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Ive been wondering this for a while with today’s technology & fast paced lives.
Not too long ago men attended Daf Yomi in person holding a Gemara & listening to the Rebbe. That seems to be the “standard”
So today what qualifies a person to make a personal Siyum?
A 5 min Daf?
An 8 minute Daf?
A 20 minute Daf?
Does a “summary” count or does the Rebbe need to read (almost) every word straight from the Gemara?
Even with a normal 40-60 minute shiur does one have to be holding a Gemara & following along? Or is just listening to a full length shiur online without a Gemara while commuting to work count?
There’s plenty of different variables & options but I’m looking for, “What is the minimum shiur that entitles one to make a Siyum on Shas?”Who said there is any minimum shiur?
There was an elderly Yid who had great difficulty learning but after many months of learning with a chavrusa managed to learn one blatt of Gemara. He asked a gadol (it may have been Rav Chaim; I don’t remember exactly) whether he could make a siyum on a single daf. The gadol said yes–you can make a siyum on any learning accomplishment that’s significant to you!
In practice, there are people who just listen to a shiur (without looking at the Gemara inside), and they make siyumim. Others learn on their own too. I personally do both. I would probably feel more of a sense of a accomplishment if I took tests or had some structured chazara at the end of a masecha. But I make siyumim anyway.
The 8 minute daf hasn’t been done for a while. Reb Eli now only does the full shiur. I don’t know if there are any “summary” shiurim.
Ask your wife. If your middos improved over this time, you can do the siyum. If they didn’t, no point celebrating even if you spent 5 hours daily on the daf. Good you asked early, you can do a check now and refocus your learning.
To yytz:
The story is with R’ Moshe Feinstein. It was with a boxer who suffered from CTE, a form of dementia due to multiple head injuries. It took him a year to finish 1 blatt, R’ Moshe paskened to make a siyum on it and he attended it.
The next day this person passed away. At the levaya R’ Moshe was maspid him יש קונה עולמו בדף אחד.I suspect one “devalues the currency” if a Siyum becomes a routine affair or a pretense to to avoid other halachic restrictions.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall the Yam Shel Shlomo – Maharshal – in Bava Kama saying saying that the definition of a seudas mitzvah is one that is eaten in celebration of a mitzvah. So if one is eating lunch anyhow but has conincide3ntally finished a messechta, that would not be a seudas mitzva, no matter how many hadrans are recited. On the other hand, one who completed a single tosfos and is genuinely excited and makes a seudah on that account, that is a seudas mitzva.
So in al the cases mentioned above, there would be no seudas mitzvah – the ‘mitzva’ is generated to allow the seuda, which doesn’t work.
The former 8 minute daf by Rabbi Eli Stefansky was not a shiur that read the Gemara. It was a summary shiur made for those who had gone through the daf already and wanted chazara. He originally started the 8 minute daf shiur as a summary to the daf not to replace daf yomi but as a chazara to those who learned the daf already. Someone suggested that he give a full daf yomi shiur and that’s how his full daf yomi shiur was born. He stopped the 8 min daf as it was getting hard for him to prepare for the full daf yomi shiur and a summary shiur as well. He hopes to eventually one day come back to it.
I would think a siyum qualifies as someone who went through the Gemara (word by word) and understood it, even if he did it quickly.
If you do a search for path4life, you’ll get the website of Rabbi Nachum Malinowitz and his shiurim. Among his shiurim, he has daf4life, which is a synopsis of the daf.R Aha b’ Yaakov (I think) sent his son to learn for a year and stayed home working the farm. When the son came back, he tested the son and then went back himself, leaving the son to work. Do you think he asked the son whether he followed every word or how many hours he was holding the (non-existent) gemorah? That he could have found out via a shaliach in the first month. No, he was waiting the whole year to see what the son has actually learned.
So, you guys discuss minutiae – minutes, with text or listening, etc. I suggested ^ a middos test, but probably an open ended question “tell me something you learned” is a better one. Some will learn middos, some something else. If a person learned one tremendous idea from the whole maseches, then you can do a siyum. Even if he did by listening 8-min daf at 2x speed while exercising.
“The definition of a seudas mitzvah is one that is eaten in celebration of a mitzvah…”
Perhaps literally, but this definition implicitly devalues the whole concept of a siyum coupled with a seudas mitzvah. Most associate the concept with a significant degree of incremental effort in one’s limud torah, hashkafah, etc. Trivializing it with putting on teffilin, saying asher yatzar, toiveling in mikvah and other more routine mitzvos seems to be form over substance.
P.S. Try something innovative that you haven’t done before. Commit for shanayim mikra/echud targum for a least sefer Bereshis, try following R’ Eli’s nightly shiur in Hebrew (MDY home page link) for several weeks, volunteer to tutor a special needs bochur in a blat gemorah and celebrate a small accomplishment with him. All of these type events seem more in the spirit..
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