Study cycle celebration attracts capacity crowd
A SOLD out event at Hampstead Garden Synagogue on Saturday night marked the completion of the daf yomi cycle, a daily study programme for Jews worldwide to learn the same page of the Talmud.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, dayanim and United Synagogue council members were among the 200 guests at the US’s siyum hashas.
A group from Barnet United Synagogue celebrated completing the entire Talmud under the tutelage of their former rabbi Barry Lerer, now of Central Synagogue, and Rabbi Yoni Birnbaum of Hadley Wood Jewish Community. Rabbi Birnbaum completed the final part of the Talmud on the evening before reciting the Hadran, an ancient prayer said on completion of a Talmud tractate.
Finchley United Synagogue also holds a daily daf yomi shiur which was instituted when the Chief Rabbi was the senior rabbi of the Kinloss community.
Rabbi Mirvis was the keynote speaker at the siyim, declaring: “Our Torah learning is our most important achievement.”
London Beth Din head Dayan Menachem Gelley started the new cycle of the Talmud, teaching guests the first Mishnah in the tractate Brachot, which begins with the laws around the recitation of the Shema. Learning on the evening was dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims.
Rebbetzen Lauren Levin reflected on last year’s Tribe Learn2Lead Polish trip, where the young participants spent time at the Chochmei Lublin Yeshiva built by Rabbi Moshe Shapiro, who instituted the daf yomi.
Hampstead Garden Synagogue chazan Avromi Freilich led the guests in singing and dancing.
Rabbi Nicky Liss, chair of the Rabbinic Council of the United Synagogue, reflected: “It is tremendous that the first event of the United Synagogue’s 150th anniversary year was an evening dedicated to a celebration of Torah learning.” Rabbi Shapiro announced his daf yomi his idea in August 1923 with the first cycle starting on Rosh Hashanah that year.