Parshas Chayei Sarah
By Rabbi Dovid Zauderer
This week on Wednesday October 27th marks the 88th yahrtzeit (anniversary of death) of the great Rabbi Meir Shapiro ZT”L, Chief Rabbi of Lublin, Rosh Yeshivah and Dean of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, and promoter and initiator of the Daf Yomi.
[Ed. note: It should be obvious that October 27th is actually the secular anniversary of Rav Shapiro’s death. The “true” yahrtzeit traditionally commemorated by most Jews follows the Hebrew calendar and was two weeks ago on the 7th day of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan – dz]
In honor of this auspicious occasion – and especially since Rav Meir Shapiro is the one who “put Daf Yomi on the map” – it would be a good time and place to discuss the all-important question …What’s so great about Daf Yomi?
But first we have to make sure that everyone knows exactly what Daf Yomi is.
[Come to think about it, first we have to make sure that everyone knows exactly what the Talmud is!
The Talmud (Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (halachah) and Jewish theology. The Talmud has two components; the Mishnah (משנה, c. 200 CE), a written compendium of the Oral Torah; and the Gemara (גמרא, c. 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. The term "Talmud" may refer to either the Gemara alone, or the Mishnah and Gemara together. The entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in the standard print there are 2,711 double-sided folios. It is written in Mishnaic Hebrew and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic and contains the teachings, wisdom, and opinions of thousands of rabbis (dating from before the Common Era through to the fifth century) on a variety of subjects, including halachah, Jewish ethics, kabbalah, philosophy, customs, history, and many other topics. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law and is widely quoted in rabbinic literature.]
Daf Yomi (Hebrew: דף יומי, Daf Yomi, "page of the day" or "daily folio") is a daily regimen of learning the Oral Torah and its commentaries, in which each of the 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud is covered in sequence. A daf, or blatt in Yiddish, consists of both sides of the page. Under this regimen, the entire Talmud is completed, one day at a time, in a cycle of approximately seven and a half years.
The first Daf Yomi cycle began on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5684 (11 September 1923); the thirteenth cycle concluded on 4 January 2020 and the fourteenth cycle began the following day, to be concluded on 7 June 2027.
Tens of thousands of Jews worldwide study in the Daf Yomi program (myself included), and over 300,000 participate in the Siyum HaShas, ("completion of the Talmud"), an event celebrating the culmination of the cycle of learning. The Daf Yomi program has been credited with, among other things, making Talmud study more accessible to Jews who are not Torah scholars.
Now that we know what the Talmud and Daf Yomi are, we can finally ask ourselves … what’s so great about Daf Yomi?
Allow me to share with you the interesting thoughts and reactions of a few great rabbis when they heard that a multitude of Jewish people had accepted upon themselves and begun to learn the Daf Yomi:
The great and venerated sage and leader of the Jewish people, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Ha’Kohen, known to all as the Chafetz Chaim, commented that learning the entire Daf Yomi cycle would cause the Jewish people to learn parts of the Talmud that had heretofore been neglected because of their lack of relevance.
This is important because we believe that the Messiah is coming soon and can even come suddenly, so we need many Jews, and especially kohanim (priests), to be well educated in the laws of Kodashim and the Temple Service so that the Jewish people will know exactly what to do when the Beis HaMikdash is rebuilt.
Learning through the complete Daf Yomi cycle – explained the Chafetz Chaim - which includes the tractates which discuss the laws of Kodashim and the Temple Service – will greatly remedy this situation.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ZT”L, the great Posek (“Halachic Authority”) praises the learning of Daf Yomi from a different angle. He writes in his collection of responsa Igros Moshe (Yoreh Deiah 2:110) that in addition to the general mitzvah that we have to learn Torah every day (even learning the same tractate over and over again), there is an additional mitzvah for each and every one of us to learn Kol Hatorah Kulah (“the entire Torah”) at least once in our lifetime, and this mitzvah – explains Reb Moshe – can be fulfilled through the learning of a complete cycle of Talmud Daf Yomi.
[Ed. note: I would like to add that the first Lubavitcher Rebbe ZT”L writes in his Shulchan Aruch HaRav (Laws of Talmud Torah Chapter 2) that whereas with the Written Torah one receives reward for studying it even if he doesn’t understand the meaning of the words, the Oral Torah must be understood to be considered a mitzvah worthy of reward. If so, one can ask, what is the purpose of learning Daf Yomi if I am not going to understand much of what’s going on? The Shulchan Aruch HaRav himself answers this question by quoting a Zohar in Parshas Vayeishev that says that even if one doesn’t understand the meaning of what the Talmud is saying he should try his best, and whatever Torah he did not merit to understand in This World he will merit to understand in the Next World. -dz]
Let’s conclude with the powerful words of the great promoter and initiator of the Daf Yomi himself – Rav Meir Shapiro ZT”L – that he spoke in front of over 600 delegates at the first K’nessiyah Gedolah (“Great Assembly”) of Agudas Yisrael in Vienna, Austria on August 15, 1923:
“If the entire observant community everywhere, in every single location where our observant Jews exist on this earth, will study the same daf of Talmud on the same day, could we have any better, more palpable expression of the sublime eternal unity between the Holy One, His Torah, and His people?
“How splendid this could be! A man goes sailing across the sea, and he carries a volume of Tractate Berachos. He is traveling from the Holy Land to America - and everyday, with the setting of the sun, he opens the volume and studies the daf. Arrived in New York, he enters Bais Medrash (study hall), and to his amazement, he finds a group at work on the very page of Talmud that he has reached in his own, private learning program. Delighted, he sits down and joins them. He gets into Talmudic debate with them, and is answered back. The net result is that the Glory of Heaven has become greater, mightier, more holy….
“Suppose someone migrates from North America to Brazil, or to far-off Japan. Having arrived and settled, he will head for the Bais Medrash and find there what?- a group busied with the very part of the Talmud that he has been studying…. Could we have a better way of bringing Jewish hearts into one great, harmonious union?”
In this impassioned plea in front of the leaders of the Jewish people, Rav Shapiro is enthralled and captivated by the Jewish unity that the worldwide learning of Daf Yomi would create!
So now we know what’s so great about Daf Yomi.
Hey, it’s never too late to start!
[Sources: Rav Meir Shapiro: A Blaze in the Darkening Gloom by Rav Yehoshua Baumol; Feldheim Publishers]
http://www.torchweb.org/torah_detail.php?id=686