A New Antidote for Anxiety

Anxiety thrives on unstructured attention. Mine certainly did. I found relief in an unexpected place. Daily Torah study has noticeably reduced my anxiety even as the world around me has gotten more and more anxiety-inducing. Daily Torah study replaces passive consumption with active engagement and spiritual grounding. It creates structured community and focused conversations, offering an alternative to the endless, often anxiety-provoking conversations driven by social media and the news cycle.

I am a full time attorney, part time rabbinical student, spouse, and parent of teens. I have struggled with anxiety for my entire adult life. Since starting daily Torah study several years ago, I have seen my ability to handle the ups and downs that come with world events grow exponentially. Daily Torah study takes me out of the dark cycles of doom scrolling and mindless reels and makes me feel productive. I am a person that loves to check boxes and there are programs for daily study of Tanakh, mishnah, and gemara that have boxes to check, goals to achieve, and celebrations along the way.

In college decades ago, I took a course called “Introduction to the Hebrew Bible.” During the semester I was expected to read the entire Tanakh but as a slow reader and a lazy student, I did not complete that reading assignment. Fast forward to early 2018, I heard that the Israeli program 929 was starting an English-language version of the program that summer. The program met my desire to finally complete the reading I had neglected in college and my deep love of checking boxes. Each day as I read a chapter along with selected commentaries, I was exposed to different perspectives on this ancient text and its connections to today’s world.

Looking back, I know that 929 was my gateway drug to more serious daily Torah study. When my younger daughter’s elementary school made a big push to encourage students to take up Mishnah Yomit, she and I decided to do it together. We started in November 2022 and have been learning two mishnayot a day ever since. Almost every night from the preteen years through the middle of high school, my daughter and I sit together with a book in hand. Some days she remembers a connection to something she once learned in school, some days we are each nudging the other one to stay awake, but each day we are there physically together.

While a chapter of Tanakh with some commentaries or two mishnayot did not truly intimidate me, Daf Yomi was something different; Daf Yomi is a much bigger commitment. On a summer trip a number of years ago, I was at a beautiful resort when the Daf Yomi cycle was starting a new Massechet and I thought, “I can listen to an English Daf Yomi shiur by the pool for the day or two that we are here.” Well, two days turned into more and now I am almost four years into the 7 ½ year Daf Yomi cycle. One of the best parts of learning Daf Yomi is that everyone else in the program learns the exact same thing you did that day. This means that I can text my Daf Yomi friends to share funny memes and jokes that the learning inspired and we can celebrate together when we finish a Massechet. 

In retrospect, I can see that the low barriers to entry really made this all possible. With the phones that we have in our pockets, we can learn Torah on our own, with apps, or by subscribing to podcasts. Translations make the practice accessible to all. Time is no object – these different modalities can take from 3 minutes a day to as much time as you can devote to the practice. And, we all know that too much screen time diminishes our attention span and often results in doom scrolling but daily Torah study, even on our phones, is a way to use these devices for good. Further, it provides a different subject for discussion based on a biblical text, a mishnah or the daf.

Daily Torah study removes us from our echo chambers and the seemingly constant influx of negative information in the 24-hour news cycle. Learning Torah on your own or with others can make you better equipped to handle the scariness of the world. Tackling a different kind of thinking and a different subject matter has a visceral effect on your entire body and calms you – or at least, it calmed me. While many of the day-to-day subjects covered in daily Torah study seem unrelated to life in 2026, the overarching themes that emerge from the texts remind us of our values and to strive to be our best selves. When we remember to be these versions of ourselves, we act differently in the world; we have more patience, we see the people around us through a lens of radical kindness. Next time you think about getting lost in reels or comment wars online, don’t. Start one of these daily programs. Trust that learning Torah is both a way to care for yourself and the world.