In Western culture, we are accustomed to considering learning as a means to an end, especially as adults. We learn a skill to get a better job, or a language because we plan to travel somewhere. Rarely do we talk about learning for its own sake, for no outside purpose other than the pure joy of it.

The Rabbis of the Talmud, on the other hand, while they acknowledged the importance of learning in order to teach, were keenly aware of the importance of learning “Torah lishma”, Torah for its own sake. They warned against using learning (which is what Torah means, literally) as a spade to dig with (Pirkei Avot 4:5) – in other words, purely for utilitarian reasons.

So what’s the big deal about learning for its own sake?

If you watch young children learn something of their own volition, you can’t miss the joy in the process – the bubbling curiosity, the persistence in the face of frustration, and then the triumph of success. There is nothing quite like that feeling, and we don’t appreciate it enough.

It’s something that good schools encourage, especially in elementary school, but certainly by high school most learning seems to have become a spade to dig with, rather than a joy. How will taking this class affect our future? Can we get into post-secondary education with it? And then, will our courses enable us to get a good job?

Being able to support ourselves and our families is important, of course. But is that all there is to life? What about joy and beauty and doing things just because? 

It’s not really encouraged. I remember my uncle taking up the piano in his fifties, to the bemused disapproval of his sisters-in-law. What was the point of a middle-aged architect working his way through a booklet entitled “Teaching Little Fingers to Play”? The fact that I even remember that shows how it was spoken of in the family – this was in the early 1970s. 

Thankfully, my uncle was impervious to their scorn. It gave him deep satisfaction to be able to play simple tunes. He was not interested in becoming a concert pianist, or indeed a “pianist” at all. He just wanted to enjoy playing the piano, and he did.

I am privileged to be able to emulate him, not with the piano (maybe someday!), but with Talmud. It gives me so much joy to dig into it, to understand it deeply, and to share that joy with others.

What do you learn, just because it brings you joy? If you’ve lost that, what will you do to bring it back?

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