Why is it important to study Gemara?

I don't understand what the rabbi answered in answer to the question.
The man asked why one studies, and the rabbi answered that there is value in the study itself. This is precisely the question: what is that value?

First, yes, I explained. I wrote that learning is devotion to God (see Nefesh HaChaim Shaar 4, and Batanya 54-5).
I will elaborate.
When you ask what the value is in act X, you assume that there is a more fundamental reason, Y, that explains it. And when I ask you what the value of Y is, and then I will keep asking all the time, where will it stop? Instead of being the most fundamental value that itself does not require an explanation. Incidentally, according to Leibowitz, this is the definition of a value (that has no explanation outside of it).
My argument is that learning Torah is the most fundamental value that explains other things. Therefore, it itself cannot have an explanation outside of it. God and Torah are one, and therefore learning Torah is devotion to God.

Sorry, I didn't understand again. You said that there is an explanation (devotion to the Torah) and that there is no explanation outside of it.
Are there two explanations here?
And if the value of Torah study is devotion, how is this achieved through study? This sounds like a rather mystical and vague explanation, and probably won't appeal to high school students. And the commandment of tefillin also leads to devotion to the Torah. So what is special about the Torah?

Studying Gemara is like preparing food. You invest time, work, and thought, and then the important part comes.

And some will explain that studying is preparation for birth. The fetus develops for 9 months, and then it comes out cooked.

Conclusion: If this doesn't work out for you, you should buy ready-made food or go to a surrogate mother.

Dedication, my brother - is the desire to understand the Creator and fulfill His commandments, and for this one must study His words.

I will give an example from morality. When you ask me what the value is in a human life, what should I answer? Or alternatively, what is the value in protecting the property of others? What I can say is that a human life is the most important moral level. This is not an explanation but a definition. I did not place the value of a human life on the value called morality. Morality is not a value but the axis on which values are measured.
The same is true for studying Torah. What I said is that it is adherence to it at the highest level. Adherence to it is the axis on which religious values are measured, and when I say that learning is the highest adherence to it, I said that it is the fundamental religious value, meaning that it cannot be placed on something outside of it.

In other words, God and His will (= the Torah) are one, and therefore studying Torah is adherence to it. There is no positioning of one value (studying Torah) over another (adherence to it). This is identity, not position.

This seems like a mystical explanation to you because you assume that devotion to God is an experience. But Nefa'ch explained that study is not a means to devotion, but rather is devotion itself. This is in contrast to Hasidism, which perceives devotion as a religious experience, and study is a means to experience devotion. As stated, in my system (following Nefa'ch) this is not an explanation, but rather identity. Therefore, there is no mysticism here. The logic is as follows: God = Torah (He and His will are one. It is the expression of Him and His will). Therefore, engaging in Torah = devotion to God.

I understand, thank you.
By the way, why are we sure that Talmud Torah has more value than the other mitzvot, not quantitatively because T”T is superior to all of them, but qualitatively (in Tefillin we are satisfied with the fact that it is the will of God and a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt, even if it does not remind anyone of anything, so why in Talmud Torah are we not satisfied that it is a mitzvah and that it will lead to knowledge of the halakha, which really seems to be the foundation of this mitzvah according to Ezra) Maybe because it is a mitzvah that we invest years in? Isn't it appropriate to update this approach and also slim it down? What is it based on?

Studying Torah is not a means to know Halacha or what to do. It is a value in itself. There is a lot of evidence for this. See Rashi at the beginning of my Laws, who distinguishes between doing mitzvot and studying in order to do the Torah work for itself. Another view is that women are obligated to bless the Torah (as the Shulchan Arbiter ruled), and the Maghrib and the Mishnah ask why they are obligated, since they are exempt from the mitzvot of studying Torah. And they explain that they are obligated to study the mitzvot that concern them. We see from this that the obligation to study the mitzvot that concern you is called being exempt from studying Torah.
The greatest evidence is a rebellious son and teacher, who, according to at least one conditional opinion, has never been and will never be, and yet is part of the mitzvot of studying Torah. See the article by R. Israel of Salant (in the collection of his articles published in the Dorot Library) called Law and Justice.

Well, then we will be content with the fact that it is a mitzvah of merit.

It is not a mitzvah from the 33rd. It is enough for us to fulfill the mitzvah in the morning and evening chapters (see Rosh Hashanah and in the commentary of Nedarim 7:1 and more). Everything beyond that is at most an existential mitzvah for Rosh Hashanah (and for Ren, the result of a sermon). Therefore, the mitzvah in this one is without special meaning, and it is precisely the essential matter that is important. See the end of my article on explanations:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%A1%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%9F-%D7%94%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%99/
See also the lesson filmed here:

Rabbi, it seems to me that this is a commandment from the Targum on the path of “know the God of your father and serve him with a complete heart and with a willing mind” and ”and cling to him”.

http://wikivort.co.il/view.php?vort=1454

And even if it is not included in the Torah, there is a reward for learning, as in: “And the great teacher said to me, “Learn Torah that leads to action”. So the reward for every mitzvah is included in the mitzvah itself, which he knew and kept. And here we actually run into a small problem that you are still going along with the one who says about the mitzvah of a rebellious son and a teacher who did not exist and was not created, but was required and received a reward, but from this it follows that you will not receive a reward because it will not lead to action because there is no such thing. And so on.

The Master said about all Torah study, not just the mitzvot: “It is necessary that every holy thing that you have learned, whether it is a mitzvah or a law, a law, the deeds of the ancestors, stories of the ancestors, proverbs, words of wisdom, the history of our ancestors, manners and etiquette.” Everything is within the scope of Torah study.

If I may add something from Professor Yehuda Leibs, winner of the Israel Prize for Acceptance:

“It is worth studying the Talmud

To everyone I love and who is interested in listening to my advice, I wholeheartedly recommend studying the Talmud. But not for the reasons already given on the site. Not because it will help you navigate our political and cultural world, nor for the sake of ‘imposing culture’ on it, because I do not like the concept/institution ‘culture’ at all, and I am not one of its ‘consumers’, and I am also a little anxious about what awaits the Talmud at the hands of that culture. The reason for the recommendation is not because the Talmud is a respected citizen in the ’Jewish bookcase’. I do not belong to the group of followers of that coffin either, and it resembles to me an ornate coffin, inside which they seek to place the Torah of Life, the Book of Books of the People of the Book, in the form of privileged organs bearing an official seal. I understand the hearts of those who are alarmed by the desire of educators to burden them with such a coffin, and for me the Talmud is not even a book in the coffin. Apparently, for centuries the Talmud lived and was created without being written down, residing entirely in the living minds of its creators and students, and this character of it is still evident in every page.
I recommend that the Talmud is amazing, and in my opinion there is nothing more beautiful and delightful than it, and in it one can find consolations in old age, the old age of the individual and the old age of the nation. This is immense wealth that is reserved for its owner's harm, and I use this advice not in the usual way but according to the biblical simple: wealth that adds to and supports a person even when the days of evil and old age come and move upon him, when it seems that he no longer knows what he is and what he will do in his world, as it is written: If your Torah had not been my amusement, then I would have been lost in my poverty (I once heard this from the Jerusalem poet Rivka Miriam, daughter of the Yiddish writer Leib Ruchman, who once found her father sobbing in tears. She asked: Father, what happened? And he answered her [and in Yiddish it sounds even sadder]: It suddenly occurred to me: Oh, what does the people of the land do in old age?!). The "owners" of that wealth are us, and there is no one left, this is the book in which our ancestors invested their lives. Many and vast numbers of Gentiles may study the Bible, and very few will connect with the Talmud, which is a wonderful thing (I wrote earlier "creation" and regretted it, in the name of a certain embalming that arises from the term) that has no equal or worse in the cultures of the world.
I cannot explain in advance the secret of the Talmud's charm; for that, one must taste it. And the truth is, I fear that even many of the veteran students will not understand what I am talking about, because they have become accustomed not to seeing the Talmud as something beautiful, but as a difficulty that must be overcome (a difficulty that, in my opinion, is created mainly by those who seek in it what is not in it), or, worse, as a hatchet to dig into: for the sole purpose of ruling on halakhic law or for the purpose of elaborating "methods" of thought, and so on. Furthermore. Sometimes it happens that those who do not recognize the reality of the magic in the simplicity of the Talmud even destroy it on purpose, by taking the simplicity out of the simple, and thus that magic is lost from the learner through them.
Regarding the essence of this magic in my opinion, I will nevertheless try to give a hint here: In the Talmud we hear the voice of wise and intelligent people, but also direct and primary (primitive in the sense of the word), who are directly connected to themselves, to their people, to their Torah, and to their God. They combine intellectual sophistication with a primitive directness that has no upper (or lower) than it. They speak in a simple and popular language, in the dialect spoken in a remote province of the Persian and Byzantine kingdoms (for us, this creates a certain difficulty), and say simply and directly the most intense and wonderful things, out of an enormous, but incidental and structured self-respect. In their words and personalities, Halacha and thought, legend, myth and morality, are intertwined together, to the point where it is almost impossible to separate the fields. It is true that the world of these people is often far from what is accepted today, but that is precisely why I find freedom and liberation in this study. Suddenly, other possibilities and other worlds beckon to a person, beyond the totalitarian wall of (post)modern pluralism.
Perhaps something of what I am saying can be understood with the help of the following famous example, which originates from the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Megillah, page 7, page 2: ‘Rava said, "One is obliged to eat the Purim meal until he does not know between the accursed Haman and the blessed Mordecai." Rava and Rabbi Zira served the Purim meal in Hedi Hadadi, Ibsom, and Rabbi Zira stood up and said to him, "Tomorrow I will give you my mercy and my life." For the year he said to him: I will eat the Purim meal in Hedi Hadadi. He said to him: Not at every hour and hour, a miracle occurs.
Translation: ‘Rava said: A person must get drunk on Purim until he cannot distinguish between the cursed Haman and the blessed Mordecai. Rava and Rabbi Zira had a Purim feast together, they got drunk, Rabbi got up, and slaughtered Rabbi Zira. The next day he asked for mercy on him and revived him. The following year he said to him: Come, my friend, and let us have a Purim feast together. He said to him: Not at every hour and hour does a miracle occur.
Therefore, his golden tongue

Continuing with the above regarding the obligation of Torah study for women, I came across a source in my book that implies that there is an obligation of Torah study for women from the commandment of “work with all your heart”:
In the book's suggestion: “‘And work with all your heart’. Can it really be work?”, a suggestion that is rejected and in return comes two other alternatives: “Work with him – it is Talmud”, “Work with him – it is prayer”.

I didn't understand the evidence. How do you see that there is an obligation on women? You see here that there is an obligation to study beyond the mitzvah of Talmud Torah. That's right. Do you assume that in this mitzvah women are certainly obligated? Maybe, and maybe not. Even in Talmud Torah itself, I would assume that they are obligated.

I meant that there is a mitzvah to worship God with all your heart, this mitzvah is imposed on women and men equally (like other positive mitzvot that are not time-limited). The Shifri says that this worship of God is either prayer or Torah study. For the second option, Torah study is obligatory for women.

As I wrote, this does not seem necessary to me. After all, the mitzvah of studying Talmud Torah is not a time-limited duty, and yet women are exempt. The sages apparently understood from the explanation that it does not belong to women (there are sermons, but it is clear that there is a worldview at their core). If so, the same can be said of the mitzvah of “and to serve”: either women are not obligated in it or women are not obligated in the Talmudic part of it, but each one serves the Lord according to what is appropriate and appropriate for him.
As stated, it is possible to learn from this that there is another mitzvah to study as the service of the Lord beyond the mitzvah of studying Talmud Torah. This was the basis for my argument.