Nearly every Shabbat in our synagogue we meet visitors from different places in the world.  Recently we have seen people from Israel, America, Britain, Europe, South America and elsewhere.   We know that we have a different style of prayer and they may not be exactly familiar with the tunes that we use but one thing for sure is that they know exactly what sedra they are going to read in every synagogue every Shabbat.  Every visitor knows what the Rabbi’s drasha will be about. 

There is another common shiur which is called “Daf Yomi”. 

Daf Yomi (“page {of the} day” or “daily folio”) is a daily regime undertaken to study the Babylonian Talmud. One folio (a daf consists of both sides of the page) each day.  Under this regime, the entire Talmud would be completed, one day at a time, in a cycle of seven and a half years.

The novel idea of Jews in all corners of the globe to participate in completing together the entire Talmud was put forth at the First World Congress of the World Agudath Israel in Vienna in 1923 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublien Poland.  On the first day of Rosh Hashanah 1923 (5684 in the Hebrew calendar) the first cycle began.

The Impact is that thousands of Jews worldwide participate in the Daf Yomi programme.  Currently Daf Yomi efforts contribute significantly to Orthodox Judaism and Baalei Teshuva and has had a uniting factor among Jews.

As we said with 2,711 pages in the Talmud, one cycle takes about 7 years, 5 months.  The completion of the cycle is celebrated in an event known as Siyum HaShas (“completion {of} the Shas –Shas, an acronym for shisha sidrei (mishnah) or “Six Orders of the Mishnah” – is another name for the Talmud).  The last Siyum took place on 1 March 2005 with an estimated 120,000 in attendance worldwide.  The next Siyum HaShas will take place on 2 August 2012.

In my last visit to Israel I had the pleasure of going back to my group in Modiin to join them in the morning learning.  This group, which I started nearly ten years ago, is one of many in Modiin.

All the best
Rabbi Chaim Dovrat