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And again a new tractate on Daf Yomi. Do you think I wrote about this just a moment ago? You're right. Tractate Makot, which hundreds of thousands of students in the Jewish world are finishing this week, is one of the shortest in the Shas. And Tractate Shavuot, which we will begin at a good and auspicious time this weekend, is also a short tractate: only 48 pages. A short tractate is an opportunity to finally burn into you an experience of success. You can start something and also finish it. And whoever tastes a taste of success, gets motivation and faith in his abilities. This is a very big thing.
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And there is something else that gives me special motivation in the new tractate: its study begins on the 1st of Iyar. I once heard from an Abrevet who once studied at the Kerem Yeshiva in Yavne, that on Independence Day he and his friends wanted to leave the yeshiva for some entertainment or ceremony. He no longer remembers where, but he clearly remembered what the mythical Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Goldwicht told them.
What is Independence Day? A day when we give thanks for the great graces in the establishment of the State of Israel, he said. Well, is there a more beautiful way to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for the great miracles He has done for us than to study Torah on this day in a yeshiva in the Land of Israel?
Rabbi Goldwicht told his students this decades ago, and it's been a long time since that abbot told me these things, but every year on Independence Day I am reminded of this simple and natural feeling of Rabbi Goldwicht. Especially when I see the various advertisements about "a day full of Torah" with countless shiurim all over the country.
Some may think that this is the way of all kinds of synagogues, or of rabbis, especially from the Eastern denominations, who have not fully formed their opinion on Independence Day, to avoid celebrating this day. But the truth is the opposite: this is the most accurate and beautiful way to celebrate this day. Rejoice and be glad, O Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in your midst.
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And this year there is another reason to add Torah study to Independence Day: to purify the air of the Holy Land a little. Not from the smoke of barbecues, but from the spirit that rises from the state and central ceremony of the State of Israel.
The truth is, for years now I haven't understood how this ceremony is considered by many to be the heart of the consensus: Why? Because it is a way to express gratitude to people who have contributed to Israeli society in the past year? Very nice. Well done. Really. But what about the rest of the event, its content, dances and costumes? Sometimes I get nostalgic for the innocent days of the Bat Sheva band and the "Ahad Mi Yode" storm.
What does this event mean to those who celebrate this day with praise and thanksgiving to the Holy One, Blessed be He, "who redeemed them from the hand of oppression, and gathered them from the lands from the east and the west, from the north and the sea," as the Psalmist chapter says that opens the evening prayer for Independence Day in the various synagogues across the country, just as the announcer on Mount Herzl introduces (remember last year's ceremonies?) Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana entering the ceremony area.
Oh, maybe the fact that they're bringing in the most successful singer of the era, who in recent years, thank God, is always religious or repentant and his songs are full of love and faith? That's ridiculous.
But there is a song, actually an anthem, that has not been replaced in this ceremony for decades: "We Carry Torches." A song that is entirely a heresy against God and His grace in the spirit of old secular Zionism. The most famous line is "No miracle happened to us, we could not find a jar of oil!" But later in the song there is also a defiant reference to the divine command not to go up to Mount Sinai. Yes, yes. And the climax is a heresy in the creation of the world: "We hewed in the rock until blood – and there was light!" I have read several literary analyses of this song and its messages. To summarize it in one sentence: We do not believe in the rule of the Holy One, blessed be He!
I wonder which minister will have the courage to replace this song, which so does not express the spirit of the majority of the Israeli people. Certainly not since October 7, and the collapse of the "My Strength and My Power" concept. I know who wouldn't have the courage: Minister Miri Regev. We saw how she "balanced" the choice of the "controversial" Ben Shapiro.
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By the way, this week I did a little research on the man who wrote the poem in question. His name was Aharon Zeev. He was a poet and writer who grew up in a town in Poland, immigrated to Israel in 1925, settled in Degania, and then in Tel Aviv, where he was among the founders of the "Educational Home for Workers' Children" (one of his students from those days was Yitzhak Rabin). With the establishment of the state, Zeev was appointed head of the IDF's "Culture Department", one of the founders of the Education Corps and "one of the shapers of its image and work patterns". He was later appointed to serve as the IDF's chief education officer.
In the book "Gale Tzahal Speaks from the Field" written by Rafi Mann and Tzipi Gon-Gross and documenting the history of the station, it is written: "Gale Tzahal was born in the State of Israel, which at that time was engaged in absorbing waves of immigrants. On the day the station began broadcasting, the newspapers announced the end of Operation 'Magic Carpet,' in which some fifty thousand immigrants from Yemen were brought to Israel... Aharon Ze'ev, head of the Information and Education Branch in the Personnel Division of the General Staff, saw the station as an excellent tool that would assist the IDF in the educational mission it had undertaken, mainly in absorbing immigrants." You understand which immigrants we are talking about, from which homes, with what pure faith, and what the desired "educational mission" is.
Zeev is also quoted as saying: "The current level of the soldier community requires a special educational approach, based on information and education, presented indirectly, and in an attractive and entertaining way.".
Wow. What is called, radio-based wig cutting. It's amazing how over 75 years later, both the Education Corps and Galei IDF manage to preserve this legacy, generation after generation, despite all the changes that have taken place in Israeli society.
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And from the Education Corps of Lieutenant Colonel Aharon Zeev to the Education Corps of Rabbi Meir Shapira of Lublin. I received a lot of enthusiastic responses about the very well-invested 'Yomi' app, which I highly recommended here in that column, and I recommend it even more highly after studying the entire tractate of Maktot with it. It really is a different world. In my opinion, it is a real revolution in the world of learning. No less. But the next email brought me back to the old, great old ones. You know, the ones with the smell.
""Hello friends. My name is Eli, I live in Jerusalem. About two years ago my father passed away. He was a man of the past, the only son of parents who survived the Auschwitz extermination camp. My father studied the Daf Yomi, and fortunately he managed to finish the Shas. After his passing, I decided to give away the Shas that he had. I had already arranged with someone to deliver it. Then I came across, I don't remember where, your column about the Daf Yomi. I said: Let's get started. I apologized to that gentleman, and he accepted it with understanding.
""And since then I've been sitting and studying. Can I tell you that it changed my life? Absolutely. I study seven days a week, with great love, with a strong desire. Tears at the end of a tractate... sitting with my wife at the Shabbat table and talking to her about entire issues. And I haven't opened a gemara in more than 30 years. Since my high school yeshiva days. So thank you very much!".
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I thanked Eli for the moving letter (and I also thanked God, blessed be He, who sends me such moving stories by email), congratulated him on his graduation, and asked him a series of questions: Who are you? Which tractate did you start with? How is the learning experience going for you? I also asked to hear a little more about the first owner of the Shas, who is his father. And he replied: "I am still a novice. I started last summer with Tractate Baba Batra, then Tractate Sanhedrin, and now I am finishing Tractate Makot. The Gemara is part of my P'kal. Everywhere, on every journey, it is with me. I found myself in tears at the end of the tractates (and I am Ashkenazi, we do not tear up easily…). I am not the most religious person, and I do not pretend to be, it is important to me that people know that the Gemara is a whole world, it is exciting, sometimes entertaining, it is exciting, it is everything.
""Who was my father? Yehoshua Rosenbaum, late. Born in Germany after the war. Came to Israel on an illegal immigrant ship, a true Zionist, tears up when he sees the flag. Fought in most of Israel's campaigns, the Six Days, the Attrition War, Yom Kippur, the First Lebanon War. Loved people and the country. He was one of the founders of the Daf Yomi classes at the synagogue where he lived in Kfar Saba. Every day, winter and summer, he would go to study. Fortunately, he managed to finish high school and start it over again.
""About two years ago, he passed away from an illness, and my mother, who is a widow, asked me to hand over the Shas. I published it, and the number of inquiries I received was crazy. I said: What do they know that I don't? And then, like a sign from heaven, I came across your article. I took the Gemara, opened it... My late father was a rabbi, so at the beginning of each page he wrote the start and end dates of the period in which he studied the tractate. I said: Let's try. And here I am. My mother, who is a full-time nurse, is confined to her bed, and when she sees me enter her room with the Gemara - her eyes sparkle.
""So, truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much. You have no idea how grateful I am. I wish I could graduate from the Shas (it's unbelievable how dreams get updated). To you.".
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""Amen!" I wrote him excitedly in a return mail. I also asked, if possible, for a picture of Tractate Makot, the one he is finishing this week, from his late father's old Shas. I thought it would be exciting to publish his father's manuscript, and perhaps his own as well, with the date on which he was privileged to begin studying and finish the tractate. And he replied: "Unfortunately, I cannot take a picture of Tractate Makot. It is also a work of art... This tractate is missing from the Shas I inherited. It turns out that my late father gave it to someone I do not know so that he could sit down and study with his son.".
So if any of you happen to come across an old gemara, Tractate Makot, with a start date and end date in the neat handwriting of a Yakha – you will know that it belongs to someone who does not intend to give it up so quickly. And remember the Gemarat on the Children.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
