No Jewish tradition is more revered, more popularly identified with Judaism than learning. And yet, strangely, the commandment to study Torah appears nowhere in the Torah. It actually originates in the Talmud. The sages inferred it from the biblical commandment to “teach it (the Torah) diligently to thy children” (Deuteronomy 6:7). They figured you can’t teach it if you haven’t learned it yourself.
Whatever the Torah says, though, the Talmud insists study is commanded — in fact, it’s “equal to all the other commandments combined” (Tractate Shabbat). This is the logic behind the celebrated Daf Yomi movement, in which tens of thousands of people worldwide study a page a day of Talmud. They just concluded their 12th seven-and-a-half-year, 2,711-page cycle with the August 1 spectacle known as Siyum, featuring mass rallies at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey and dozens of other locations on five continents.
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