On September 28th, 1997, I made my way to Madison Square Garden for a historic event. On that day the daf-yomi cycle of synchronized Talmud study was completed for only the tenth time since this learning program was launched. I had not participated in daf yomi learning, but a close family friend brought me along with him to the celebratory siyum marking the completion of the daf yomi cycle. He teaches a daf yomi shiur in one of the shuls near where he lives. As a high school student who had not yet studied in a yeshiva, I was in awe of both the Torah scholarship being celebrated and the Orthodox society that promoted and honored Torah scholarship in such a significant and dramatic way.
Daf Yomi was invented in August, 1923 at the annual convention of the Agudat Yisrael movement by a young rabbi, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the brilliant rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Hokhmei Lublin in Poland. He proposed a daily cycle of Talmud study that would unite Jews everywhere in the world. He encouraged Jews to take on the practice to study the very same page of Talmud according to a regular schedule of one daf, one folio, each day, culminating in the completion of the entire Babylonian Talmud every 2,711 days. The very first daf of Massechet Berachot was studied on the first day of Rosh Hashannah in 1923 and seven years and five months later the very first celebratory siyum took place at Yeshivat Hokhmei Lublin, presided over by Rabbi Meir Shapiro himself.
Rabbi Shapiro, who died young, was no longer alive at the second siyum of the daf yomi cycle in June, 1938. By the time the third daf yomi siyum was celebrated in November 1945, the great yeshivot of Europe were gone, and thousands of their students, faculty, administrators, and donors had been murdered alongside millions of their brothers and sisters. But at least some Jews gathered for a siyum in a DP camp in allied occupied Europe.
By the time the tenth siyum was celebrated in 1997, the depleted ranks of students of Torah and Torah scholars had been filled by more than two generations of Jews raised to cherish the Torah and its mitzvot and Jews turned out to celebrate by the tens of thousands. The 25,000 people who were with me at Madison Square Garden were joined by an additional 20,000 in the Nassau Coliseum. The highlight of attending the massive siyum was the chance to recite Mincha and Maariv prayers in a congregation of 25,000. The reverberations of thousands all crying out “Amen Yehei Shemeih Rabbah Mevorach” at the same time is a transcendent experience and for this reason I eagerly accepted the invitation to attend the siyum for the next two daf yomi cycles in 2005 and 2012. By 2012 the siyum had to move to Met Life Stadium to accomodate more than 90,000 attendees and that is where they will celebrate the upcoming siyum this January. The siyum audience at the stadium is larger than for any football game since they can put additional seating on the field for a siyum.
I am not going to be able to make it to the siyum in New Jersey this January, but I’m doing something even better. When the next daf yomi cycle begins on January 5th, I intend to start that cycle too and continue my way through the Babylonian Talmud. I hope you’ll consider joining me. For the past four years we have had a daf yomi class at the shul following weekday Shacharit. After January 5th we will meet on Shabbat and holiday mornings too, starting at 8:20 AM.
Bit there is another moment from that first siyum which has remained seared into my memory. As my crowded subway car reached 34th street and the other passengers and I made our way from the train to the entrance to Madison Square Garden we were met by a row of metal detectors and a platoon of uniformed police officers who yelled instructions to the surging crowds to sort us into lines so that we could pass through the security checkpoints and enter the stadium.
Being in that space, hearing the yells of the officers, seeing crowds of mostly bearded men in dark suits and hats being sorted into lines for more efficient processing, and feeling the crowds press in around me, I had a moment of panic. Being around so many Jews in the presence of uniformed guards causes a sort of inherited post-Holocaust PTSD to kick in. “I’ve seen this before” I thought to myself, and it doesn’t have a happy ending. Ten minutes later I was safely in my seat enjoying the siyum and the trauma receded.
My conflicting siyum memories symbolize the two poles of Jewish experience and the two poles of what can happen when we gather together as Jews in large numbers in publicly visible ways. We can cry out “Amen Yeheih Shemeih Rabbah Mevorach” by the thousands and tens of thousands and sanctify God’s name, but some of the largest gatherings of Jews in history have been gatherings undertaken by our enemies. We are vulnerable to attack when we clearly identify as Jews and gather together. It is so much easier for our enemies to target us when we come together in Jewish spaces or in ways that identify us as Jews.
Hanukkah contains both poles as well. We were vulnerable to the persecutions of the Hellenists precisely because Judaism was centered in the beit hamikdash, in one building in just one city. If our enemies had eradicated Judaism from Jerusalem, we could not have recovered. And the story of a bloody war against the Greeks, and an even more deadly civil war among Jews lies just below the surface of our songs and prayers.
Famously, Hanukkah is completely absent from the Mishnah with only one surprising reference to the liability for damage caused by a Hanukkah light that ignites a fire. It is as though Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, as he edited the Mishnah thought to remind us that Hanukkah was a holiday with dangerous potential. Fire is dangerous. Jewish communal life puts a target on our backs and invites the persecution of our enemies.
However, the primary mitzvah of Hanukkah, the rabbis tell us, is to light Hanukkah candles, and those candles, the Talmud says, must be lit at a time when they can be seen by others. According to the Talmud they are lit outside so that non-Jewish passersby can see them and by publicizing the Hanukkah miracle to those passersby we sanctify God’s name. But centuries ago the practice evolved to lighting Hanukkah lights indoors because of the danger that lighting Hanukkah candles outdoors would antagonize our enemies or draw unwanted attention to our homes. This practice has endured even where it is safe to publicly identify as a Jew.
And so the Hanukkah lights themselves represent our bold statement of faith in God’s miraculous care for us and our community. And the lights are partially hidden inside our homes because of fears that have been passed down from generation to generation.
The book of Proverbs teaches “ner mitzvah v’Torah ohr” – a poetic couplet that expresses the flame of a mitzvah and the light that shines from Torah. Like all Biblical poetry in this form, the two halves of the couplet can be understood as a simple recapitulation. Ner Mitzvah and Torah Ohr are expressing the same thing.
I was taught, years ago, to pay attention to the differences in this verse. Ner is a flame. A flame can burn out of control and cause harm as the Mishnah itself warns. And a flame will eventually consume its fuel and die down. In contrast, ohr, light, emanates outward and onward forever. A mitzvah is akin to a flame because it is a concrete act that ties us to God and to one another. It comes and it goes and if a mitzvah isn’t replicated or repeated with another mitzvah it’s impact with sputter and die like a flame. Mitzvah gorerret mitzvah – one mitzvah leads to another – is not just a promise it is also an obligation. But Torah is akin to light. It is the perpetual generator of Jewish life and a never-ending source of good in the world. Ner mitzvah v’Torah Ohr.
On Hanukkah, we are meant to demonstrate to the world that we will stand with Judaism even when it’s hard and even when it feels dangerous. Decades ago Rav Soloveitchik probed the curious halakhic detail that even someone who is sustained by charity is obligated to light Hanukkah lights (Harrarei Kedem I: 160). This is unlike most mitzvot which are not obligatory when they are financially impossible. One does not have to spend an irresponsible sum to purchase the only etrog in town. But someone with no money of his or her own should nonetheless light Hanukkah lights. This is because the mitzvah of publicizing the miracle of Hanukkah is, at its root, the same mitzvah as sanctifying God’s name in public, a demand that transcends our normal pragmatic calculations.
Our willingness to risk our very lives for the sake of Jewish survival, and our public celebration of God’s own miraculous investment in Jewish survival are two sides of the same coin. Ner Mitzvah v’Torah Ohr. Even when a mitzvah is too dangerous or too expensive, or frightening, spreading the light of Torah must continue.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 