The Global Journey of the Daily Page: Uniting Jews Worldwide

In the weekly Torah portion Bamidbar, it states: "These are the generations of Moses and Aaron," yet only Aaron's sons are listed. Why? Our sages explain that anyone who teaches Torah to another's child is as if they birthed them. Torah is the lifeblood of the Jewish people; spreading Torah is spreading life.

One of the greatest concepts in spreading Torah came relatively recently, known as the 'Daily Page' or 'Daf Yomi'. Before then, efforts to spread Torah knowledge were naturally limited—each person teaching in their place, or at most, publishing a book to disseminate as far as it reached. This idea, however, unites and enriches Torah study among Jews around the globe, who feel a commitment to the daily page framework, striving to reach the "completion", and sensing that missing a day's study means missing a page.

This idea was conceived by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the head of Lublin's Chachmei Yeshiva. Having an idea, no matter how grand, doesn’t automatically mean it will spread across the entire globe, become part of every calendar, and ensure that every synagogue offers a daily page class, often more than one...

The proposal was made about a hundred years ago, at the Great Congress of the Agudath Israel in 1923, at Vienna's national theater. Rabbi Meir Shapiro, a gifted orator, vividly described a Jew traveling by ship from England to the U.S., studying a page daily, and upon arrival in the U.S., joining others in synagogue on that same page... A story that sounded far-fetched at the time, yet in a short period became reality.

People were skeptical of the idea—a nice notion, but who would listen? Why start a tractate with the expectation that in the U.S. they'd also study it? Everyone studies what they wish, where they are accustomed, etc. But on Rosh Hashanah 1924, after the evening prayer, the Gerrer Rebbe declared: now I’m going to study a page from Tractate Berachot, and his multitude of followers gathered around him, followed suit, and so the custom spread throughout the Jewish diaspora.

To promote the idea, Rabbi Meir Shapiro initiated a monthly publication gathering Torah insights on the pages studied that month, and ensured that well-known periodicals like "Yavneh" and "Eshkol" would include a supplement focused on the Daily Page. Even the initiator himself, Rabbi Meir Shapiro, admitted he was surprised by the swift response and the realization of "Hashem, the Torah, and Israel are one" in the most literal sense, with everyone engrossed in the same topic.