Super Charge Your Mastery of Talmud

A Young Man in his twenties expressed to me a strong desire to "finish Shas" and he did not wish to do "Daf Yomi", rather he wanted to learn Shas b'Iyyun.

Based upon my learning experiences, I summarized a learning program that focused upon:
• The texts,
• The core commentaries,
and
• Style or Derech of how to learn and read Shas.

I tended to avoid works that were "tangential" or who provided summaries without presenting the substantive arguments.

Also, I recommended those Rishonim whose styles resembled that of Shas itself, which is especially true for Tosafos and Beit Yosef.

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To summarize my recommendations:

1 Learn G'mara with careful attention to Rashi and Tosafot, and work to "read between the lines". Constantly ask yourself - "What prompted them to say what they said?"

2 For Additional M'forshim Consider:
• Sheetah M'kubetzet [most important]
• Me'iri
• Ritva
• Ran [on Shas]

Those last 3 digest and summarize earlier Rishonim.

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For B'kiut
• Don't learn G'mara for B'kiut directly, instead learn -
• Mishnayot [pick your peirush]
• Minchat Chinuch
• Torah T'mimah on Chumash and Megillot

For Halachah focus upon
• Tur / Beit Yosef
• SA with B'er Hagolah and Bei'ur HaGRA.

All these will provide sources rooted in Talmud and Rishonim.

Aruch Hashulchan is also good, but he rarely goes back to Shas.

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Comments:

Rambam.
While Rambams' Mishneh Torah covers many of the issues in Shas - the Rambam tends to gives just the Maskanah and not a derech. I would avoid that until later.

Acharonim.
Except for the GRA and a few others, they are usually about 2-3 steps removed from the text of Shas.

Deriving Halachah from Shas.
If one decides to extract Halachah from Shas then I would suggest researching:
• Rif with commentaries especially
• Rosh
• Ran
• Mordechi

Best Regards,
RRW