There is a relatively new tradition in Judaism of studying one page of Talmud a day. It is called Daf Yomi –which I like to think of as my daily page. Although study and daily discussions of Talmud have been going on for thousands of years (for most of that time, allowed only to males) and continue on today, the Polish rabbi Meir Shapiro first introduced the practice of one page a day in 1925. His idea was to have people all over the world studying the Talmud and reading about the same issue together – a sort of global connection. Of course it would be a lot easier today in the world of the Internet, but still it was a monumental goal and one that succeeded.
Thousands of people (male and female) in places all over the world today continue the Daf Yomi practice. The most recent completion of the 37 volume reading cycle (which takes 7 ½ years) was celebrated by 90,000 people at the MetLife stadium in New Jersey.
One friend here in Denver goes to his Daf Yomi class daily at 5:00 am, before work. Thousands others access Daf Yomi online, on Tablet, on app., on podcasts. There are even Daf Yomis in the form of daily haikus.
The breadth of topics covered is literally awesome -- from the ins and outs of the criminal justice system to an encyclopedic guide on the interpretation of dreams. “Even in just one page, the daf covers a vast amount of terrain, perhaps beginning with the halachic minutiae of how to prepare food for animals on Shabbat and concluding with a story about the laundry practices of Rabban Gamliel from which we learn that white clothing is more difficult to wash than colored clothing.” Still is, despite Tide and bleach.
Having just been reading about Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed (written in the late 1100s) and contemporary writer Dara Horn’s 2013 best-selling respectful rif on it , I was led to wonder if a modern, short, and more secular version of Daf Yomi would be fun. I hope it is.
I don’t promise to write about washing clothes, but I also will not be telling about my picnic lunch in the park, a la too many Facebook entries. I envision it more as a few-times-a -week journal entries by a sort of perplexed 70 year old woman whose usual iconoclastic take on stuff (from food to dreams to tattoos to deceased artists and contemporary vagabonds) might be interesting.
Immediately, the title jumped into my head: Yaf Domi. At first, it was just my own silly rif on the words Daf Yomi. Then I realized it incorporated my secondary/Hebrew name Yaf-fa. Sold.
Yaf Domi, it will be, tomorrow.
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