For obvious reasons, Daf Yomi is all the rage these days. Over 110,000 packed a football stadium and a basketball arena in the New York area last Wednesday for the Agudah-sponsored Siyum HaShas, and countless smaller siyumim have been made around the world in the days since. In Teaneck, over 300 people came out on Sunday morning for an event launching the new cycle of Daf Yomi, and with good reason it is assumed that perhaps as many as half a million people learned the first daf of Masechet Brachot on the same day, a feat both unprecedented and unimaginable to previous generations. Over the next few days and weeks, countless people who never before saw themselves as candidates to finish Shas will at least take the first steps along that path.
Consistent with Newton's third law, all of this positive action produces the inevitable and predictable reactions. Daf Yomi is not the ideal way of learning; it is too fast; it is too slow; it is too superficial. The critiques come from both the halls of Yeshivot as well as from secular Talmud scholars - and they all contain a modicum of truth to them. However, they also strike me as largely irrelevant, and for two reasons that I wish to elaborate upon.
Reason #1 - The mitzva of Talmud Torah
Rambam (Hilchot Talmud Torah 1:8) rules that a person is obligated to establish fixed times for Torah learning every day and every night, based on the pasuk in Sefer Yehoshua - v'hagita bo yomam va-layla. Shulchan Aruch (O.C. 155:1) codifies this as well, and emphasizes the need to make this time a permanent fixture in one's day. Granted, neither one demands that the learning in question be the study of Gemara, and certainly not the amount demanded daily by Daf Yomi.
However, Daf Yomi is perhaps the most successful program of study that makes a daily demand that one learn a certain amount. The one course of learning mandated by the Gemara, namely the requirement to review the weekly parsha with a commentary (shnayim mikra v'echad targum - Brachot 8a), only requires us to finish the parsha over the course of the week, and thus one could fulfill that obligation by waking up early on Shabbat morning and spending an hour or two reading through the parsha. Only Daf Yomi requires its adherents to show up every day without fail, with no regard to busy days, vacation days, holidays, or any other type of days.
But, but, but!!! What about all of those other "Yomi" programs - Nach Yomi, Mishna Yomi, Mishna Berura Yomi? Don't they count as learning? Of course they do - but we have to recognize that they all were created in the shadow of Daf Yomi. If mishna is more one's speed, then by all means, he or she should focus on mishna. If Tanach works for you - go for it. And if you are learning in Yeshiva and you have time for serious analysis far beyond what is involved in Daf Yomi, then certainly you should expend your energies there. The genius of Daf Yomi is that its widespread and growing acceptance forces everyone to answer the question of "What are you learning today?" - and forces us to answer it every single day, exactly as Rambam and Shulchan Aruch have ruled. Your answer to the question can be that you are doing Daf Yomi, or it can be that you are learning something - anything - else. But your answer cannot be "nothing". Daf Yomi has elevated the issue of learning every day to the status of a national priority and thus even if it is not for you, it pushes you to figure out what is.
Reason #2 - The Global Beit Midrash
There is a disheartening comment by the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 2:1) that states that for every 1,000 people who begin to learn Tanach, 100 will advance to learn Mishna. From that 100, 10 will move on to Gemara, and only 1 of those who advance to the level of hora'a, meaning that they will be qualified to offer halachic instruction. On the face of it, it sounds like an educational system with a fairly low success rate.
Of course, those numbers are not set in stone and they do not have to remain static. Centuries of Jewish thinkers, from the Sages to the Maharal to modern-day educators, have offered pedagogical, methodological, and psychological advice as to how to enhance education, reach more students, and create learners who will absorb more of what they are taught and be able to analyze that material at ever-higher levels.
However, on its most simple level, the Midrash is saying that Torah learning is challenging. To be an accomplished Torah scholar requires one to master a wide range of texts written over several millenia, in multiple languages and dialects, in often opaque and complex writing styles. There are more books to master than there are minutes in a year, and every volume seems to cross-reference every other volume. Viewed from that perspective, one out of a thousand does not seem so bad.
It is here that the sheer popularity of Daf Yomi becomes its strength, by raising the numbers of people who enter into the pool in the first place. While there are undoubtedly some for whom Daf Yomi is not the best way to spend the time that they have available for learning, for so many more that time was not being used for learning in the first place. True, for many of those individuals attending a Daf Yomi shiur will be the highest level of learning that they will attain - and that alone is an amazing accomplishment! However, the more people who involve themselves in the daily study of Gemara, the more likely that a few of them will push beyond and become the people giving the Daf Yomi shiur, and perhaps even go beyond that. Further, as was highlighted at the Siyum HaShas this past week, the result of children seeing their parents involved in daily study of Gemara is likely to be children who follow in their parents' footsteps, again expanding the pool of people who commit themselves to serious Torah learning. If a rising tide lifts all boats, then the tide of Daf Yomi is currently a high one indeed.
Rav Meir Shapiro, in founding Daf Yomi, famously dreamed of two Jews from different countries and different stations in life being able to chance upon one another on a train and be able to converse about the daf that they both happened to be learning. As Daf Yomi continues to gain in popularity with each new cycle, those encounters become more common and the broader Jewish world continuously crystallizes into an international Beit Midrash.
