[Avodah] Does Daf Yomi Exemplify Talmud Torah?

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 03:56:05PM +0300, Ezra Chwat wrote:
: The replacement has been around, serving precisely this function, for
: over 900 years. The Great Talmud Digest produced by the last Gaon with
: the authority to canonize such an abridgment- The Rif.

I don't know of anyone learning Rif Yomi. And while it's a logical
alternative, I don't see gemara-stripped-of-"lomdus" (shaqla vetarya)
successfully catching on to the scale Daf Yomi has.

: Only in recent generations, when learned magidey shiurim decided that's
: what's good for them is good even for non-Yeshivah learning, and when
: egalitarian educators assumed that the matrix text of Torah creativity-
: the Talmud- is to be made available not only to Torah producers, but to
: Torah consumers at all levels as well, has the Talmud become an item of
: mass consumption.

It's also because of universal education, the upsurge in people who at
least one time knew had to "make a leining", and their learning that
analysis can be fun.

: Myself included, many who are about to conclude the Daf Yomi cycle have a
: feeling of dissatisfaction, not of "zero understanding", but of near-zero
: retention and a low level of internalization.

There is also another element. Aside from what is learned, the quality
of learning and the quality of retention, there is the experience of
daf yomi which puts a more religious spin to the entire day. As well
as the experience of seeing a 7.5 yr project through to completion,
an excercize in religious commitment.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One doesn't learn mussar to be a tzaddik,
micha at aishdas.org        but to become a tzaddik.
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