In reply to critiques of his Op-Jed essay, "Boycott: The Moderate Response to the Siyum haShas," Rabbi Gidon Rothstein has penned the following responses.
The original essay can be found here: www.atid.org/resources/op-jed/rothstein.asp 
-----Original Message-----
From: Gidon Rothstein [mailto:gidonr@att.net] 
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 4:31 PM
Subject: Putting an End to the Contretemps around the Daf
To Whom It May Concern:
 
I am writing to apologize for my earlier comments on the Daf Yomi, in two distinct contexts. Please forward this email to whomsoever you may have forwarded (or discussed with) my earlier comments:

First, it has become clear to me that my comments, intended as an expression of personal views, have been assumed to reflect on institutions and people with whom I am affiliated.  I am deeply sorry, and distressed, that my exercise of free speech has caused trouble for people and institutions that are innocent of any wrongdoing other than thinking of me as worthy of teaching Torah.  I hope that my reiteration here that these were completely and solely personal views will help put a stop to any repercussions of those comments other than those that affect me personally.  

Second, I have been told repeatedly that the tone of my comments, particularly my call for a boycott, was wrongly inflammatory and, worse, prevented people from having a reasoned discussion of the issues that I intended to raise.  Since anger and machloket are rarely a spur to positive analysis, discussion, and growth, and since I meant the essay as an avenue to hagdalat Torah ve-haadaratah, to strengthening study of, knowledge of, and adherence to Torah, I regret having used the terms and language that I did, apologize to those who were offended, and hope that I will not err this way in the future.  

I hope that any people who still have concerns about this matter will direct their inquiries, criticisms, and ire to and at me, so that I can, I hope, properly address them.  I most emphatically hope that discussions of my issues will no longer be seen as saying anything about anyone other than myself, nor will be used in such a context.  

Gidon Rothstein
gidonr@att.net

Dear Mr. _____________, 

I wanted to reply to your comments on my recent essay about the Siyum haShas and Daf Yomi.  First, let me apologize for the distress I apparently caused you, as my intention was only to stimulate careful thought about this phenomenon.  I hope that my comments here will also serve only to clarify my views, not to create any sadness, anger, or other uncomfortable emotion. 

Secondly, let me say clearly that I wrote and write as a reflection of my own opinions, not those of any institutions with which I may be affiliated.  While my serving in a certain role does mean that I have to consider the impact of my views on the institutions that have hired me, I also retain the right to share views that, as long as they are not completely heretical, can be seen as mine and not the institutions.

Going Negative

Disclaimers registered, let us turn to the matter itself.  A complaint you and others made, in my mind the most important one, was about my choice to protest a practice that has so many positive aspects to it.  If I want to have a Mishnah, Rambam, Nach, or whatever shiur, why not just do it, instead of bothering those who are happy learning Daf Yomi?

Let me take up each of the two aspects of this question separately.  First, it assumes that if something is truly positive, it will succeed regardless of the competition.  If my shiurim (or ideas about Torah study for laypeople) were good enough, I should just initiate programs and they would succeed.  Ralph Waldo Emerson famously captured this view when he said, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”

History has repeatedly shown the error in this view.  When one product or idea becomes dominant, it will take over despite possible real advantages in other ideas.  When video recordings first came out, it was well recognized that Beta was better than VHS, and yet, for various reasons, VHS won. Similarly, while the Apple computer has always retained a small corps of devotees, and has recently made a comeback, it largely lost out to PCs for reasons that had little to do with its recognized superiority as a personal computer.  In business, monopolies need to be broken up to allow for the healthy competition that will let market forces work optimally.

Turning to Torah, the experience of the neviim, who usually spent frustrated lives futilely trying to educate their contemporaries on how to serve God, should be proof enough that the same dynamic affects the Torah world.  Rabbis throughout history, including gedolim who we now revere, often struggled with communities who were unwilling to accept the truth about the errors of their ways, despite being told so in no uncertain terms.  Pilpul, a version of Torah study vigorously protested by many important rabbis, captured the imagination of many students of Torah for centuries.  Right does not always win, not in the regular world and not in Torah and service of God. 
  
My own view, therefore, is that until we confront the downsides of Daf Yomi, we will not be able to begin to build a positive alternative, one that would capture the advantages of Daf Yomi in a format appropriate to the skills of the laypeople who wish to participate.

The second part of the question, I think, depends on the similarly common assumption that we should not interfere with other people’s actions as long as they are not obviously destructive to the rest of us.  Live and let live, I hear you as saying; don’t learn Daf Yomi if you don’t want to, but why bother others.  The answer to that, quite simply, is that kol yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh, which I read as meaning not only that we are responsible for each other, but that we are inherently interconnected.

Our responsibility means that if we see someone else acting wrongly, whether in error or intentionally, we are required to discuss with them how they might change their ways to more positive ones.  (It is also, incidentally, a mitzvah in the Torah to remonstrate with others when we can).  My writing about Daf Yomi was an attempt to suggest that many of those who have adopted the practice should reconsider how they invest their limited Torah study time.

To give an analogy, obviously imperfect but illustrative nonetheless.  Suppose that a whole group of people decided to take up weightlifting, and were going to the gym together, regularly, but were doing the moves all wrong.  Certainly they would get something out of the experience, but wouldn’t they want someone to note that they could accomplish so much more if they just adopted a routine that was appropriate to their readiness?

Our interconnectedness also highlights what I mentioned in the original essay and suggested above, that Daf Yomi shapes our community’s views of Torah study.  When the gold standard of devotion to Torah study is Daf Yomi, the community as a whole is affected.  Given my views, I find the impact of the practice on my community (especially those who will now decide to start studying it) troubling.

Retaining the Positives

You and many others also were bothered by my apparently ignoring what is so valuable in the Daf.  Numerous people told me that attendees at a Daf would not learn the Mishnayot or Rambam that I suggested.  In addition, Daf-lovers say, it gives a good overview of Torah concepts, an exposure to the breadth of Torah that their own study could never provide.

I recognize both those points.  We are discussing a group of people who need the regular structure of a shiur to support their Torah learning, and the convenience of having that shiur available at different hours and in different places (such as when they go on vacation).  All well and good, but not inherent to the Daf.  Were world Jewry to adopt other cycles of learning, ones that better laypeople’s skills levels, all those values could be achieved and more.  
A well-taught Mishnah Yomi shiur, covering five mishnayot in forty-five minutes, or a Rambam Yomi (a chapter), or a Humash and Rashi Yomi (twenty pesukim) would, in less time (five, three, and one year respectively), with better comprehension and retention, give a similarly broad acquaintance with the fundamental ideas of Torah, in a venue that could be as accessible as the Daf currently.

Over time, in fact, we could work our way up to where more and more Jews could meaningfully study the Daf in a way even I would appreciate and applaud.  Someone who had twice studied all of Tanach and Mishnah (or Tanach, Mishnah, Rambam, and Shulchan Aruch, in fourteen years, two cycles of the Daf) would quite plausibly be ready to engage the Daf itself.  My point was not the problems in the Daf, it was in our readiness to study it in the broad numbers we currently see.

R. Meir Shapira and Respect for the Giants of Yesteryear

The most surprising complaint I received, both by R. Yoel Domb in his online rejoinder to my article and by others, protested my cavalier attitude towards R. Meir Shapira  If  he instituted the Daf, surely he, a gadol be-Yisrael whose judgment on the issue has been ratified by many other Torah giants, knew better than me.  How could I have the temerity to question him?

I will present my three answers to this question in rising order of irreverence.  First, I did not question R. Meir Shapira at all, since I firmly believe he operated in different circumstances than we do now.  R. Meir Shapira was instituting a Torah curriculum that he hoped would unite Jews around a particular Torah curriculum, an idea I would be happy to keep.  At the time, however, the only Jews he could imagine joining in this project were ones who had been to yeshiva, which in those days meant having learned large chunks, if not all, of Shas.  

His goal was to unite people already well-qualified at studying gemara in their choice of what to learn and when.  Note, by the way, that he did not intend these people would be taught Daf Yomi, but that they would learn Daf Yomi. He wanted Jews who encountered each other at random to have a shared topic of study to discuss (like parshat haShavua works for those who do not study the Daf).

Now that we are blessed with a broader group of people interested in serious Torah study, but who have fewer textual skills, R. Shapira’s idea should change as well.  Rather than questioning him, then, I was suggesting that his concept needs to be retooled to properly apply in our current circumstances (a readjustment that happens in the realm of halachah all the time).  To return to my weightlifting analogy, suppose that Arnold Schwarzenegger argued that all Americans should do the exact same exercises each day, so that whatever gym one attended, everyone would be unified by their routine.

Only Arnold, being Arnold, said that people should use 30 pound hand weights for each of these exercises (incidentally, the ridiculousness of the example supports my view that even R. Shapira himself would not have spoken about a Daf a day, since it is so far beyond people’s capabilities), and was successful at convincing people to do so.  Shouldn’t somebody point out that people who couldn’t actually lift that much weight or do the movement correctly should take some other alternative (like a lighter weight until such time as they built up to lifting more)?

I would make a similar claim, incidentally, about the approbation given by various Torah giants to the Daf haYomi.  I strongly suspect that these gedolim were asked whether it was a good idea for Jews to learn a Daf of gemara a day, to which there can only be one answer.  The question that should have been posed was, “Granted that the vast majority of those who attend such shiurim will not understand much of what is going on and will retain little of what they do understand, is Daf haYomi a good idea?”  Ask the question that way, and I believe the answer would differ.  (In fact, I believe it is questionable whether the people who attend such a shiur without understanding secure a fulfillment of the mitzvah of Talmud Torah, but that is for a different time).

Even if my preceding analysis is wrong, and R. Meir Shapira hoped to have our exact situation as it is now, I do not understand why I am not allowed to register my different view.  It is not as if I had disagreed with him in halachah, although rabbis disagree with other rabbis (even “regular” rabbis disagreeing with “gedolim”; R. Moshe Feinstein’s rulings were not universally accepted, in his lifetime or today).  I raised an objection to a particular strategy for maximizing a value we all share.

Finally, I do not understand how R. Meir Shapira became enshrined in the list of untouchable gedolim, were there even such a list.  I study Jewish texts and Jewish history fairly regularly, and yet all I know of R. Shapira is that he headed a remarkable yeshiva in Lublin, whose entry exam required students to already know a significant portion of the Talmud (further proof that even he would not have been pleased by today’s Daf Yomi), died at a very young age a little before the Shoah, and instituted the Daf haYomi.  All fine things, and would that I would one day merit his place in Heaven, but what in that resume makes his ideas immune to questioning?  Critique respectfully offered is an inherent part of our tradition, and I don’t see why Daf haYomi should be immune.

Why Lose the Siyum for the Daf?

Another group of respondents questioned my speaking out about the Siyum, which was an event that collected thousands of Jews in a positive, pro-Torah atmosphere.  I should, according to these people, just have registered my thoughts about the Daf, but gone to and participated in this remarkable event. 

Here, I think the event is inherently connected to the accomplishment it is celebrating, so that to go to the event is to tacitly but necessarily applaud the underlying institution.  People at the Siyum, or even who just heard of it, would and will think that this is a great idea for the community at large (were Daf Yomi restricted to the elite who are really capable of handling it, I don’t believe the Siyum would be nearly the event that it has become).  I also think there is a greater political aspect to the event than we would like to believe, but that is a conversation for another time. 

In sum, I stand by my earlier claims that we, as a community, need to use the Siyum haShas as an opportunity to rethink the Daf haYomi phenomenon.  It has positive values for sure, and for highly educated people may even be a desideratum.  But its having become a mass practice, with all due respect to the people who started it and the ones who give tremendous energy and effort into learning it, produces numerous negative outcomes for those people, for others who either come to feel that that is the only “true” Torah study, for those who take it up when they are unprepared to, and for the community at large.  

Very sincerely,
Gidon Rothstein