It's really a shame...or is it?

I'm in the middle of reading The World of the Yeshiva: An Intimate Portrait of Orthodox Jewry by William Helmreich.  It's an intelligent, fascinating read on many levels, and I plan to write a more extensive post with my thoughts when I'm finished. 

There's something that has bugged me for a long time, though, and reading this book has really brought up the matter again:  The extent to which Reform Jews (RJs) in general, and myself in particular, lack any substantive knowledge of Talmud.  It's not a big surprise, of course:  the Reform movement from its inception made it clear that halacha was not a binding source of Jewish law.  The fact that we RJs don't know it, therefore, "makes sense."  Reading Helmreich's book has also driven home for me how much foundational knowledge is required before one can even think of approaching the study of Talmud:  Aramaic, Hebrew, and Torah all have to be known cold.  And then one has to devote years to its study, daf by daf.

It's overwhelming.

I know the point isn't to "know" Talmud but rather to "study" it,  I know that very few people ever gain truly comprehensive knowledge of it; I certainly won't.  But even though I definitely view Oral Torah as man-made, even though I undoubtedly would disagree with much that is contained in it, and even though I could never be happy or comfortable living in a community that used it as a basis for its laws...I am nevertheless sad to be distanced from it.  This is for me the paradox of trying to live as an engaged, committed RJ in today's world:  I cannot just shake my head and say "oh well, I don't know much about the Talmud, and that's okay" but neither am I willing to make the sacrifices of time, effort, and ideology that its study would require.

I wish the RJ movement would have started teaching me Hebrew and Aramaic more seriously, at an earlier age.  I wish I had been exposed to real Torah and Talmud when I was young enough to absorb it like a sponge. 

Does anyone else feel that way?