We each have our own private quests, those goals we tried — or keep trying — to achieve. As we struggle and strive, the process becomes its own destination

Project Coordinator: Rachel Bachrach | Digital Artwork: Meital Ashkenazi

ArtScroll’s Eruvin 2 sits on my shelf, the burgundy placeholder marking two days behind today’s daf. That’s where I’m up to. I’ve started daf yomi four times before over the last decade. This is my fifth attempt.

Most evenings I set myself up at the dining room table with a herbal tea, usually peppermint with one Stevia. I open the Gemara and turn on Rabbi Zecharia Resnik’s shiur. The tea is piping hot and cools off as the shiur progresses. The sweet dregs at the bottom are my reward when the shiur is complete.

My old yeshivah self would have scorned this effort. Daf Yomi app and a tea? A herbal tea?

I studied in yeshivah for ten years after high school, the last five years in BMG of Lakewood. The decade of learning was intense. I wasn’t the first one in the beis midrash or the last one out, but I was definitely a serious student. Lomdus was not my thing, but learning was. Multilevel abstract reasoning didn’t come naturally, but diligence and perseverance came easily, and I held my own.

After Lakewood there were a few years in an out-of-town kollel, and then I went to work. I opened a business that consumed all my time, energy, and headspace.

I fell out of learning for a few years.

After that, learning became difficult for me. Very difficult. Back in Lakewood, I had completed Shas, some b’iyun, mostly bekius, and had learned it well. But after a few years of work, with pressure, stress, and unrelenting problems following me from morning till night, I could no longer concentrate on a sugya. I was trying to learn, but it wasn’t the same.