Q&A: Which Tractate to Study
Which Tractate to Study
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In our yeshiva they’ll be learning Bava Kamma next year, but in my class they’re already steering us toward studying one order for the rabbinate exams. The studying for the exams themselves is only shortly before the test; most of the time they’ll be learning Niddah in depth.
As for me, I’m still focused on in-depth study and developing my analytical learning skills, and I was thinking of learning a different tractate in depth during that time (something in the direction of Sanhedrin, for example), or a different chapter of Bava Kamma. On the other hand, that would mean I’d have less of a framework, since the classes and most of the other study partnerships will be doing Niddah. Because of that, a lot of people told me it’s a shame to make things unnecessarily complicated, because what’s really the problem? If I want to study a different tractate in depth, then I can just study tractate Niddah in depth with everyone else. But for some reason I have a feeling that Niddah is less suited to developing classic analytical learning skills. Is there really an advantage, in that sense, to a different tractate or a different chapter in Bava Kamma over Niddah, or is there no real advantage and it’s preferable to learn Niddah with everyone?
Answer
It’s hard to give a general answer to this, but I’ll try anyway. You can develop analytical learning skills in any tractate (as Rabbi Chaim said: an egg, whether hard or soft). If you have the opportunity to study Niddah in depth as part of a group, that seems preferable to me over studying Bava Kamma alone. In general, I favor keeping to the yeshiva’s learning structure and using it to make progress. If alongside that you manage to add something else, then excellent. But in principle, it’s not כדאי to study something else instead.