“I learned in the Yeshiva of Staten Island,” says Rabbi Newman, whose father, Rav Moshe Boruch Newman, is a longtime rebbi there, “and I know what worked for me — inspiring stories from gedolim of yesteryear and regular bechinos. We’d get tested every month, after every ten blatt, at the end of the zeman, and we even were awarded cash prizes — it was great. But here’s the thing: If the engine is running, that is, if a bochur is motivated, if he can make a leining and the Gemara talks to him, then all these things are wonderful. Bechinos create accountability, they rev the engine.

“But no bechinah or incentive in the world is going to truly start a bochur’s engine if it’s not already running. It’s a no-win situation: If a boy doesn’t do well on the test, he’ll feel hopeless; if he does well, the effort invested was probably just enough to get through the bechinah, but it won’t propel him forward.”

Sweetening the Deal

When he began teaching eight years ago, Rabbi Newman was doing it the way everyone else did, with regular bechinos and incentives that keep the pressure up and the boys in line. But it wasn’t working, except perhaps for the very best boys in the class; the others had tuned out to varying degrees. Even for the top talmidim, Reb Dovid realized, it simply didn’t make sense that something as delectable as Torah learning should need the element of compulsion that bechinos and prizes represent. We don’t pressure kids to eat ice cream, do we?

And so Reb Dovid set out to find a way to allow the Torah’s natural power to work its effects, without the need for external pressure, whether in the form of bechinos or incentives. This eventually became a program called V’haarev Na, which takes its name, of course, from the first words of the tefillah we recite each morning asking Hashem to make His Torah sweet b’finu, in our mouths. Reb Dovid explains that “sure, Torah is sweet. But only if the Gemara is b’finu, only if we can smoothly read and understand the flow of the shakla v’tarya, the Gemara’s give-and-take, can we develop the taste buds in our mouths to savor that sweetness.”

How, then, can a person learn in such a way that when he goes through a piece of Gemara, the Gemara also goes through him? The answer isn’t Reb Dovid’s, but one that Chazal stress repeatedly: “Chazarah, chazarah, chazarah… and then? Chazarah!” Those were the very words that Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel ztz”l said to Reb Dovid’s chaver, Rabbi Eliyahu Koval, when the latter brought some of his talmidim to the unforgettable Mirrer rosh yeshivah to ask for a brachah for ahavas haTorah.

Constant review is what puts the Gemara b’finu, in the talmid’s mouth. Once he knows it and can read smoothly down the page without getting stuck, his reviews take an ever shorter amount of time. He begins to feel he owns the daf, and the one after that, until he can honestly say he owns a masechta. The cycle is self-perpetuating: Constant review leads to mastery of the Gemara and subsequent feelings of accomplishment, which lead, in turn, to yet further review. Reb Dovid says that “some of my bochurim have these words written on the first page of their Gemaras: ‘You need to chazer in order to chazer.’ What does that mean? That you need to know the Gemara clearly and once you do, you can open a Gemara and it’s talking to you, which is so geshmak. And the better you know it, the more geshmak it is to review it again.”

Fast-forward six years, and what began with one high school class has now blossomed into an integral part of the everyday curriculum in close to 25 mesivtas, from Monsey to Far Rockaway, from Atlanta to Denver to Toronto, with more joining every year. Rav Mordechai Wolmark, rosh yeshivah of Monsey’s Yeshiva Shaarei Torah, where Reb Dovid teaches, says that V’haarev Na’s great success convinced him to incorporate, this coming year, elements of the program in every grade and throughout the entire curriculum, including the iyun shiurim. “Today’s nisyonos are very different from those of years past, and waiting for boys to develop a geshmak by appreciating the depth of Torah often doesn’t work the way it did 20 years ago. I’m excited to do this because it will give them the geshmak now when they need it.”

You Can Own It In Rabbi Newman’s class, the critical first day of the zeman is a virtual Yom Tov, the beginning of an exhilarating journey toward owning a masechta. There’s a big kiddush, and each student gets a high-end Cross pencil set and a Gemara, both bearing his name. He says it makes the boys realize he must have something valuable to sell.

“I tell them they don’t have to board my train, but if they want to, it means chazering three times a day, and on their own time. And believe me, they do. On the bus, during lunch or supper, they find the 20 minutes it takes to chazer half an amud three times.”

To make it possible for his boys to gain ownership of what they’ve learned, Reb Dovid carefully chooses from among a group of masechtos — Berachos, Succah, Sotah, Taanis, Beitzah, to name some of them. The boys know they’re on their way toward conquering an entire tractate, so quiet reigns in the classroom, with no one wanting to miss a line or even a word, and certainly not an entire day. One bochur, Reb Dovid recalls, underwent hernia surgery that ended a half hour before shiur was to begin. He called in from the hospital, not wanting to miss even one day of Gemara.

There’s a physically tangible component to the ownership idea, too. During his shiur prep, Reb Dovid is busy figuring out ways to make the Gemara easier to understand. He comes up with different footnotes for the bochurim to write into their Gemaras, all in order to make the shakla v’tarya, a seemingly indecipherable code of unpunctuated and unvowelized Aramaic and Hebrew, reviewable by the bochurim on their own.

“The biggest key in owning a masechta is to write in your Gemara and turn it into something that reads back to you,” Reb Dovid explains. “When we learned Taanis, we had, by one bochur’s count, 1,549 footnotes. In Succah, it was 2,448. It creates such an attachment to their Gemaras that I overheard one boy say to another, ‘We need life insurance on this Gemara.’ ”

One rebbi told his boys on the first day, “Write in your Gemara and it will become so much a part of you that you won’t want to part with it.” Turning to one boy, he said, “I’ll prove it to you — here, take this hundred dollar bill and go upstairs to Rabbi Newman’s shiur room. Go around the room and see if anyone will sell you his Gemara for a hundred bucks.” Not one guy went for it.

Reb Dovid is passionate about the idea that when you own something, when it’s part of you, there’s no limit to what you’ll do for it. With all the stress on chazarah, he tries hard not to emphasize quantity, which would send the wrong message. Instead, the focus is on quality and effort. He writes down every instance he sees of mesirus nefesh by a bochur, and at the end-of-year siyum, talks about how each bochur was moser nefesh over the past year.

“Before bein hazmanim,” says Rabbi Newman, “everyone in my shiur makes a kabbalah about how much they’re going to chazer. This year, there were 20 bochurim in the shiur and when they came back, we tallied up how much they had chazered and it came out to an astounding 1,975 blatt. I was very happy, of course, but I turned to them and said, ‘Rabbosai, the number is beautiful, but I want to know when it was hard.’ I went around the shiur room. One boy was on his way to Eretz Yisrael and at 3 a.m. there was an hour stopover in Madrid, so he sat down in the terminal and spent that hour chazering Gemara. Another bochur had committed to chazer two blatt a day, morning and night. After the Pesach Seder, he remembered he hadn’t done his two blatt, so he went back downstairs to the dining room to do his two blatt.”

Not Your Standard Chasunah

The program’s growth has been exponential, but for Rabbi Newman, it’s never about the numbers, neither the number of mesivtas that are part of V’haarev Na, nor about how many blatt a bochur has learned. For Reb Dovid, what really matters is the quality of a bochur’s knowledge and how much of himself he has invested in his learning. The two essential questions are: First, does a boy have the gemara in der beiner, in the bones, and second, has he acquired an ownership interest in a masechta through tens of rounds of chazarah both in yeshivah and on his own time?

The answers that boys themselves give to those questions are captured on a video Reb Dovid recently produced, and they’re interspersed with scenes of dancing at a very unusual “chasunah” — replete with bentshers reading “In honor of the Chasunah between Yisroel and Avinu Shebashamayim” — that takes place each year in Monsey on the 7th of Nissan. That’s when alumni of V’haarev Na who have returned from Eretz Yisrael for bein hazmanim gather together for “retzufos” — i.e., four uninterrupted hours of learning the masechta Reb Dovid taught them, which they’ve been reviewing ever since, followed by a “chasunah” meal and dancing. For next year, Reb Dovid plans such a “chasunah” for well over 500 V’haarev Na talmidim.

When the video, titled V’haarev Na, appeared on a popular Jewish news site, it garnered 14,000 views in one week, along with hundreds of e-mails and phone calls from around the globe from people wanting to know how they or their children could become part of the program. A successful young Brooklyn businessman was so taken by the video that he’s now working with Reb Dovid and others to bring a similar program to the world of working balabatim. The new initiative, “Kinyan Hamasechta — Own the Masechta,” is set to launch after the summer.

“One of the bochurim you see dancing,” Reb Dovid shares, “came over to me with tears streaming down his face, and whispered, ‘The feeling I feel now, after learning four hours straight, I didn’t know there was such a feeling, such a simchas haTorah.’ Later that night, I got a text message from another boy: I just want to let Rebbi know that this past zeman was a life-changer for me. I always wanted to be part of the olam and know the taste of a good juicy piece of Gemara, but I was never encouraged to believe that I could know a Gemara in the bones. It makes me feel amazing when another bochur comes over to me to ask for help with a Gemara. It’s like my life is starting again, but this time with the love of Torah leading the way.”

Another boy on the video talks about Torah like a natural-born masmid, but, Reb Dovid confides, it wasn’t always quite that way. “The first day of the zeman, I always start off with such a bren, letting the boys know how much mesikus they’re going to get through Torah. So I was giving my whole pitch about how ‘you’re going to be koneh this masechta, chazering it over and over, you’re gonna live it, you’re gonna love it.’ Then I stopped and said, ‘I’m assuming everyone here wants to know a masechta. Does anyone here not want to know a masechta?’

“And then, one bochur stands up and says loudly, ‘Who cares about knowing a masechta?’ Wow, after that whole buildup, he had created such a rifyon, he just destroyed the spirit I had worked so hard to create. With all the geshmak and confidence I have in this program, I remember feeling really deflated.

“But let me just tell you, many weeks later, when we got up to daf zayin in Succah, there were eight different views of the Tannaim on the topic of diras kevah. So I said to the class, ‘Close your Gemaras and let’s see who can tell us the eight shitos.’ And that boy raised his hand and rattled them all off. The class got up and broke into a tantz right then and there — boy, did we make a matzav! Of course he had said, ‘Who cares about knowing a masechta,’ because at that point, in his mind, a masechta wasn’t geshmak, so who wants to do something that’s not geshmak? But when you really know it, when it’s in your bones, it’s geshmak.”

Rabbi Menachem Feifer, who teaches 11th grade at Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway, is one of the many mesivta rebbeim who’ve seen great success with V’haarev Na. “One student chazered Megillah three times over Shavuos, once the first night, once the second night and once over Shabbos, and all told, has finished it 40 times this year. A number of my boys have told me, ‘Rebbi, I’m going to finish this masechta 101 times. Imagine — to dream of finishing a masechta 101 times, it’s mind-boggling.”

One boy, continues Rabbi Feifer, is a huge sports fanatic. “After the Super Bowl, he came back to yeshivah and couldn’t stop talking about it, high-fiving everyone he saw. The next week, he ran a marathon in Miami for Chai Lifeline after training for months, and again he came back super-excited. Then we traveled to a Monsey yeshivah for our “retzufos” seder, and for nearly three hours, this boy didn’t pick his head up from the Gemara. When he finished, he told his chavrusa, ‘These were the sweetest hours of my life.’ I wanted to cry. I had seen how he looked after the Super Bowl and after the marathon, and yet this is what he said, not to me, but to his chavrusa. That’s not a story you can make up.”

Plowing Through

The results speak for themselves, but the challenge is how to create the initial momentum: We all know that when we really want something, we’re ready to be moser nefesh, the sky’s the limit. “If a bochur wants, we’re in business,” says Rabbi Newman. “But how do we get bochurim to want?”

At the very beginning, before one has the Gemara down pat, chazarah requires lots of self-sacrifice. It means concentrating, and plowing through the amud over and over. In a way it’s circular: In order to want, you need to feel the sweetness that comes from intense review. But in order to chazer, you need that self-sacrifice that only experiencing the mesikus haTorah makes possible. Simply put — how do we get someone to be moser nefesh for something whose sweetness he’s never yet tasted?

Reb Dovid finds the answer in an unlikely source: the circus elephant. What keeps this two 2,000-pound behemoth in its cage, instead of barreling through the bars to freedom? All the trainer needs is a rope around its leg, while the other end is tied to a peg in the ground. The trainer first ties that rope to its leg when the elephant is still young, weighing a mere 200 pounds. The elephant tugs with all its strength and, finding it impossible to break free at that point, it gives up. The belief that he’s incapable of pulling out the pegs stays with that elephant for life. Yet when, 20 years ago, a major fire raced through a circus, the elephants panicked over the approaching flames, pulled out the pegs and stampeded off the grounds.

Most of us, Reb Dovid observes, believe that we have limited abilities. “If we, as mechanchim, pull out the pegs for our boys with bechinos or incentives, we do them no favor. Our job is to light the fire, to bring the ‘aish haTorah’ alive so that the students themselves will pull out those pegs, and only then will they stay out.”

Rabbi Zev Freundlich, menahel of Mesivta Shaarei Arazim, observes that V’haarev Na manages to achieve “one of the most difficult things to do in chinuch — to change a bochur’s self-perception. Through what this program reveals to a boy about himself and his capabilities, it gives a boy a new role model — none other than himself. ” Small wonder, then, that Rabbi Yehuda Shick, menahel of Mesivta Yesodei Yisroel, refers to the program as accomplishing what the Kotzker Rebbe called the highest form of techiyas hameisim — bringing the living back to life.

Although the program focuses on quicker-paced learning, mechanchim say it helps the bochur’s success in his in-depth iyun seder as well. For the first time, boys know what it means to learn for an hour or two straight without distraction. And, Reb Dovid adds, “once they’ve tasted the mesikus, they want to take it to the next level. If you have a friend, you want to get to know him better, and if the Gemara has become your friend, you want to get to know it better, too. One bochur told me that having gone through Succah 20 times, his oneg Shabbos each week consists of going through one piece in the Steipler Gaon’s Kehillos Yaakov on Succah.”

Don’t Connect the Dots

Early in his chinuch career, when Rabbi Newman decided to dispense with the bechinos that he felt were an easy yet counterproductive way to enforce discipline and produce grades, he knew he needed to fill the resulting void. And he has, with an atmosphere of abundant love, excitement and chashivus haTorah, giving bochurim that push to jump on their rebbi’s chazarah train.

Reb Dovid believes he needs to put as much effort into moving the boys’ hearts as he does in stimulating their minds. “I need to constantly be thinking: What can I do today to show the bochurim they’re important to me and that I care about them?”

One of his talmidim had learned in Eretz Yisrael and then enrolled in college. “He told me, ‘Rebbi, I feel bad but I stopped chazering Sotah because I’m too dizzy to learn from a sefer while traveling to school in Manhattan. What should I do?’ I said, ‘Let me send you an MP3 player with Maseches Sotah on it.’ I sent it to his house and didn’t hear from him. On a frigid Friday night three weeks later, I’m learning in a shul next to my house in South Monsey and in walks this boy, who lives an hour’s walk away. I exclaimed, ‘What are you doing here?!’ He says, ‘I’m stuck on a Rashi in Sotah.’ I offered to bring him to my house for some hot tea and cholent, but he said he just couldn’t go to sleep until he had pshat in the Rashi. We learned for 15 minutes and he walked back home. Where does that come from? He knew that I cared.

“It’s a lot of little things: If a bochur leaves for the bathroom, I’ll continue writing in his Gemara for him so he won’t miss anything. If a boy isn’t there at the beginning of shiur, I’ll call him to find out where he is, and I won’t have to do it again that year because if he’s missing again, he’ll call me. I call parents as much as possible to give them nachas, and the boys will want to continue to live up to it.

“I take my own sons on a 24-hour overnight every summer. Why? No reason — we’re going, just like that. During the trip, I turn to my boys and I say, ‘What’s the kabbalah for this year?’ One year it was yehei Shmeih Rabba with kavanah, one year it was to be ma’avir sedra, one year to make asher yatzar while standing still. Imagine if I had said at the beginning of the year, ‘Whoever does yehei Shmeih Rabba, whoever is ma’avir sedra the whole year, we’re going to go on an overnight’… there’d be no overnight.

“The point is to show genuine love and not connect the dots. The boys know what their fathers want, they know what their rebbeim want, and they’ll connect the dots on their own. If we connect the dots for them and say ‘if you do this, we’ll do that,’ we lose them. Our job is to find ways to show we care, we that we believe in them.”

Every Thursday, Rabbi Newman makes a kiddush and the bochurim make commitments to how much each will chazer over Shabbos. One week, a talmid named Moishy said, “This Shabbos I can’t learn because I’m going camping and I won’t have electricity.” Reb Dovid went to Home Depot and bought a lantern for Moishy to take along. As it happened, the campsite had a generator and the lantern went unused; Moishy wanted to return the lantern to his rebbi, but Reb Dovid wouldn’t hear of it. That Purim, Monsey experienced a major blizzard and with it, a blackout. All was pitch-black — except for one home, where a bochur named Moishy sat and chazered that week’s Gemara by the light of a lantern.

Rabbi Newman has found that the best way to “start a bochur’s engine” is when a peer who’s been through V’Haarev Na can get up and say, “I was in your shoes and now, through chazarah, I’m loving and living Torah.” To that end, during the first part of the year, Reb Dovid calls up his alumni to deliver a 45-second message via speakerphone to his class, the gist of which is to put in the effort — because it’s worth it.

Once, says Rabbi Newman, the class called up a bochur learning in the Mir named Moshe Yehuda, as he was walking through Meah Shearim. Rabbi Newman told the class that his former student had chazered Berachos so many times he practically knew it by heart, but one of the boys didn’t believe it and went to get a Gemara. He opened it at random and asked Moshe Yehuda, “What’s on daf lamed beis, amud beis?” Moshe Yehuda didn’t miss a beat: “There are two dots in the middle of the amud, and the Gemara begins, ‘Arba’ah devarim tzerichim chizuk — Four things require ongoing chizuk, one of which is learning Torah.’ ” And, Moshe Yehuda added, “Is there a greater way to be mechazeik than through constant chazarah?”

“You can’t make stories like that one up,” Reb Dovid muses. And with his ever-growing record of success in turning a generation of bochurim on to Torah, he doesn’t have to.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 571)