Inside texts

you’re female. you dont need to learn how to learn. you need to learn how to cook and sew and do laundry.

you should also learn how to drive so that you dont have to depend on hubby or car service to take you shopping or visiting.

you should also learn how to navigate the internet so that you can shop on ilne as well.

now those are the things you need to learn. make a list and tackle them one by one

mewho:

I was wondering who would be the one to say that.

Bas Yisroel: His point, while it may seem offensive, is not totally wrong.

If you don’t want to learn tanach and meforshim, there is really no reason why you need to. You can have a very spiritually fulfilling life with a close connection to Hashem, without ever opening a chumash.

So, if you want to learn how, then pursue it. But if you are finding it a burden (which is not implied in your post, I am just mentioning it), then you can forget the whole thing as soon as you graduate high school. Which should be in about a year, judging by your screen name.

artscroll – the saperstein edition is very nice: if read footnotes, can really learn to understand what rashi’s question is and why he asks that. if really work at it and keep practicing, can get pretty good at it quite quickly.

When I was working on my kriyah I got a set of Yalkut Me’am Loez and this little green Hebrew-English dictionary and went through the whole set on chumash.

I also have so much trouble with meforshim, and it’s so annoying. I never did well with them in high school and now I’d so much like to be able to open up a sefer in hebrew and learn a bit, because somehow it’s just more meaningful in lashon hakodesh. I have a mussar sefer in only hebrew and I’m trying to labor through it with an english-hebrew dictionary but it can get so slow with me looking up every other word that i almost feel like it isn’t even worth it. Though I marvel and feel good about myself when I finish a page or two, and I’m happy I’m trying it this way. But I hear basyisroel94 when she says she wants to learn how to read meforshim. While I’m sitting there flipping through the pages of the dictionary I WISH I would have worked my heart and soul out in high school memorizing vocab words and reading more and more and more mefarshim until I “got” it.

The thing is, with all these interlinear Rashi translations – those just help you understand that Rashi that you’re reading, but it doesn’t teach you HOW to “do” meforshim. I wonder, is it just something that some are good at and others are not and will never be? Or do we just have to work harder? And if so, how, exactly?

i also was not that great at understanding mifarshim until my father helped me a little. But in high school i had a very hard chumash teacher who would read a miforash and would wait for us to call out the meanings of it. Even if noone knew it, she would sit there waiting or wometimes giving us tiny hints. I guess this way by the time we get out of high school we’ll know how to translate it ourselves as if we’re still in the class.

Your trouble is in two parts, language barrier and the learning per se. For the language barrier get yourself a dictionary aimed at the Torah like Dr. Jastrow’s or Rav Hirsch’s Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Bible and a basic diqduq book. If you use those two as you learn you’ll find that you need them less and less as time goes on.

For the learning itself, get Rabbi Bonchek’s books on Rashi. He has one for each chumash, each focusing on a different aspect of learning Rashi. Once you work your way through one cycle with them (you don’t need to read every page) you’ll have enough grounding to learn Rashi, RaMBaN and probably Ibn Ezra on your own.

bas yisroel – i agree with bygirl93 – after understand it, practice it again and again, until can read it thoroughly, as if will be tested on it. then go to next one. eventually, you’ll get the flow of it and you’ll be more used to the vocabulary. nice idea is to hook up with someone who knows less than you, like a ba’alas teshuva and/or younger girl – prepare first and then do it with other person. it takes time, but if really want to, not as much time as you would think to become proficient.

and i think it’s wonderful that you’re working on reading meforshim!

“please give me suggestions on how to ‘teach myself’ how to learn.”

Practice, practice, practice. Then when you’re done, practice some more. I don’t think there are any real shortcuts.