Join us as we complete Masechet Berachot לעילוי נשמת our Rabbi, Rabbi Michael Haber רבי מנחם בן חנה

  At the first Siyum HaShas held in Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, Rav Meir Shapiro, the initiator of the worldwide daf yomi schedule, peered presciently into the gathering gloom. He quoted the Gemara (Yevamot 121a) in which Rabban Gamliel describes standing on the deck of a ship and seeing a nearby ship crash and break apart, casting overboard a great scholar — no less than Rabbi Akiva himself.

 After reaching dry land, Rabban Gamliel was shocked when the same Rabbi Akiva appeared before him to engage in halachic discussion. Rabban Gamliel asked him how he had survived being thrown into the watery deep — to which Rabi Akiva replied, “A board (daf) of the boat floated into my hands. I grabbed on to it, and I bent my head before each and every wave that came toward me until I reached the shore.” 

The daf of the ship to which Rabbi Akiva held tight, said Rav Shapiro, can be understood metaphorically as the daf Gemara to which we must hold tight for protection against the evils of the day and the far greater horrors yet to come.

The Daf protects:

Now we have joined together to protect those in need of a Yeshua, each of us going to learn one daf to complete one Masechet.