The Talmud Marathon

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, March 4, 2005

This past Tuesday, March 1, the 20th of Adar, was not a Jewish holiday but in cities around the globe thousands of Jews gathered for special celebrations. Not only in New York and Jerusalem, but also in New Jersey and Atlanta, Toronto and Phoenix, and even in China and on the African continent, throngs of Jews and Jewish dignitaries, such as Elie Wiesel and Dan Raviv and Hadassah Lieberman, joined together to celebrate the conclusion of the 11th Daf Yomi cycle.

Since 1923, when the idea was introduced by Rabbi Yehudah Meir Shapiro of Lublin, thousands of Jews around the world have committed themselves to a cycle of study, completing all 38 volumes of the Talmud in a mere 7 ½ years, by studying 1 two sided page a day. A page a day may not sound like much, but a daf of Talmud, two sides of a page, often 7 – 8 pages in English translation, is not light reading. The Talmud is more challenging than the New York Times crossword puzzle, and comes complete with commentaries, hypertext, that is vital in puzzling out the depths of the text’s meaning. Daf Yomi was a part of the inspiration for Rabbi Yoffie’s “Ten Minutes of Torah” and for Amit, a Jewish Women’s Organization’s Tanach Yomi, a program to complete the reading of every word in the Hebrew Scriptures, Genesis to Chronicles by reading a chapter a day.

Some people do their page a day at home alone, but many gather in local synagogues. Southern California boasts 5 sites where this study takes place daily though I didn’t find a single one up here in the North. Modern technological advances like CD Roms, the Internet, and even the Ipod have been harnessed to make this study easier. For a relatively modest sum, you can buy a shaspod, SHAS being another name for the Talmud. This is an ipod already loaded with everything you might need to study Talmud.

While some of those who participate in this marathon are scholars, most are everyday Jews with a variety of other responsibilities. What really caught my attention this time was the mention of someone I know in one of the articles about the Siyyum celebration. An acquaintance of mine from my east coast days, Danny Levine, a manager of a Jewish book store, completed the 7 year cycle with his two teenage sons. He began the cycle when his sons were 10 and 11, now his oldest has graduated from high school and is spending the year in Israel. Studying an hour a day with his sons, everyday for seven years was an amazing experience. They studied at home, in the car, on trains and planes. When they got behind, they had marathon catch up sessions.

Within the Orthodox world there is criticism of the daf yomi program. Some feel that the Talmud is too difficult to be studied at that pace and that the learning is very superficial. That hour a day could be better spent on more accessible material like Tanach or Mishnah, or even the Shulchan Aruhh, basic Jewish laws about observance. Yet there is a special mystique to Talmud study and an excitement that comes from knowing that thousands of other people are studying what you are studying at that same moment. That’s why today you see many cities and towns following the example of Chicago which originated a citizen’s city wide read-in of TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD, hoping to create community conversation across class and racial lines. Silicon Valley has its own "Silicon Valley Reads: One Book, One Community" organized by the San Jose Library Foundation and the Santa Clara County office of Education In

2003 – the book was Breaking Through by Francisco Jiminez, in

2004 - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and this year it’s --Epitaph for a Peach by David Masumoto

Reflecting on daf yomi, I think of our members, some of whom had not previously exercised much until they decided to participate in a 25 mile hike or a triathlon to raise money for some worthy cause. Something in the challenge pushed them to go beyond what they previously thought they could do. Perhaps that same sense challenge and camaraderie is what motivates thousands of Jews to take on the enormous task of Daf Yomi.