You’re Never Too Old To Start Learning Torah

How I First Started Daf Yomi At Age 87

When my wife or I have questions, or seek advice on any subject, legal, financial, or religious, we ask our children and grandchildren. They are our teachers and advisors. In halachic matters, for example, my kids are my rebbes. That is real nachas.

Which brings me to my Daf Yomi journey. It all started with the Siyum HaShas at MetLife Stadium on New Year’s Day in 2020. My children and grandchildren persuaded me to go, and they promised it would be a life-changing experience. And they were right, in more ways than one. The Siyum HaShas itself was an extraordinary experience, as many of you who were there know.

At the end of the siyum, my kids then persuaded me to begin the Daf Yomi program. Initially I was not very enthusiastic about it. At that time, I was 87 years old, and the Daf Yomi program was seven-and-a-half years long. I didn’t relish starting a long program, without having a clear idea of what the end would be. I therefore knew that if I was going to start the program, I would have to somehow compress the cycle. So instead of learning one daf a day for seven-and-a-half years, I thought that if I learned three daf a day, I could finish in only two-and-a-half years. That seemed a lot more reasonable.

However, that was a big load to pile onto an already busy schedule, and generally consumed about two to three hours a day, seven days a week. So in order to do this, I devised a method which I coined “Chap-a-Daf,” where instead of tackling the whole block at one time, I “chapped a daf” anytime during the day or night, whenever I could find suitable breaks in my schedule. Fortunately, there was an outstanding online program taught by R’ Shloime Schwartzberg which made this possible.

Besides the learning, there was also another, unforeseen but extraordinary benefit which turned out to be not just a life-changing experience, but literally, a life-saving experience. Going to the Siyum HaShas in 2020 initiated a sequence of medically related developments that can only be called nissim, or miracles.

When I and my kids went to the Siyum HaShas in Metlife Stadium along with about 90,000 other Jews, we had a long walk through all the parking lots just to get to the stadium, and then we had to climb up all the ramps just to get to our seats which were on the upper deck. After it was all over, again we had to run down all the ramps and across all the acres of parking lots to get to our car. And I had no problem that day doing all this running and climbing. That was January 1. But by February and March, I was having a lot of difficulty in catching my breath just walking to shul on Shabbos. If I had not attended the Siyum just two months earlier, I may have thought that this was just a sign of getting old. However, with the Siyum event as a fixed reference point, I knew there was something wrong.

An angiogram confirmed that I had two fully blocked arteries and had to have stents inserted to open them up. Had I not gone to the Siyum earlier, that condition would have continued unnoticed and I would have been in serious danger of having a heart attack.

That took care of the cardiac problem, but this story is not over yet. In running blood tests which were part of the angioplasty procedure, some other anomalies were detected, and further tests, including a colonoscopy and CT scans, showed that I had a fair-sized malignant tumor growing inside my colon. Fortunately, the cancer was caught early enough, and it was still well-defined and had not yet metastasized. The subsequent surgery was complicated because of its location but the surgeon was able to completely remove the tumor without causing too much collateral damage to the rest of my colon. Here also, I had no outward symptoms of any internal problems. So again, if I had not gone to the Siyum and started down the medical treatment path, I would not have known that I had cancer and the tumor would just have kept on growing, unnoticed.

What’s more, during this sequence of events, there was also a miraculous timing factor unfolding. In January, February, and March of 2020, the Covid pandemic burst upon the scene. By March, we had masks, social distancing, and lockdowns, including for shuls. Many people stopped going to shul completely, including me, since Covid had particularly devastating effects on seniors like me and there were no vaccines available yet at that time. Here also, if the lockdowns had started only one or two months earlier, I would already have been staying home, and would not have experienced the shortness of breath walking to shul, which in turn precipitated the whole sequence of medical issues in the first place. The timing was a real nes.

Thus far I’ve discussed the effect that the Daf Yomi experience had on my learning agenda and on my physical well-being. Now, I would like to discuss an additional dimension. That is, what the learning experience did for my emotional well-being.

By way of explanation, in addition to the cardiac, cancer, and Covid-related issues, I also had other serious issues that I was personally struggling with at the time, although those were unrelated to the Daf Yomi program. But what is important is that this whole slew of problems occurred within a very short time frame – all within one year – during the year 2020. That was a year of real turmoil for me. It felt like being on a ship in a storm, being buffeted from all sides, and not knowing where the next hit would come from. However, throughout this whole time, when I awoke every morning, I knew I was going to have to learn my three daf a day. That served like a sea anchor in the storm, and was very instrumental in helping to keep me focused and on track able to cope during a very difficult period.

My siyum upon completing Shas was itself an uplifting experience and was held on September 11, 2022.

But I wasn’t done yet. After finishing the Daf Yomi program, I decided to undertake a Mishna Yomi program to learn Mishnayos. Fortunately, there was also a popular online Mishna Yomi program, the OU’s “Time 4 Mishna,” which was offered as a six-year program. But here again, I was faced with the time element. By now I was 91 years old, and a six-year program again seemed very daunting, so I knew I had to somehow accelerate this timetable also.

The basic Time 4 Mishna program consists of learning two mishnayos a day every day for about six years. So I decided that, instead of two mishnayos a day for six years, if I learned 12 mishnayos a day, I would finish in one year. That was a lot more reasonable. So instead of “Mishna Yomi,” I coined my effort “Mishna Shana” and “The Daily Dozen,” which I have just completed.

In the course of these programs, I was covering a lot of often very detailed material at a very rapid pace. I don’t want to deceive myself or anyone else into thinking that I was actually mastering much of the material. I was certainly not. At best, I may have been absorbing only a small fraction of the whole Talmud, maybe only one or two percent. So the question is was it worth a large part of three-and-a-half years of my life for this seemingly very small gain?

To answer that question, I would like to borrow one of Rabbi Yishmael’s 13 Rules of Torah, which we recite every morning. And that is Klal–U’frat–U’Klal. The first klal is the overall generalization, the vast font of knowledge in the Talmud. The frat, or limitation, is the small amount that I may have actually learned. And the second large klal is that the small amount that I may have learned is still infinitely more than what I knew before I started. Klal-U’frat-U’klal. So the answer to the question of whether this effort was all worth it is absolutely yes.

My siyum on completing Mishnayos was held on September 7, 2024.

The siyums and celebrations were not really just for me, but for all those involved, who initiated them and enabled them all to come to fruition. These include my wife, my entire family, and ultimately Hashem, who watches over all of us.

The most obvious takeaway from my learning programs is that it’s never too late to start learning. In my case, for example, I started at age 87 – with essentially no Talmud background.

As for the future, I will just close my narrative with the blessing: “L’Chaim…Bis a hundert und zwanzig!”

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