Parshat VaEtchanan
Despite its centrality to a man’s Jewish life, I believe many of us do not know basics of the mitzvah of Talmud Torah, commonly translated as Torah study. (It is, increasingly, also important or central to many women’s religious lives; why women were not obligated in this mitzvah, the derivation of the idea, what the Gemara and later authorities thought/think of women’s learning, is all too involved to discuss here; I have discussed it on other occasions, such as in my book, We’re Missing the Point).
Let’s see what Rambam and Sefer HaChinukh teach us about it.
Rambam’s Short Version
Rambam’s Obligation Eleven requires us to learn chokhmat ha-Torah, the wisdom of the Torah, and to teach it, the whole process called Talmud Torah, presented in the verse in Shema, ve-shinantam le-vanekha, you shall teach it to your children. Note, first, the mitzvah is about study and teaching, not just study, and the teaching is to your children, those who will take our place in the world when we are gone.
Rambam includes Sifrei’s comment that banekha, your sons, really means all students, as students of prophecy were called benei ha-nevi’im. Sifrei also said ve-shinantam implies thorough knowledge, to be able to answer readily when someone asks you a question. Rambam includes that here, too, as well as reference to the Gemara’s many calls for us to involve ourselves with Torah always.
Rambam’s chosen citations—he does not intend Sefer HaMitzvot to be a comprehensive review of a mitzvah—tell us how he understood the mitzvah. Today, in my experience, many of us are sure the mitzvah is to learn Torah, when we can, what appeals to us. Rambam thought tradition told us the mitzvah was to learn as much as we possibly can, with a minimum standard, that we are supposed to—all of us, not just great figures—have fluent knowledge of the written Torah.
The Wisdom of the Torah, Sefer HaChinukh Style
Sefer HaChinukh 419 of course echoes Rambam’s definition, with enlightening additions. He says “chokhmat ha-Torah” means how to perform the mitzvot, avoid what Hashem told us not to do. That might sound like he was a strict constructionist of sorts, the sum total of the Torah’s wisdom consists of halakha, what to do and what not to do.
Except in his reason for the mitzvah, he says it is well known that study allows a person to know God’s ways, without which the person has no understanding of the world and is akin to an animal. [Talmud Torah aside, he has just said a mouthful worth pondering: even if we assume he was exaggerating, there is an important extent to which Jewish tradition—including Rambam, that rationalist—thought complete ignorance of God meant the person was missing an essential element of being human. Part of what separates us from the animals is our relationship with God, and without one...enough said.]
Unless we think technical halakha is a sufficient guide to God’s Ways, I think Sefer HaChinukh is signaling that the wisdom of the Torah is not fully covered by what we would call halakha. [Of course, he may have thought halakha referred to all mitzvot, including such expansive ones as loving and fearing God, emulating God’s Attributes, and the like. While those have less exact rules, they, too, might be thought of as halakha.
Digression for a story, skippable if you just want the mitzvah: I once convinced a school to teach Sefer HaChinukh as its halakha curriculum, expose the students to thirty-forty mitzvot a year, with basic halakhic rules, instead of just studying one topic like tefilla or kashrut. In the middle of the year, I checked in with a teacher as to how it was going, and he said he didn’t like it. I asked why, and he said, “this isn’t halakha, it’s hashkafa (Jewish thought).” He was teaching the mitzvah of kibbud av va-em, caring for parents.]
Some Laws of Learning
The laws Sefer HaChinukh shares say much about how to view the mitzvah, too. Sukka 42a tells us a father should start teaching his sons as soon as they can talk, make Devarim 33;4, Tora tziva lanu Moshe, and the first line of Shema, among their first words. From there, the process goes gently until the age of six or seven, depending on the child, at which point he is brought to school (as Sefer HaChinukh has it, but watch where he goes from here). He warns against burdening the child before he has the strength for it.
Arukh HaShulchan Yoreh De’ah 245;2 thinks the child completes learning how to talk in his fifth year, making it a good time to start to introduce verses into the child’s lexicon. He thinks Avot’s idea of ben chamesh la-mikra, at five to study Torah, means as the child grows to be five. Bringing him to school at ben shesh, a child of six, is for Arukh HaShulchan actually what we call five.
Once he does have the physical strength, we are to place the yoke of Torah on the child, make him drink and eat it, learn as much of it as possible. He cites Kiddushin 30a’s story of Zevulun b. Dan, whose grandfather taught him all of Torah, Written, Oral, Midrashic, and more.
Not a Burden, Not to Take Lightly
[We have to be careful with phrases like “as much as possible.” Some have taken it too much as a purely physical issue, make children who are not cut out for it spends hours and hours in an endeavor they are not ready for emotionally or spiritually, with disastrous consequences. On the other hand, possibly as many parents and schools err in the other direction, let their students off with much less Torah study than they could engage with productively.
At a different school than the one I referred to earlier, I once suggested not letting students take
