I can already recognize them from afar.
I developed this ability, to understand from their words, and especially from their reasoning, what mood they were in and why. And what's beautiful is that it's always shared by everyone. And sometimes, even if I don't know the one in front of me, I can guess that he belongs to this group too.
In short: I recognize Daf Yomi learners. If they are relaxed and flourish aphorisms, ideas and stories, then they now hold the pages of a "smooth" chapter in the Tractate Sanhedrin; And if they are stressed and their foreheads are constricted, then now they learn the beginning of Tractate Yevamot, and so on.
This experience leaves its mark on those who are part of it, and we, everyone else, can only be jealous.
I was a young boy, in the days when my father my teacher began giving a daily lesson on Daf Yomi. It was born out of an attempt to create something permanent and became a central issue around which the whole house revolved. Every day the lesson, its preparation and delivery. Once every few months - the conclusion of a tractate.
Sometimes right at home, when I help set the table, and once every few years, the end of Shas.
My father and his students have already completed the Shas seven times, and there is still more to come. Hundreds of thousands more around the world are part of this great operation, and feel like a growing family with more joining them every day.
"Daf HaYomi". On one day, exactly 100 years ago, a young leader, Rabbi Meir Shapira, stood on the podium of the Agudat Israel Great Church in Vienna and presented an idea that sounded like action in a youth movement.
Let's create, he said, a fixed curriculum common to every Jew who wishes to contemplate the Babylonian Talmud.
Since the Talmud has been printed in a fixed format for many years, and since everyone learns on the same page, it is easy to set a fixed order of study for everyone.
He stood there on the podium, flanked by rabbis and leaders older and more distinguished, and bravely presented this vision in vivid colors. Two Jews, he described, meet on a train. Onboard. Journey. There is nothing between them, but at some point they both pull out the Gemara, and lo and behold, they both learn exactly the same thing.
The same words, the same issue, and instead of arguing with each other, they quibble with each other.
And at the same time that they study in fellowship on board, a Jew in Mexico and a Jew in Haifa sit and learn the same thing.
Did Rabbi Meir Shapira envision the spread of his idea and the dimensions it reached after 100 years? The answer is certainly: yes. More than Rabbi Meir was a genius and leader, he was a visionary and a prophet. 100 years before any social network was born, before the principles of mass psychology were finally formulated, he succeeded in conceiving an operation that incorporated every sophisticated principle of using social engines and harnessed it for the central value of Torah study and knowledge.
Exactly 100 years have passed since then.
Time to say thank you to this dreamer, whose operation succeeded after his death much more than in his life.
Thank you, Rabbi Meir Shapira. Managed you more than expected.
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