Learning Torah

How much I envy the men sometimes, that can put aside their time for Torah and organize their entire daily schedule around the real priorities in life. A man may need to work a lot to bring money home and when possible, to take a break when learning with a chevruta and davening.

As a woman, there are always priorities that need to be fixed, children getting sick over night, unexpected guests for Shabbos, shopping and domestic chores. Maybe your chavruta is going through the some problems and at the end of the week, you might discover that besides the name of the parasha - that is written in the calendar anyway - and some vague memories from the old school time, you don't know too much and you skipped again the proper learning. 

I am trying to constantly learn more or less regularly for years. I am also working, but from home and taking care of a complex household and even dare sometimes to have a limited social life. Recently, I decided to offer help to my shul, because I felt compelled to help people that did so much for me and my family in the last years and especially months. A couple of weeks ago I realized how my Torah learning is decreasing and started to feel not only embarrassed, but equally scared that my already superficial knowledge will soon dissipate without constant new fresh learning.

On fasting days, the lack of water makes me suffer physically. Torah is considered our spiritual water.

While struggling with my lack of strength to continue with at least one serious hour of learning per day, I realized how different is this learning from all the others. In the case of history, or literature or even for a foreign language, there will always be a limit beyond which one can consider him or herself an 'expert', after spending a considerable amount of time immersed in study. In the case of Torah, there is a permanent duty to keep ourself busy with its learning because the immensity of knowledge is infinite for the human mind and the lack of continuity leads to a considerable diminishing of the learning itself. 

And G-d knows how much I need this water!