Event Details

New Year’s Day 2020 saw a crowd of over 90,000 Jews assemble in freezing temperatures at New Jersey’s
MetLife Stadium. Instead of the usual football game, the attraction was the Siyum ha-Shas of Daf Yomi, a
ceremony celebrating the completion of the study of the entire Talmud over the course of 7.5 years by learning
one page (a daf) per day (yomi). Scores of parallel events took place on five other continents. Since the
inception of the daf yomi cycle in the 1920s, the overwhelming majority of partakers have been men. While this
remains the case, the 2020 festivities marked a watershed when over 3,000 women congregated in Jerusalem's
Binyanei ha-Umah Auditorium for the inaugural “Women’s Siyum Shas.” Exploring the processes that
precipitated this conspicuous moment, Professor Adam Ferziger will contextualize the expansion of women’s
daf yomi within contemporary Orthodox Judaism’s struggles over the religious standing of women and the ways
digital technology is reshaping religious practices.