Ours is a uniquely ignorant generation, a generation truly without precedent in all of Jewish history. And the great irony of our ignorance, of course, is that we are simultaneously the best educated generation of Jews that has ever lived. Wonderfully educated in the ways of the world, we are abysmally ignorant in the ways of our people.

Too many of us can name the mother of Jesus, but not the mother of Moses.  We know the author of Das Kapital, but not the author of the Guide for the  Perplexed. And when we do study, we have too often have been satisfied  with a kind of learning that is largely cosmetic, and which, if you were remarkably stupid, would be edifying. But of course we are not remarkably stupid; we are remarkably smart, and hungry for the intellectual splendor and the deep humanity of our heritage.

And why is this so important? Because Torah study is the motor which drives Jewish life, and whenever communities neglect it, they have already started on the road to decline. Because you do not wake up one morning and say: "I'm not going to be Jewish anymore." Disengagement from Judaism is a process, and it always begins when we turn our back on the study of Torah.

Who among us is so busy that he cannot spend 10 minutes a day in the study of a Jewish text? Just 10 minutes? Such a commitment would enable us to meet our Jewish obligation to make Jewish study a fixed occurrence. If we make time to answer our cell phones a dozen times a day and to check our email five times an hour, surely we can find 10 minutes to contemplate sacred words that nourish the soul.