Yeshivas primarily focus on learning Gemara because that's what Hashem told us to do. The Rama poskens in hilchos Talmud Torah that Gemara is the way to fulfill our mitzvah Talmud Torah because the Gemara contains within it all the different elements. It has the Oral Torah, it has the Tanach, and it also has the Written Torah. And so, we learn Gemara for the same reason we do everything else in our lives, because that's what Hashem told us to do.

Additionally, there are benefits to limmud Gemara that are absolutely critical. And even if it was I'm making a choice of what to learn and should I be learning Chumash or Mussar or Nach or Machashava there are reasons to choose Gemara. For sure. Without any question. Because if you think about our lives, there's one thing that holds true for every interaction that we have. Anything you're ever going to think about, anyone you're ever going to interact with is that you're going to be needing to use your brain. You're going to have to understand what's happening. You're going to have to be listening to what someone else is saying, you're going to have to be able to understand what is being said and what is not being said. You're going to have to be able to draw sometimes very subtle lines between what this person meant and what this person meant. And then you'll have to be able to draw implications and say, well, if this is saying this, that means, oh, in this other situation, it will be different. Over and over again in every interaction, whether it's with a friend, with children, with wives, with each other, you're reading something, anything, anywhere. All those things demand a certain set of mental skills to be able to get at the truth of what is taking place.

And the Gemara, besides just the essential mitzvah of limmud Gemara, and besides, all the more spiritual things that are happening when we learn, practically, it is a training ground for how to think. And as a person immerses himself in it and compels himself every day like an exercise machine every day to push further and to get it clearer, and to ask himself questions that are not so natural for him to ask. And to take the rules that he's learned of how to analyze things and utilize them and practice them again and again. What you'll find is that brain that you have built, that capacity for understanding and getting at the truth that you have built through learning Gemara, it doesn't go away when you leave the shiur, it doesn't go away when you leave the Beis HaMedrash. Everyone you're talking to, everything you're interacting with, you have the same thought processes that are happening, and your mind is dividing it in the same ways and saying, oh, we said this and not this. And what you find is that you hear people better and you understand people better and you understand things that you're reading better, and you understand the events that are going on in your life. You understand them better and deeper and clearer than you would otherwise.

Limmud Gemara is the tool that Hashem gave us to accomplish this, and you'll find that, yes, there are many other areas of Torah to learn. But what is that learning going to look like? How deep will that learning be? How much are you going to get out of the Chumash? How much are you going to get out of the mussar or the philosophy? It depends almost entirely on how well you have built the machine that's going to try to understand those things, and so your learning Gemara is going to influence all of that.

So, if you're asking what the core of my effort should be? There's no question to me that it needs to be Gemara.