All of it, almost ten years of learning, paled in comparison to the excruciating difficulty of learning the last five dapim

As told to Rivka Streicher

Ten years ago, I was 20 years old, leaving Eretz Yisrael and the hallowed walls of yeshivah, headed for college and then the corporate world.

The world was open for me, and I knew the coming years would mark a succession of changes in my life, professionally and personally; I also knew I had to hold on to Torah, keep the beis medrash inside. I was only 20, wet behind the ears, but I made myself a goal then and there: I would finish Shas in the years to come.

I started college and started ploughing through Shas alongside it. For the first three years — through college, through my first job in an accounting firm — I learned with chavrusas early each morning.

I got married and soon the kids started coming. I was working full time. I had to be at work early, daven earlier, and learn even earlier; it didn’t work anymore to learn with a chavrusa. I’d wake up at 4 a.m. and sit down to learn at home on my own.

The house was quiet and calm in those early morning hours, and I could immerse myself in the Gemara. I was covering ground, early morning by early morning, the commitment I’d made back then seeing me through.

It wasn’t easy. There were long work days that often spilled into evenings. Come tax season, I’d be up to my eyeballs in work. Then the kids  were born — we have five, all girls — and sometimes it was impossible to wake up early in the morning after the baby had been screaming through the night. And then just the struggle to understand the Gemara…

But all of it, almost ten years of learning, paled in comparison to the excruciating difficulty of learning the last five dapim, while sitting in a small, airless room high above the city of New York, beside my small, whimpering daughter, Tehilla.

Ten years. Ten years. They’d been the most happening years of my life, and somehow, alongside it all, I’d managed to get through Shas. I was about to celebrate my very own siyum haShas.

We’d set a date a few weeks before for July 24, 2022.

It was the beginning of July and I should’ve been feeling euphoric at what I was about to accomplish, but instead I was feeling ambivalent.

Had I achieved what I set out to? I asked myself. Yes, I’d covered all of Shas, I’d put in intense work, countless hours, but still, I felt like something was lacking. Had I done it right? I wasn’t feeling the accomplishment, the excitement. I was feeling tired, dulled, harping on what hadn’t gone right.

I had to rid myself of those feelings. I’d accomplished something huge and these thoughts were hindering me from accessing the simchah of my achievement.

I suddenly had the idea to write a letter to my 20-year-old self, to that guileless young boy who’d made an incredible commitment, who didn’t even know what a visionary he was.

I sat down with a pen and paper and wrote and wrote. What emerged was a poem, a paean to my 20-year-old self.