How to Achieve Success, Simchah, and Satisfaction in Your Learning—Guaranteed

Peretz Baruch Eichler

Do you feel a lack of satisfaction and simchah in your learning due to a lack of comprehension of the sugya?

Do you feel that you quickly forget what you are learning?

Do you feel that even if you review your learning, when you come back to look at the daf again, it’s as if you are beginning it for the first time?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, the Shas Chaburah Webinar is for you.

The importance of talmud Torah and being kove’a ittim laTorah is something that anyone who learns the daf is well aware of. A significant aspect of talmud Torah is focusing on the simchah and achieving the satisfaction that one’s learning can bring him if he learns, reviews, and remembers what he learned.

That’s where the Shas Chaburah webinar and its program come in. They will take your learning experience from ordinary to extraordinary.

Rabbi Sender Dolgin puts it this way:

Many of us attend a daily shiur or learn with a chavrusa with great self-sacrifice. At the same time, many of us feel a lack of comprehension and retention, which robs us of the ability to feel the simchah that our learning should be giving us. Shas Chaburah was created to give direction and purpose so that a person can experience simchah with each day’s learning. This can be accomplished by following two simple steps:

1. Every day, one learns new material and reviews what he learned yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, three months ago, and last year. By moving forward and reviewing the past, one will feel a simchah with each chazarah as a new piece of Gemara or a Rashi or a Tosfos becomes clarified. Eventually, all the pieces will come together, and the idea of forgetting a gemara will become a thing of the past.
2. A person should have a rebbi or a Schottenstein or ArtScroll to teach him the relevant gemara and the relevant Rashi or Tosfos needed for pshat. However, it must be emphasized that we are not trying to know the gemara the first time or the second time; rather, we are trying to become familiar with the gemara, and with future chazaros, the clarity will come.

Rabbi Eytan Kobre, a proponent of Daf Yomi, says:

I would like to share some thoughts about my experience with Shas Chaburah, Rabbi Dolgin’s program. It’s a program based on cycles at various intervals of review, based on how human memory works and how we retain what we have learned. I began to see that as I went through those cycles, I would revisit a gemara that I hadn’t seen in many months, and all of a sudden, it was coming back to me. There was a familiarity, because I had been through this gemara two or three times, and even though I hadn’t made a specific attempt to retain the information, simply through the process of review at those intervals it was coming back to me.

In addition to the fact that I am able to actually remember what I have learned, I find that it’s a way to be suffused with Torah. It’s almost like Torah is enveloping you. I have never had that experience before in other programs that I have tried.

What I find in Shas Chaburah is that it builds to a point where each day, I am learning five blatt in different places in a masechta or sometimes in two masechtas at once. It could be a daf a day; it could be an amud a day; perhaps it could be even less than an amud a day. The beauty of the program is that it’s just a keili, a vessel, and you put into it what you are able to, given who you are and what your life looks like. But what it does is, it gives you the ability to feel good about your learning because you remember what you have learned; you retain it.

All I can say to people who either have gone through Shas with Daf Yomi or are trying it for the first time is, give a serious look at Shas Chaburah as a way that you can really feel good about your learning, feel good about yourself, and make the most productive use of your time so you are able to really grow in Torah.

Rabbi Pinchas Kugielsky is a successful businessman who utilizes the program to go through Shas on a regular basis. Here’s what he has to say:

So I was always chazering Torah; my whole life I was chazering. But I never maintained it past a few months. But now, baruch Hashem with this program, you remember gemaras that you learned years and years ago because you’re continuously chazering every gemara you learn. It’s very, very worthwhile, and it’s a tremendous investment in your learning.

Rav Yitzchok Sorotzkin lauds the program and the value of chazarah in general:

I remember when I was a bachur in yeshivah, there was a big dagesh on chazarah. This was the way it was done in those days; there was a dagesh on covering ground and a dagesh of chazarah. Slowly, that petered out.

I am familiar with Rabbi Sender Dolgin’s program, and it’s an excellent program. Maybe it’s hard at the beginning, maybe you’ll think it’s too difficult, [but] you have to shteig into it. That’s the way everybody who grew did it—they worked slowly, and they got to a level in which the more you learn, the more you get siyata d’Shmaya and the easier it gets for you. The Ribono Shel Olam will give everybody siyata d’Shmaya to be matzliach and to grow and to be able to retain and to chazer. You don’t even realize how much you really can do because you tend to believe that you don’t have those kochos, but the Ribono Shel Olam will help you to be able to accomplish if you really want it badly and undertake to do it.

Chezky Friedman, a bachur in BMG, shares:

It’s an unbelievable program—every day, nach an amud, nach a blatt, nach a Rashi, with clarity and geshmak. There is no pressure; you are always coming back to it again. It’s enjoyable, geshmak, a breath of fresh air. With this program you walk out with such a geshmak and such a sipuk. It’s the drive that keeps me going, and anyone who could do it: come along, join. You won’t regret it.

Rav Chanina Brudny, rosh yeshivah of Yeshiva Gedolah Tiferes Yaakov Yitzchak, says:

The bachurim from the yeshivah who joined Shas Chaburah have had their lives changed completely. Shas Chaburah changed them as people. And that is because Shas Chaburah gives them achrayus in learning. It gives them clarity in learning. It gives them simchas hachaim, simchas haTorah. And that completely changed them. This is on off-Shabbosim and during bein hazmanim as well. Every single day, they have chiyuvim to learn, they have bletter to learn. These bachurim have already finished close to 700, 800 blatt in the last year—chazarah and chazarah and chazarah, just getting something klar.

Mendy Freilich and a group of his friendsat Yeshiva Gedoloh Tiferes Yaakov Yitzchak are achieving extraordinary new levels of limud haTorah via the Shas Chaburah review program. Here’s what Mendy has to say:

Coming out of first-year beis medrash, I really wanted to finish a masechta. I thought about it for a long time, and I realized that what would really push me would be if I’d decide to finish Bava Kama 10 times. The problem was that two or three months in, I started realizing that I was forgetting what I’d learned in the beginning of the zman. I was losing the feeling of satisfaction of being koneh a masechta because I was already forgetting what I learned originally, and I was a little bit down.

Hashem sent me one of my rebbe’im, Rabbi Yoffee, and he put his arm over my shoulder and said, “Mendy, what’s going on?”

“Rebbi, I wanted to finish a masechta ten times, but I’m up to lamed-beis, and I’m already forgetting what I learned at the beginning.”

“Mendy,” he said, “I actually know a program called Shas Chabura.” And he explained to me how it works, the feeling of satisfaction that you have of being koneh gemaras by constantly chazering in a geshmake way.

It’s really incredible. It gave me such chizzuk. And that’s what allowed me to finish Bava Kama 10 times. Any time you open a Gemara and someone asks you a question from that Gemara, you have seen it seven to eight to nine to 10 times; it’s a really satisfying feeling.

When I made my siyum on Bava Kama after finishing it 10 times, I felt like a different person. I felt like a new being.

I’m 20 years old now, and my goal is to continue for another 11 years and finish Shas when I’m 31. And I think it’ll be seven times.

Mendy’s friend Shuey Grossman has this to say:

I will never forget the night Mendy made the siyum. I still remember, I walked in from the lunchroom, and Mendy walked out of the beis medrash. To say his face was shining would be an understatement. It gave me such a push and a drive to see Mendy, someone who is just like any other guy but on a whole different level, glowing, shining. His father got up, and he was so proud. The roshei yeshivah got up and spoke—“Look at what Mendy did.” The thought went through my mind that maybe I could also do that. And I made a kabbalah at that siyum. That siyum has changed my life because it gave me this program. And it will do the same for you.

People look for enjoyment. And people are always searching for happiness. People spend hundreds, thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, to try to get a perfect vacation, to try to relax, to enjoy life just a little bit more. People can buy life for $34.99—an ArtScroll Gemara. It didn’t just change my life, it gave me a new one.

Here’s what Yosef Schorr has to say:

One of the greatest things for me is when I see a gemara that quotes a gemara I learned a month ago. Now that I do Shas Chabura, when I come home for bein hazmanim, when I come home for an off-Shabbos, every day I go out to the beis medrash to learn for an hour and a half, and my parents look and they’re thinking, Wow, look how great he is, look how awesome he is, he’s going out to learn. Even in the beis medrash, you run in with multiple Gemaras, and everyone is thinking, What is this guy doing?

If anyone asks me if they should take on Shas Chaburah, I would tell them—100 percent. If you have the time, if you don’t have the time—you have got to do it.

Here’s what Shloimy Weinstock’s take:

I was introduced to the program by my rebbi Rabbi Baruch Yoffee, who told me, “You’re learning so well, but there is so much more you can be doing. You’re learning, but are you remembering what you are learning?”

And I thought, No, I don’t. I am putting in the hours, I’m learning first seder, second seder, but I’m just not retaining it.

He pulled out the pamphlet and said, “This is the program—you learn an amud, you chazer an amud, and it keeps on going.”

Once I made the decision to start the program, I said, “I’ll make the time.” And so I did—I started waking up before Shacharis and doing the program then. I can say baruch Hashem that I have not missed a single day so far. I’m almost six months into the program—that includes summer zman, two bein hazmanims of not going to sleep before finishing the program, a bein hazmanim of preparing for Yom Tov—it doesn’t matter, because before you go to bed you make sure that you filled in that check. For Shas Chaburah, you end up finding the time. It’s not a pressure that you feel that you have to finish; you want to finish. You want to end up learning that seder. Whether you find the time bein hasedarim, during the break, after work—you end up finding the time.

Shas Chaburah literally changes people’s lives.

Rabbi Sender Dolgin reflects:

I am zocheh to be able to see every blatt in Shas once a year. I feel like I haven’t seen my best friend in a year. I give him a shalom aleichem; I can remember that last year the gemara was like Greek and Chinese, but now the lights are on. And I say the word “unbelievable” many times a day. I come here to the beis medrash not because I have to, but because there is nothing in the world that I would rather do than sit with my Abaya and my Rava. This is transformational.

My tefillah is that everybody should feel this simchas haTorah. And with this, all the brachos that the Torah guarantees will come, and with this we’ll bring Mashiach tzidkeinu.

For more information on Shas Chabura and to get a free Talmudo B’yado booklet, call 732-447-4201 or visit shaschabura.org.

The Shas Chaburah webinar and podcast with a brief introduction can be seen by going to shaschaburah.org or torahanytime.com.

To hear the webinar by phone, call 718-298-2077, then press 9 and 275994#.

To hear the podcast by phone, call 718-298-7077, then press 9 and 278243.

If you are an app user, you can sign up for the app by going to the app store Google Play.

Start today and hatzlachah rabbah!