“oomis1105-Your Grandmother may not have formally learned out of a sefer, but she definitly learned Torah experiantially-and by living it. That’s how most women learned that which they needed to for centuries in order to preserve klal yisroel-and until the Bais Yaakov movement.”
That’s true, but the person who commented (which prompted MY comment) said that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be an observant Jew without someone “learning Torah several hours a day. IMPOSSIBLE!” And that gets my Irish up, as they say, because there were so many people who never attended Yeshivah, who grew up in frum homes and were extremely obervant all their lives. Living Torah is as important as learning Torah. When someone makes the statement to which I responded, it sounds very negative to me, as if ONLY the Yeshivah bochurim know how to be frum. That just ain’t so.
I am not a professional baker who went to school to learn how to be a pro, but I learned by observing my mom and Bubby O”H how to make challah, and an assortment of pastries and cakes, as well as cook for my family. One does not always need to learn in a formal way in order to be good at something. Likewise, though of course it is good that someone learns Torah as much as he can, it does not mean that the shomer shabbos person sitting next to him in shul who does not learn several hours a day is not religiously observant. That is a tad elitist to think that way.