1.
Due to deadline constraints, this column closed at the beginning of the week, a few days before the election. It's hard to guess what mood you'll be in when you read it at the end of the week. Will you be happy about the landslide victory? Sad and worried after a landslide failure? Or, God forbid, with a sense of frustration and (overwhelming) understanding that we're going to the polls again?
Moreover. Even in the event of a victory, it is not certain that in the end it will indeed turn out to be a victory, and even in the event of a loss it is impossible to know with certainty that it is a loss. I still remember to this day the great joy and relief the day after the 2003 elections, after it was learned that Arik Sharon had defeated the leftist candidate Amram Mitzna and that he would be the prime minister. Well, today one can only imagine what history would have looked like if Mitzna had won and not Sharon. What Gush Katif would have looked like, what the south would have looked like.
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But one thing I know for sure about this weekend: This coming Shabbat, hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world will celebrate a tremendous victory. They will finish studying Tractate Berakhot as part of the daily Daf Yomi. A large number of them, I estimate tens of thousands, for the first time in their lives. And that is a very sweet victory.
Basically 63 daily victories, page after page, about the attractive vanities of this world, about fatigue, about the difficulty of concentrating.
2.
What, are you writing about Daf Yomi again? This festival of all the big endings just ended. Enough, enough. Yes, you're right, but what will happen this coming Saturday is in many ways even more exciting than the ending of Shas.
I will explain: The completion of the Shas is for the strong, for those who persevered for seven and a half years. Congratulations to you. Blessed are you, scholars, whose Torah readings are most dear to you. But the completion of Tractate Berchot is not celebrated by the scholars. It is less for them. The ones who will be truly happy this coming Shabbat are those for whom the Torah readings were not who knows what dear to them until recently. The people who did not believe they would last more than three or four pages and yet set out, and suddenly found themselves finishing Tractate Shlomo.
3.
So congratulations, friends. Literally congratulations. I really hope you know how to pat yourself on the back. I hope your family knows how to pat you on the back. You deserve it.
Exactly six years ago, in Adar 5774, I finished Tractate Shlomo for the first time in my life, at the age of 37. It was Tractate Sukkah (I joined the previous cycle of Daf Yomi a year late and completely by chance). My wife organized a Tractate Completion Party in my honor, which, to be honest, seemed completely excessive to me. In addition to my immediate family, of course, there were also friends, important rabbis, important musicians, and a lot of important food.
At first it embarrassed me. What's the big deal? I just finished tractate Sukkah. Who said I would even continue to the next tractate? But she knew what she was doing.
This ending, with all the sermons on the Bridegroom of Joy, gives me strength to this day, six years later, for the daily challenge. I'll put it this way: Who said I would continue to the next tractate? The party said so.
If your husband's studies are important to you, treat him to a particularly festive ending. And even a few months later, when he finishes more and more tractates, try not to get used to it. I'm not saying you have to order catering every month or two, but I trust you to find the right way not to pass up the event as an agenda. Every family has its own style, every family has its own standards. You can bake a cake, you can order pizza, you can go out for ice cream together, say at 'Katsfat' or 'Zislak' (there is no hidden advertisement for a particular chain here, I'm just mentioning two places in the Holy Land that I really miss from the Diaspora).
Any such family gesture can cherish the study in the eyes of the learner, and no less importantly: in the eyes of his children. This is truly a proven virtue. The merit of all the tannaim, the amoraim, the ice creams and shakes will stand for you and your descendants, never to touch the sweetness of the Torah from your mouths.
4.
Okay, so after we properly celebrated the end of Tractate Berakhot, let's talk about the new product from Daf Yomi: Tractate Shabbat. I'm a passionate campaigner, but I truly believe in advertising. Well, Tractate Shabbat is, as we know, not Tractate Berakhot. Much less legend, much more complicated laws.
Right at the beginning of the tractate, you are given a head start, with laws of issuance from one jurisdiction to another, that will make you long for the wonderful dreams of Tractate Berakhot.
Still, it's important to constantly remember: What is the main characteristic of studying the Daf Yomi? The fact that it's daily. Today is hard? So tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, or in two weeks, it will be easy. Today is easy? Tomorrow will be hard. Everything passes, my dear. Both the fun and the complicated endings, so there's no time for narcissism in studying the Daf Yomi. You just study every day, like you brush your teeth every day.
5.
And the truth? With all the difficulty of Tractate Shabbat - it's too small for you. After all, the main challenge in learning was not deciphering the Gemara. True, it is often difficult and incomprehensible, but thank God, there is Schottenstein, and there are recorded lessons in all styles and lengths on the Daf Yomi portal and also in reality, in every synagogue and beit midrash.
The main challenge was perseverance. Stopping the race of life and every day, for long minutes, even an hour, disconnecting from everything for the benefit of the Gemara. And if it was a crazy day, then you make up for it the next day, or at most on Shabbat. You successfully stood by this task every day, for two months, despite all the interruptions and difficulties.
So, skilled and experienced practitioners like you will retire at the peak just because the next tract is a little less friendly?
6.
And just one more important point, and with that I conclude the announcement until the next tractate in about six months (Wow, how do you market Tractate Eruvin? It's like talking with enthusiasm and passion about the book 'Geometry, Trigonometry, Stereometry by Aharon Aspis'). I don't know exactly how much time you devoted each day to Daf Yomi, and how much you delved into it, but I'm sure that in the last two months you have been, if anything, more interested in blessings: blessings of joy, blessings of praise, zimon, reciting the Shema, prayer.
True, studying the Daf Yomi is not like studying a Halacha book, and yet, the daily engagement with a tractate whose sole concern is blessings and prayer was present to such a degree in your practical life. It has an impact, and it's great fun. A kind of thrill. To keep the mitzvot not just because that's how I learned in kindergarten, but to be a little more involved. To move up a grade. To be Jews of Tractate Blessings.
And now we have the opportunity, once and for all, to be a little more involved in matters of Shabbat, of Shabbat laws, of the 19th Avot Melachah, and in general in the meaning of this beloved day. And we will do this in the coming six months, not just on Shabbats, but every day. It's a bit of an upgrade to life. Why not every Shabbat? Here, every Shabbat!
7.
That's it. Starting this week, there will no longer be a hundred new election videos every day. Bibi is not changing waiters and dog walkers, Gantz is not stuttering, the muses are a little quieter. Even the dose of ugly secret recordings should decrease dramatically. That leaves us with a lot of free time. What does the Blue and White slogan say? We must move forward.
• The column is published in the newspaper on Sheva.
