This past week, someone shared something with me that caught my attention. He told me he had recently begun setting aside time to study Torah again on his own.
"Something interesting is happening," he said. "As I'm learning, things I learned years ago are suddenly coming back to me. Ideas, stories... it is all starting to come alive again."
The comment resonated with me because I have seen the same phenomenon many times. Most people I meet carry with them some memory of Judaism from their youth. For some, it is a prayer they learned in Hebrew school. For others, it is the melody of Kiddush, the blessing over the Shabbat candles, or even the opening verse of their Bar Mitzvah Haftorah that they still remember by heart.
Yet for many people, those memories have slowly faded over time. The songs, prayers and ideas that were once familiar can become distant and harder to access.
Why is it that some people remember so much of what they learned years ago, while others struggle to recall it? Often, the difference is whether they continued learning and kept that part of their lives active.
There is an old saying: "If you don't use it, you lose it." The same is true spiritually. Every time we study Torah, attend a class, pray, or engage more deeply with Judaism, we breathe new life into everything we learned before. Ideas that seemed forgotten suddenly become familiar again. Our earlier learning, so to speak, is reawakened.
This may also explain why the Shema tells us, "These words shall be upon your heart today." Our relationship with Torah should never feel like something we once learned years ago. It should feel current, alive, and as meaningful as the day we first received it.
Every week, I have the privilege of studying Torah with people from all walks of life. Some sessions last an hour, while others are just ten or fifteen minutes. I have found that consistency matters far more than duration. A small amount of Torah, learned regularly, keeps a lifetime of Jewish learning vibrant and alive.
Judaism was never meant to become a childhood memory tucked away somewhere in the back of our minds. It was meant to remain a living relationship that continues to grow throughout our lives.