To many ears, any criticism of Daf Yomi comes as a surprise. After all, Daf Yomi is the second most common Jewish text study program ever (the first of course being weekly study of the Parashah and Haftara, uniting all Jews.)
So before I mention any criticism, or offer suggestions, I acknowledge the great good. Well over 100,000 Jewish people across the globe study together in pure Torah Lishmah. Studying holy texts for their own sake. Jews who are Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrachi; Jews by birth or giyur גיור ; married and unmarried, men and women, adults and teens.
And despite flaws, Rabbi Ethan Moses Tucker explains that the decision to engage in daily Jewish text study creates commitment and results.
There is a lot more interconnectivity between different communities than we realize on the surface, a lot more passing in and out, and more interdependence than most like to acknowledge. But the Jewish future will be “won” by the committed, the people who show up, strategically orient their lives around Judaism and make daily commitments that shape who they and their children are. For that, Daf Yomi is a wonderful and powerful metaphor, and I am very happy to celebrate all it represents in that regard.
Here is a photo of the 13th Global Siyum Hashas of Daf Yomi at MetLife Stadium, New Jersey.
So what then are criticisms of Daf Yomi?
From a teacher’s point of view, it is a pedagogical disaster. Imagine trying to learn our civilization’s history, art, literature, and religions – by reading the original 1700s version of the Encyclopædia Britannica, one page a day, only in order, from front to back. And, in this analogy, its a non-English version, written in an old form of English quite different from our own. On top of that, it is written in shorthand, as it was redacted before the invention of the printing press. As such it has only minimally necessary wording.
Reading in this way the subjects wouldn’t be connected by idea. You would read about “forests” one day, and then “finance” a few months later, yet wouldn’t learn what “plants” are until a few years later. By the time you get to “plants” it has been months since you read about “forests.” And so on, for every subject.
Similarly, the subjects in the Talmud aren’t always connected in page order. So this is no way to learn Judaism – not history or ethics, not law or legend, not how to argue and think.
As an educator and a Jew, these observations from Professors Jacob Neusner and Samuel Heilman speak to me: They discuss the difference between learning, in the educational sense, and lernen, a mode of ritual study that doesn’t necessarily impart much knowledge.
We offer some criticisms of Day Yomi:
Dan Margulies writes
“Daf Yomi is driving across the US at 80 mph and passing all the landmarks and parks saying “I will be sure to come back and visit that” “
Shoshana Michael Zucker writes
There are so many ways that people are doing Daf Yomi that I don’t know if generalizations are possible, except one: It is a ridiculously fast pace. The Talmud isn’t meant to be read as a book, and I am very concerned about the posts I am seeing from people who are using it as a first-entry into Jewish learning. Unless they find a really good teacher they are likely to get frustrated and I fear turned off from Jewish learning.
Even leaders in Daf Yomi understand that many participants aren’t learning in the traditional sense: David Landes writes
“It is noteworthy that none of the speakers gave a shiur or “spoke in learning,” which would seem to reflect an assumption that many in attendance either would not be interested or not be able to follow. While the daf yomi program was feted for being a great equalizer, unifying Jews of all types, the distinction between real talmidei chachamim and ba’ale-battim was maintained.”
Solidarity and Redemption at MetLife Stadium: Notes from the Siyum Ha-Shas- Guest Post by David J. Landes
Rabbi Ethan Moses Tucker of Hadar writes about the Siyum Ha-Shas event:
The Event Shockingly Has Nothing to Do with the Talmud Bavli…. I was struck by how the event had no educational character. If I had been on the planning committee, there would have been all kinds of things that would have brought you in to the actual stuff that was studied. I would have had a unique color coding and iconography for each massekhet, and the divrei Torah would have shared a highlight from each and every tractate….
Great scholars of the academy would highlight the best of research into the Talmud Bavli that happened over the last 7.5 years. Inspirational speakers would share the 5 most important messages they learned from the Talmud. Someone would offer a vision of what the Talmud can offer the world. And even the many folks who didn’t finish Daf Yomi who were there (you’re lookin’ at one) would leave with a deeper sense of what this work is about, what is magical about it and why it has made it this long.
Instead, we got lots of talk about discipline, overcoming illness, supportive families (mainly wives and children) and live time with the contemporary greats of the Agudah’s rabbinic leadership. These are all appropriate and even inspiring in their own way, but they really have nothing to do with the Talmud Bavli per se.
I now quote here a recent piece which has attained some attention, “The Moderate Response to the Siyum haShas.” Here, Rabbi Gidon Rothstein writes
Daf Yomi’s attractions are not hard to uncover: it offers an opportunity, in a well-planned course, to achieve what seems like a great deal of Torah study. Give us an hour a day for seven years, the Daf Yomi call says, and we will give you Shas. Like a marathon, Daf Yomi is a task that requires little skill, just the willingness to show up with discipline and consistency….
The problem begins to become clear when we consider the religious yield of the practice, because there is so little of it. In an hour a day, the vast majority of those who attend such shiurim can do no more than watch the text whiz by, gleaning occasional nuggets of information that strike them as particularly interesting….
My own experience has been that serious talmidei hakhamim do not study Daf Yomi…
Daf Yomi instead appeals, with notable but few exceptions, to those who get so caught up in the romance of completing a great task in bite-sized pieces that they do not notice that the bites are too large for them to digest, who do not figure out that they end up with the appurtenances of accomplishment without the actuality.
No harm, no foul, I hear readers thinking. Why pick on people who are devoting such time and effort to studying Torah?
… Daf Yomi often (really, almost always) turns Torah study into another form of davening, where the only requirement is to sit down at a table for a certain period of time, listen passively as someone spoon feeds ideas, or read them out of an English Gemara, going by so fast it leaves no impression on the student.
Torah study becomes what Nevi’im decried in other contexts: a mitzvat anashim melumadah, a rote observance devoid of all internal impact. Rabbi Yisroel Salanter is said to have encountered a Jew who told him he had been through all of Shas. His reply? “Yes, but has it been through you?”
– Rabbi Gidon Rothstein is currently the Rosh Kollel at the HAFTR Community Kollel in Cedarhurst, NY
Exclusion of women
In yeshivahs and kollels, women almost never participate in Daf Yomi. In most Orthodox synagogues, which offer daily Daf Yomi study, they generally do not include women.
Rabbanit Leah Sarna writes
I haven’t been able to articulate it in a way that isn’t uselessly angry…but these “pan orthodox moments” usually involve modern orthodox men leaving the women in their communities in the dust in a way that obviously makes my skin crawl. Watching so many male colleagues posting from siyum hashas and feeling so excited and positive about an event that leaves no space or appreciation for women’s learning was a pretty unpleasant part of my Wednesday…
(and of course there were 10,000 women in attendance which must have been amazing [many minyan points!!] but they were explicitly encouraged to be there because of their hishtadlus to enable their husbands’ learning, not their own)
What could we do instead of Daf Yomi?
Daily Tanakh
A popular study program is 929 Tanakh B’yachad (“Bible together.”) It is named for the 929 chapters in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible.) We read one chapter a day, five days a week. There are no readings on Friday and Saturday, when we study the week’s parashah פָּרָשָׁה (Torah portion.)
Mishnah Yomit
The Mishnah provides the framework to Rabbinic Judaism as we know it today, for all denominations, all approaches. It is the core of Judaism’s oral law. Rabbi Reuven Spolter writes that the Mishnah Yomit (daily Mishnah) program can and should be a leading daily program for Jews around the world. It is:
◉ Clear and concise,
◉ Short and understandable
◉ Perfect for “bite-sized” consumption
◉ Every masechet is an achievement, allowing beginners to have a sense of accomplishment in a relatively short period of time.
This is the perfect time to start Mishnah Yomit as a New Mishna Yomit Cycle Begins Dec. 25!
Integrated daily – or weekly – text study, a proposal
Robert Kaiser writes:
We can develop religious adult ed classes in which we learn Jewish thought, philosophy, halakhah; we’d learn from the great Jewish texts in a program arranged by great teachers.
This could be designed both as once-a-week or daily. A weekly reading would be for one level of students, while a richer, deeper version with daily readings rewards and educates those who make time each day.
Just like Daf Yomi, once a schedule of readings is set, study could be done on our own or in local groups.
At any time one could follow along by watching YouTube videos, reading at home, or participating in a Facebook group dedicated to this schedule (e.g. see the Mishnah Yomit Group for an example)
People could meet with on Zoom, or in person. And in-person events should take a cue from Chabad and follow the idea of innovative outreach. Sure, we could meet once a week at a local synagogue. But we could also meet at a local coffeeshop, cafe, even at a wine bar.
In this idea, we’d cover several topics throughout the year, with a month or two per topic. For example:
Where does Shabbat come from? How did it develop from the Bible, through the Midrash and Mishnah, to the Talmud? How has it been understood and observed in Jewish communities across the world? How do we understand Shabbat through philosophical rationalism (e.g. works of Gersonides and Maimonides) How do we understand it through mysticism (e.g. the Bahir, Zohar, Hasidut, etc.)
We could put together daily text study with readings from the Torah, Tanakh, Midrash, Mishnah, both of the Talmuds, the responsa literature, and later rabbinic works.
Weekly tefila (prayer) focus
Weekly Tefilah Focus is a weekly email created to assist those who wish to improve their kavanah in tefilah. The program is designed to work by participants investing only a few minutes a week to focus on one particular segment of tefilah.
Daily halakhah
Dalet Amot of Halacha from the OU
Halacha yomit
Daily study of Rambam Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah
The Mishneh Torah, also known as the Yad HaChazakah (“The Strong Hand”), is a monumental legal code written by Maimonides (Rambam) around 1200 CE. It is one of the most organized, comprehensive, and influential works of Jewish law. Maimonides clearly explains all aspects of Jewish observance, including those applicable only in Temple times.
There are schedules that let us choose to follow along at 1 or 3 paragraphs a day.
Daily Rambam (Chabad) and All of Torah. All of Us. Chabad
Daily mitzvah
Articles
The Balabatish Daf Yomi Revolution, Zev Eleff, The Lehrhaus
5 Reasons Why “Daf Yomi” Electrifies the Jewish World, Shraga Simmons, Aish
Daf Yomi Is Women’s Work, Rahel Musleah, Hadassah
On the Same Page, Miriam Krule, Slate
Jewish Women Daf Yomi About Anything, Facebook group
_________________________
Merrimack Valley Havurah 