2 Responses

1. Mazel Tov!!!

2. Mazel tov! This is takeh a great simcha and thanks for sharing it with us.
   I hope not to rain on the parade. I remember as a sixth grader hearing about a certain balebus in my shul that he learned shas 3 times. I looked at him with such respect, that we had someone in our shul that learned shas! In years gone by, learning shas was the gold standard of someone serious about their learning. Of course we were all raised on stories of our gedolim learning shas hundreds of times, and I am not referring to such feats of genius. All of us have the ability to go through shas in our lifetime but it seems as if the emphasis has been removed from this spiritual achievement.
   In some minds, finishing shas has become synonomous with superficial daf-yomi learning. It may be that a balebus doing the daf for 1 hour a day is not high enough a standard for yeshiva guys. Why then not do it at all? Take an hour and a half a day over ten years to finish shas. Dont rush!-but work towards it. At this rate you can finish 5-6 and even more times in your lifetime. It can be done by any Yid with an average intellect.
   Rav Sholom Shvadron as a yeshiva bochur would keep a log of how many blatt he learned each week.( he learned 700 blatt a zman on average). If yeshivaleit would keep an account of their weekly learning, it might incite them to do better. It would be pretty embarrasing to write Parshas Miketz – 3/4 of a daf”! It would be even more pathetic Erev Rosh Hashanah to tally up all the blatt of the year. Hmmm… 35 blatt in a year. Not bad!
   Although most yeshivos do it, I can’t believe that this is the right mehalech. In all my years in yeshiva, I was only once invited to a siyum hashas. He was a bit of an illuy, and quite young(26). There could and should have been many more. Here’s a statistic: if a 20 year old bochur would like to finish shas by the time he is 45, he needs to learn 2 blatt a week. Or, if you learn 2 blatt a week, you’ll finish shas in 25 years. Take it as you wish. Let’s get the “yardstick of the talmid chacham” back into our sights and goals. And yasher koach to Mifal Hashas for their work in this area.