In March 2004, we were four members of the Kol Mevasser Yeshiva in Mevaseret Zion, who joined the trip to Poland with the Bnei Akiva Netanya yeshiva. During the exciting and difficult journey between the hideous sites, we also visited a special structure of the "Chachmei Lublin" Yeshiva. There we heard about the work of Agudat Israel's president in Poland, Rabbi Yehuda Meir Shapira, founder of the yeshiva and the one who created the great idea of ​​the daily page project, which teaches every day a Gemara page from the Shas tracts.

For seven and a half years, you have studied 2,711 Gemara pages. Rabbi Shapiro started the idea on Monday, August 21, 1923, at a convention of the Agudat Israel movement in Poland. These days we are actually finishing the 13th cycle. I remember the story of his work and this project shocked me, but If you were to ask me in those days if there was a chance that I would take part in this project, I would laugh and answer that I was far from light years.

In those days of high school, I was unable to open a voluntary Gemara page, and I preferred pre-military preparation over a Seder meeting only so that I did not have to see Gemara again, whose contents seemed inaccessible to me and its teaching methods were based on memorization.

Toward the end of the preparatory and recruiting for the army, I watched from the side in Gemara study sessions for "homeowners", which my father studies in my hometown. The study was accompanied by a positive atmosphere with lots of laughter and humor and discussions on the issues that fascinated me. I couldn't believe it was the Gemara I had run away from. I slowly joined the same group and rediscovered the world of the Gemara.

The Gemara has a special charm. Although written 2,000 years ago, it is ever more relevant. It links the past to the present and the future in all aspects of life. The Gemara is not a halachic book, it brings out-of-the-box thinking from the Amorite era that operated in the 5th to 3rd centuries CE in Babylon and the Land of Israel. The judiciary, for example, shies away from Jewish law, but if law experts study the following tracts, Baba Kama, Baba Mitza, and Baba Batra (First Gate, Middle Gate and Last Gate in Aramaic, IV), they will find controversies and cases that, as if taken from the realities of our lives: From a car accident, through property loss to building disputes.

For the past seven and a half years, ever since I joined this project, I have found myself learning in every way possible the more or less difficult masks; Teaching with the daily page presenter on the Gali Israel radio station where I worked, learning at such and other classes where I attended, and a lot through the "Daily Page Portal" widget with Rabbi Eliyahu Orenstein on the way to work and home. My personal war with myself and the process I went through can speak for everyone. It is a blessed and eternal project, and it is a privilege for me to join the masses and take part in it.

Harel Dodovitz is a communications consultant