On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times ran my op-ed on the upcoming Siyum Daf Yomi. I would love to say that I am enough of an anav not to be proud of publishing in one of the nations’s Big Five. While I am not that anav, I do have enough restraint not to mention on Cross-Currents the vast majority of articles I publish fairly regularly in a variety of outlets. Why the exception here? Because I hope my piece will get people thinking about how they will interact with their friends and neighbors on the morning after.
The Siyum is going to be big. This means many are sharpening their teeth to tear into it, but far more are going to be looking in from the outside with an inquisitive but congratulatory gaze. I can tell this from the email I’ve received from far outside our community, and lines like the one in Haaretz that point out that the gathering at MetLife will be larger than the iconic gathering of all Jews – the AIPAC conference. The haters will spew their vitriol; the majority of media will be respectful. (I did not have to “sell” by piece to the Times. I mentioned in my cover that at the last Siyum, the Times – as well as the New York Times – provided first page coverage to the event. By the time the op-ed editor called, she knew enough about gemara to question whether I had the right to refer to “the” Talmud, since their were two of them! I told her that the Babylonian one was more important halachically, and that the Palestinian one was currently under occupation. I couldn’t resist.)
We need to think about how to articulate the specialness of the Siyum, especially why it is that we study Torah and love it so intensely. In other words, I was interested in a Talmud for non-Jew (and non-Orthodox). I tried conveying what we took away from learning, and what parallels, if any, could be shared with the rest of the world. I am greatly appreciative of the help I received from the single best idea person I have ever encountered, my colleague at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who provided a number of the concepts. My hope is that readers will come up with more, and use them to turn an item of curiosity in one new cycle into the larges Kiddush Hashem that it can. If we have the ideas, we can share them with family, friends, and the world at large.
Rav Yisroel Salanter wanted gemara to be translated into the vernacular, and taught in secular universities. He felt that if it were appreciated by secular academics, then downtrodden yeshiva students and Jews of marginal commitment make look at it differently. Baruch Hashem, today hundreds of thousands of lomdei Torah do not need the approbation of anyone outside the Torah world to enhance their learning experience. But putting Torah, the jewel of committed Jewish life, in a better light might indeed even today provide a boost for Jews waiting to be turned on to their legacy.
