A while back the Hillel rabbi decided the next step in my Jewish education was to find someone to learn Torah with. Right after that one of my close friends suggested we study Torah together. Perfect! We started learning together a few weeks ago and it is honestly my new favorite pastime. The friend I learn with has studied at Pardes in Israel so he's basically a Torah scholar (jokes). But he is experienced and has a good approach that really works for me.
We take turns reading through the parsha out loud: he reads from the Artscroll translation and I read from the JPS translation. Neither of us really knows Hebrew so the different translations help us understand what may or may not be going on in the original text. We note tense changes, repetition of words, and other oddities to decipher what is really going on in the portion.
It takes about 2 and a half hours for us to learn the whole parsha, and that two and a half hours is usually the highlight of my week. We discuss theology, history, rhetoric, math, evolution, personal experiences and more as a result of just a few chapters in the Torah. It is incredible. After our sessions, I swear, I literally feel my mind expand. I think I expected Torah study to be cumbersome, like analyzing Shakespeare for an English class, but it isn't. It's uplifting. It relieves pressure from life somehow, rather than adding. This is what it means that the Torah is a gift.
I don't have much else to say except that Torah study has been the most meaningful addition to my Jewish experience. Every week when we conclude I look forward to the next session and wonder what will happen next. It makes me want to learn more and more. It truly is a driving force in my progression of a full Jewish identity.
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