Last year on the eve of the 11th Siyum of Shas for the Daf Yomi, the Va’ad for the Daf Yomi of Agudath Israel in the US. published a miscellany, HaMeir LaOlam, edited by Rabbi Shlomo Gottesman.
The volume which featured Chiddushei Torah and Halacha as well as matters relating to the Daf Yomi, included an essay Nitzotzei Or HaMeir, chapters in the history of the Daf Yomi by Rabbi Eliezer Katzman.
Rabbi Katzman, a rabbinic scholar, excellent biographer and a diligent student of Jewish history , has contributed Divrei Torah as well as interesting studies on rabbinic personalities and books to Yeshurun, the well known New York Torah journal and other publications.
Rabbi Katzman discusses several matters in his study, among them the old Minhag that Chavurot who studied the Talmud used to celebrate the Siyum of the Talmud for seven days/ There were speeches and Pilpulim, eating and drinking, singing , dancing and music for seven days in honor of the conclusion of the study of the Shas and it new beginning.
In his study Rabbi Katzman cites a number of books that mention this custom which until the outbreak of World War II, was observed in various countries, especially Lithuania.
It was in accordance with this custom that the Daf Yomi’s second Shas Siyum, on the 28th of Sivan 5698 (1938), was celebrated in Jerusalem over a period of seven days.
The celebrations, which were organized by Agudath Israel were held in the Shaarei Chesed nieghborhood. They started on Motzaei Shabbat as well as on the following days, at eight o’clock in the evening.
On the opening evening, Rabbi Yeshaya Chashin, author of Divrei Yeshaya (Hadranim and Bar Mitzvah sermons) spoke about the importance of the seven day celebrations as a powerful instrument for strengthening the study of Torah.
A Hadran was delivered every day. The festive gatherings were addressed by Gedolei Torah and leaders of the Edah Charedit, among them Rabbi Jospeh Tzvi Dushinsky, Rabbi Zelig Reuven Bengis (the regular Daf Yomi lecturer), Rabbi Mordechai Zlotkin and Rabbi Moshe Blau. On the seventh day Rabbi Benzion Yadler, the Jerusalem Maggid spoke about the beginning of the third cycle of the Daf Yomi Study.
The entire program of the festivities was published on the first page of the Jerusalem weekly Kol Yisrael, the organ of Agudath Israel. It is reproduced in Rabbi Katzman’s study.
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Rabbi Katzman notes that he found in some issues of Kol Yisrael of the month of Tammuz 5684 (1924), at the time the first study cycle of the Daf had started, the following announcement:
“To the sudents of the Daf Yomi:
The saint Reb Yaakov Yisrael ben Yitzchak HaLevi (Professor de Haan) has been murdered, sanctifying the L-rd. Mention his name every day in the prayer you say after the study.”
The announcement referred to the assassination in Jerusalem, in June 1924,of the Dutch Jewish writer Jacob Israel de Haan. De Haan, who was a member of the Mizrachi, had settled in Jerusalem after World War I. During his stay in the Holy City he became very close to leaders of the old Yishuv especially Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, and began to identify with Agudath Israel, eventually serving as one of its spokesmen.
His new views found expression in his reports to foreign newspapers which he represented in Jerusalem.
His articles and activities embittered certain Zionist circles who decided to get rid of him. De Haan’s assaassin were never captured but it is known that they were members of the Haganah.
In Rabbi Katzman’s essay there is also a reproduction of the annoucement of the first Siyum of the Daf Yomi, which was held in Jerusalem on the 15th of Shevat 5691 (1931). The Siyum was held in the great Yeshiva of Meah Shearim with the participation of Daf Yomi students from all over the country.
The main speaker at the event was Rabbi Eliyahu Klatzkin.
(To be continued)
Jewish Press, July 7, 2006 page 29
In the second year of the first study cycle of the Daf Yomi, a number of rabbis devoted to thestrenghthening of Torah, among them the Rebbe of Gur, held a meeting at which they decided that eery student of the Daf Yomi had to donate one Groschen a day for Torah (a Groschen for every Daf that was studied). The hope was that these contributions would promote the construction of the Yeshiva of Lublin and assure its maintenance.
Soon after the meeting, Rabbi Meir Shapira published an appeal to all Daf Yomi students, acquainting them with the decision of the rabbis and asking them to contribute one Zloty and twenty Groschen for Torah at the forthcoming Siyum of Tractate Pesachim (equivalent to the 120 Dappim of the tractate).
Several years later, Rabbi Shapira amended that decision by asking that every member of the Daf Yomi students’ family also contribute a Groschen a day for Torah. “None of you should fail to bring into his house a collection box of the Yeshiva of Chachmei Lublin. This box will provide a strong financial basis for our institution,” Rabbi Shapiro declared.
The decision that every Daf Yomi student and the members of his family contribute money for the Yeshiva of Lublin was strongly criticized and attacked by the leaders and representatives of the Rabbi Meir Baal HaNesCharities, which support Torah scholars inthe Land of Israel. They feared that the collection box of the Yeshiva of Lublin would eventually replace that of Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes in Jewish homes and businesses.
Rabbi Meir Shapira wrote a sharp reply to their criticism and rallied more than 200 rabbis of Eastern Europe to support his view that placing Yeshiva of Lublin collection boxes in Jewish homes was a Mitzvah.
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The Daf Yomi continued to be studied during World War II all over German ocupied Europe. Not only did individuals study the Daf in their homes, but entire groups met to study the Daf, defying the Germans’ prohibition for Jews to assemble for religious purposes.
In his essay Rabbi Eliezer a Katzman quots from the writings of R. Joseph Fuchsman of Baranovich, who wrote about the study of the Daf Yomi in German-occupied Vilna.
He states that on October 9, 1942, the Germans published in the streetsof Vilna an official annoucement in Polish, Lithuanian and German, ordering that all houses of worship had to be closed in order to prevent epidemics and the spread of contagious diseases. After the High Holidays, all the synagogues, Klausen and Battei Midrash were officially closed and sealed by members of the Jewish police.
There was in Vilna a group of Daf Yomi students who refused to give up their study meetings. On the 7th of Cheshvan, which happened to be the Yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir Shapira, they were meeting to study in one of the shuls in Vilna when members of the Jewish police broke into the Shul and beat up the participants of the study group, driving them out. About 15 of them, Chasidim of the Rebbe of Slonim resisted the police’s attempts to break up the meeting and continued to study. They were soon overpowered and thrown into the street, their clothes torn , bleeding from wounds.
Joseph Fuchsman lists the names of a number of participants in the Shiur and notes that all were eventually killed by the Germans when the Vilna Ghetto was liquidated.
One of the participants in this Daf Yomi group was Rabbi Chaim Semiatitzky. He was a great Talmid Chochom who had studied in various Yeshivot- Radin, Lomza, Kletzk and the Bet Shmuel Yeshiva in Warsaw. While still a Yeshiva student, he began to write Yiddish poetry. Upon coming to Warsaw he showed his poems to Hillel Zeitlin, the famous Jewish writer and thinker, who was greatly impressed and urged him to publish them.
When the Daf Yomi students were driven out of the synagogue, Jewish police searched Rabbi Semiatitzky’s home and confiscated all things of value. He was shot by the Germans when the Ghetto was liquidated.
He was the brother of the late Rabbi Yitzchak Zvi (Zeiel) Semiatitzky,who was a son-in-law of Rabbi Moshe Schneider, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Torat Emet in London, and who served as one of the heads of this Yeshiva.
Another participant in that Daf Yomi Shiur was R. Zelig Kalmanovitz, a well known communal worker who was greatly loved and respected by the Jews of Vilna. The Jewish policmen did not dare to touch him. After he left the Shul he went to see Yaakov Ganz, the head of the Vilna Ghetto and complained about the behavior of the Jewish policmen. Ganz punished them by demoting them for a period of one month.
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After World War II, Vaad Hatzalah undertook to print, in Munich, Sifrei Kodesh for the survivors. Among the books they printed were Talmudic tractates featuring a Daf Yomi calendar. (Daf Yomi calendars had already been included in Talmudic tractates printed in pre-war Poland.)
(To be continued)
The Jewish Press, July 14, 2006 p. 39
One chapter in Rabbi Eliezer Katzman’s study is devoted to books and publications featuring Chiddushim by Daf Yomi students, some of which we will mention here.
When the first cycle of the Daf Yomi study started, students of Rabbi Meir Shapira, with the consent of their teacher, established a monthly called HaEshkol for the publication of Chiddushei Torah by Daf Yomi students.
The first issue which appeared in 1925 in Piotrkow, featured Divrei Torah on Tractate Pesachim by Rabbi Meir Shapira and by several known rabbis and Roshei Yeshiva, as well as excelling Lomdim, some of whom later became known as Gedolei Torah, authors of Sefarim, and rabbis of important communities.
The editor of was Rabbi Shimshon Fogelman, one of the first students of Rabbi Shapira when the latter was still rabbi in Gline (Glinyany). He later taught at the Yeshiva Rabbi Shapira had established in Sanok, served as head of the Beit Din, and as Rosh Mesivta in a town near Stanislav, and headed the Yeshiva Meshivat Nafesh in Przemysl, which prepared students for the Lublin Yeshiva.
Rabbi Fogelman, who was an orphan, was brought up in the home of Rabbi Shapira. In 1923, at Rabbi Fogelman’s wedding, Rabbi Shapira stood in for his father, arranging the wedding and even signing the invitations.
In a separate section of HaEshkol, called “Reply by the Publisher,” Fogelman discussed notes and explanations by several contributors to the journal whose articles had not appeared in print.
Only one issue of HaEshkol was published. Rabbi Katzman is inclined to believe that the reason for the short lived existence of the journal was the opposition of the Rebbe of Gur (the “Imrei Emes”) to the writing of Chiddushim by Daf Yomi students.
The Rebbe of Gur, although he was a great supporter of the Daf Yomi, was of the opinion that Chiddushei Torah should only be written by those who study the Talmud in depth, with Rishonim, whereas most of the Daf Yomi students, even those capable of writing Chiddushim, did not study the daily Daf in depth.
The Rebbe of Gur expressed this opinion in a letter he wrote to R. Pinchas Yaakov Lewin. It is not known when or on what occasion the letter was written.
The title page of the single issue of HaEshkol, which also included a call by Rabbi Meir Shapira on the occasion of the Siyum of Tractate Pesachim and the beginning of the study of Tractate Shekalim, is reproduced in Rabbi Katzman’s study.
In 1931, when the second cycle of the Daf Yomi study began, the religious monthly Yavneh, which had been founded in Lvov in 1929 and to which Rabbi Meir Shapira and other important Polish rabbis contributed, began to publish a special supplement of notes, Chiddushim and elucidations relating to the Daf Yomi.
The editor, R. Shlomo Zalman Shapira, a relative of Rabbi Meir Shapira, wrote about the necessity of establishing a special platform for the Daf Yomi. “Now that the study of Daf Yomi has been accepted in the lands of the diaspora as well as the Land of Israel,” he stated, “and that the Siyum of the first cycle has been started with great enthusiasm, the establishment of a special platform to carry the echo of the worldwide Daf Yomi study has become a necessity. This platform will broaden,deepen and enrich the study of the Daf Yomi with new lofty ideas, original Chiddushim and helpful elucidations, which will be of great help to Daf Yomi students.
The first issueof Yavneh carrying the supplement appeared in Nissan 5691 (1931). In that issue Rabbi Meir Shapira, Rabbi Aharon Lewin of Rzeszow and Rabbi Yehoshua Yolles of Stryi published short notes on Aggadah and Halacha. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau of Presov (later of Piotrkow) contributed ethical reflections on the beginning of Tractate Berachot. Rabbis and Lomdim ofthe U.S. and of Poland were also among the contributors. There was a section devoted to Torah riddles and there were articles about the importance of the Daf Yomi and the concept of studying Torah in groups.
This was the next-to-the-last-issue of Yavneh, which ceased publication after the following issue.
(To be continued)
The Jewish Press, July 21, 2006 p.43