Question

Hello Rabbi,
I know you have a certain policy of not explaining rabbis’ views—you say that one should ask them.
But still—maybe you’ll depart from your usual practice this time? (I’m asking with fear and reverence :-))

Maimonides writes this about Torah study, how one ought to learn, and at the end he notes that one should turn to studying Gemara, which is really the essence of study.

These 2 laws:

“A person is obligated to divide his study time into thirds: one third for the Written Torah, one third for the Oral Torah, and one third to understand and comprehend the end of a matter from its beginning, to infer one thing from another, to compare one matter to another, and to understand by means of the interpretive principles through which the Torah is expounded, until he knows what those principles fundamentally are and how to derive from them what is forbidden and what is permitted, and the like, from matters he learned by tradition. This subject is what is called Gemara.”

“How so? If he was a craftsman and worked at his trade three hours a day, and spent nine hours on Torah, then of those nine hours he should read Written Torah for three of them, Oral Torah for three of them, and in the other three he should reflect with his own mind to understand one thing from another. The books of the Prophets and Writings are included in Written Torah, and their explanations are included in Oral Torah, and the matters called Pardes are included in Gemara. To what does this apply? To the beginning of a person’s study. But once he has grown in wisdom and no longer needs either to study Written Torah or to occupy himself constantly with Oral Torah, he should read Written Torah and the transmitted teachings at set times, so that he not forget anything from the legal matters of the Torah, and he should devote all his days to Gemara alone, according to the breadth of his heart and the settledness of his mind.”

On the other hand, in the introduction to the Mishneh Torah he writes that a person should study the Written Torah and then his book, and does not need any other book in between.
So the question that comes up is: if we do as he says and study only rulings (the Mishneh Torah), then what about studying Gemara? And how would we acquire the ability to study independently without the Talmud? As he says:
"understand and comprehend the end of a matter from its beginning, infer one thing from another, compare one matter to another, and understand by means of the interpretive principles through which the Torah is expounded, until he knows what those principles fundamentally are"

As an aside, there’s something interesting here—that his meaning of Gemara is independent study (the thirteen principles), that we ourselves should know the principles through which the Torah is expounded just like the Sages themselves! That reminds me of the works you wrote on the interpretive principles through which the Torah is expounded..)