Daf HaYomi at Congregation Toras Chaim
7119 Bremerton Ct., Dallas, TX 75252
(972) 835-6016 / [email protected]ÂSun-Thurs: Following Maariv / Friday: Following Shacharis / Shabbos: 7:30-8:30 AM
A story was told by Rabban Gamliel (Yevamot 121a) about the miraculous rescue from drowning of Rabbi Akiva. Surprised to see this Sage learning Torah after the ship he had traveled on had sunk, this head of the Sanhedrin asked him how he had survived.
“A daf (a plank) from a ship came my way, I held onto it and bowed my head before every dangerous wave that threatened to drown me.†When Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the rav of Lubllin and founder of the great Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, introduced the idea of the Daf Yomi almost a century ago, he referred to Rabbi Akiva’s story, pointing out that in the turbulent sea of exile the Jewish People had survived because they held onto the daf, the sacred and beloved page of Talmud.
Daf Yomi (Hebrew: דף היומי‎, Daf HaYomi, “page of the day” or “daily folio”) is a daily regimen of learning the Oral Torah and its commentaries (also known as the Gemara), in which each of the 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud are covered in sequence. Under this regimen, the entire Talmud is completed, one day at a time, in a cycle of seven and a half years.
Tens of thousands of Jews worldwide study in the Daf Yomi program, and over 300,000 participate in the Siyum HaShas, an event celebrating the culmination of the cycle of learning. The Daf Yomi program has been credited with making Talmud study accessible to Jews who are not Torah scholars, contributing to Jewish continuity after the Holocaust, and having a unifying factor among Jews.
The novel idea of Jews in all parts of the world studying the same daf each day, with the goal of completing the entire Talmud, was put forth at the First World Congress of the World Agudath Israel in Vienna on 16 August 1923 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, then Rav of Sanok, Poland, and future rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. In those years, only some of the 63 tractates of the Talmud were being studied regularly, such as Berachot, Shabbat, and Eruvin, which deal with practical laws, while others, such as Zevachim and Temurah, were hardly studied. Shapiro also viewed the program as a way to unify the Jewish people. As he explained to the Congress delegates:
What a great thing! A Jew travels by boat and takes gemara Berachot under his arm. He travels for 15 days from Eretz Yisrael to America, and each day he learns the daf. When he arrives in America, he enters a beis medrash in New York and finds Jews learning the very same daf that he studied on that day, and he gladly joins them. Another Jew leaves the States and travels to Brazil or Japan, and he first goes to the beis medrash, where he finds everyone learning the same daf that he himself learned that day. Could there be greater unity of hearts than this?
Originally Shapiro saw Daf Yomi as an obligation only for the religious youth of Poland. However, the idea was greeted enthusiastically by the nearly 600 delegates at the Congress, including many Torah leaders from Europe and America, who accepted it a universal obligation for all Jews.
The first cycle of Daf Yomi commenced on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5684 (11 September 1923), with tens of thousands of Jews in Europe, America and Israel learning the first daf of the first tractate of the Talmud, Berachot. To show support for the idea, the Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, learned the first daf of Berachot in public on that day. On 12 November 1924 Tractate Berachot was completed, with small siyums (celebrations marking the completion of study of a Talmudic tractate) in local communities. At that time, Shapiro published a calendar for the entire cycle of Daf Yomi study. (For the first cycle, there were only 2,702 pages of Talmud on the schedule; later Gedolei Yisrael increased it to 2,711, incorporating Tractate Shekalim, taken from the Jerusalem Talmud.) The siyum for the completion of Tractate Pesachim took place after the laying of the cornerstone for Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. At that time, Shapiro conceived the idea of contributing daily groschen to help raise money for the building. Each day, each person who studied Daf Yomi was asked to set aside a grosh (a Polish penny), and at the end of the tractate, to donate the sum to the yeshiva. The Gerrer Rebbe immediately contributed the entire sum of 2,700 groschen (27 złoty) to support this initiative.
The Second World Congress of the World Agudath Israel, held in 1929, coincided with the completion of Tractate Zevachim.
The 1st Siyum HaShas took place on 2 February 1931 (15 Shevat 5691) in several cities in Europe and in Jerusalem, with the main venue being the newly-opened Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin in Lublin, Poland. Tens of thousands of Jews attended these events. Shapiro presided over the Siyum in his yeshiva in the presence of many leaders of Polish Jewry. In the United States, Siyums were held in Baltimore and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The completion of the Daf Yomi cycle is celebrated in an event known as the Siyum HaShas (“completion of the Shas”). In America, the main Siyum HaShas is organized by the Agudath Israel of America. Attendance at each Siyum HaShas has grown exponentially. In 1997 the 10th Siyum HaShas was celebrated by some 70,000 participants in the U.S.; at the 11th Siyum HaShas in 2005, participation had grown to 120,000 in the U.S. and 300,000 around the world.
The 12th Siyum HaShas in America was held on August 1, 2012 at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which has capacity for over 90,000 attendees. All seats were sold out. Satellite broadcasts were piped to many other locations, including Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin in Poland. Tens of thousands attended celebrations in Israel.