terms of ensuring the retention, that the limud haTorah should result in enduring yedias haTorah. The havanah that one has, however much havanah one has from having learnt the sugya once and having chazered once, the more chazarah, the deeper the havanah is. And just to sort of try to give a sense for that on a very prosaic level, there's only so much that a person can take in from a sugya at any one time. משל למה הדבר דומה, let's say you go to a museum and there's just so many exhibits. If you've been to museum once and you remember what you've seen already, so now your mind is open to seeing and noticing and absorbing other aspects or other parts of the of the exhibit. So the first time you learn a sugya, there's so many, so many problems, maybe some of them are just in terms of making a leining on the Gemara, on whatever level, so many things that we notice that we're saturated in terms of our ability to to see other elements and other aspects of the sugya. And in chazara what happens is, when you go back to the same sugya, when you go back to the same sugya having again a tfisa already on some aspects of the sugya, so now you notice all kinds of, again, layers and questions and points of significance that it was just impossible to have noticed and to have focused on the first time around. And I don't I don't know, you have to ask the biggest talmidei chachamim. I don't know whether that ever ends. I don't know whether that ever ends. I don't know whether you know whether for the biggest gedolim, mista'ma it never ends. mista'ma there's always more depth and more dimensions to the sugya for the simple reason, why is it like that? Because if you just compare who we are to Ravina, to Rav Ashi, to Rabbeinu HaKadosh, so there's no way. I think they tell the story about about the Gaon, that someone once came to him with some hundred kashyas, and the Gaon spoke for two minutes or however many minutes it was, and the person said, but you only answered three of my questions. So the Gaon repeated verbatim what he had said, so the person said, okay, so I missed it, I hear, so now you only answered seven of my questions. And it kept on going again and again and every time the Gaon just repeated verbatim what he had said, until the person ultimately saw that the Gaon had answered all his questions. Why? So the answer is you just can't, where who we are, the Gaon is who he was, so how can it be that in one hearing, in one reading, so we're gonna appreciate all the nuances, all the depth? So the truth is chazara is never purely chazara in any way. Again, one doesn't need this to feel the absolute need for the chazara, what we said before in terms of the yediyah is sufficient, but aliba d'emes, chazara is never purely, is never purely chazara. And then sort of a third perspective is the combination of the first two perspectives, that if one makes a kinyan on that which he's learnt, so then when you learn other sugyas, your understanding of them will be deeper and will be enriched because of the other chelkei HaTorah and the yediyas and the havana that you bring to bear on the sugya. The difference between the Vilna Gaon and us is not that we know Daf Beis in Berachos and he knows בבלי ירושלמי תוספתא וכולי וכולי. No, the difference is also in Daf Beis in Berachos. So it's not just, so I know one daf and he knows however many dapim there are in בבלי ירושלמי וכולי וכולי. No, because ultimately what associations you have, what context you have, what lens you're able to view that daf with, and to be able to, the more a person solidifies and concretizes and the Talmudo Beyado, so then the deeper will be his havana in other, other sugyos. And finally, the other thing which happens through chazara, which I don't know that it happens otherwise, the bond that a person forms with divrei Torah. משל למה הדבר דומה: let's say you're a substitute preschool teacher. You live in a community where there are many many schools and you're on their list. All the schools call you when one of the regular moros is out sick, and practically it translates into you work every day, but you work in a different gan every day. Or you can be kavua in one place and be working with the same children day in, day out. So the kesher that's created obviously is in the first case—yeah, there is a kesher to children in general, to little children in general—but there's something very different when you have the repetition and the reinforcement and the constant interaction with the same child, with the same children day in, day out. And there's a certain kesher and a certain ahavas haTorah which is generated by again not just learning all the time but learning the same sugya one, two, three, four, five times. There's a certain bond, a certain ahava that's generated which again there will be a bond and there will be an ahava just learning all the time. But the fact that sugya after sugya so a person goes through that sugya again and again, it creates as in the mashal a different and deeper type of bond, of connection, and of ahavas haTorah. So hopefully we should all be able to learn and chazer and ללמוד וללמד לשמור ולעשות ולקיים.