Community Magazine April 2012

Hundreds of Thousands to Celebrate Twelfth Siyum HaShas In less than four months, Met Life Stadium is going to be electrified with excitement as never before. Only this time, it won’t be the Super Bowl champion New York Giants generating the excitement, but rather “giants” of another sort entirely, as leading rabbis, community leaders and thousands of others from across the Jewish spectrum gather for a worldwide celebration of Torah study. It was 88 years ago, just before Rosh Hashanah 5684 (1923), that Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the famed rabbi of Lublin, Poland, stood up at the First Knessiah Gedolah (Great Assembly) of Agudath Israel in Vienna and shared his vision of a Jewish world united through the holy language of Torah. The concept he presented was stunning in its simplicity – a standardized study program whereby Jews throughout the world would learn the same daf (two-sided page) of the Talmud each day. By Rabbi Shapiro’s calculations, this uninterrupted regimen would enable even the simplest working Jew to complete the entire Talmud in just over seven years. A mere two weeks later, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, thousands of Jewish men opened their Gemaras to the first page of Mesechet Berachot, and Daf Yomi – the daily learning program that would eventually revolutionize Torah study – was officially launched. “The study of Daf Yomi creates a discipline in the student that everyday must have a measure of Torah study,” explained Rabbi Eli J. Mansour, who leads a Daf Yomi class that is also available online at www.DailyGemara.com . “The program trains its members in a regiment of never missing a day of learning no matter what. In a world that is filled with addiction and vices, finally an addiction that doesn’t need rehab, indeed the addiction itself is its own rehab.” From Lublin to New Jersey Rabbi Shapiro’s dream of uniting the entire Jewish nation through Torah study had yet another luminous facet. At the completion 36 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE