Article One - From The Eyes of Our Children

Eleven-year-old Avromi Spero will never forget the evening he spent in Continental Airlines Arena in Northern New Jersey on March 1st. Maybe it was the twenty-five thousand Jewish people exhilarating in the magnitude of their celebration, knowing there were more than 20,000 more at Madison Square Garden just a few miles away. Maybe he sensed that so many of them remembered a crippled and despairing Jewish nation in the not-very-distant past and were now witnessing a burgeoning population of proud and knowledgeable Jews celebrating the past and planning the future.

Perhaps most of all, though, was sharing the event not only with his brothers, 13-year-old Tzvi and 9-year-old Efraim and with his father, but with two special study partners who began the Daf-Yomi, page-a-day Talmud study program at the beginning of the cycle seven and a half years ago: his grandfather and great-grandfather.

“When I’m a Papa I’m going to tell my grandchildren about this night,” he said. “Everyone was so happy - It was almost like a wedding. I was amazed that I really felt something. Although I couldn’t understand the speeches in Yiddish, a spark inside of me told me it was special.” He was flying high the whole ride home and could not stop thanking his father for bringing him along.

“When our father had told us almost a year before that we would be going to the Siyum Hashas we could hardly wait,” his older brother Tzvi added. “We were excited, of course, but how could we possibly have known what we would witness there? But as the day came closer we got more and more excited because we knew we would be going together with so many other people we knew from Baltimore.

We heard that twenty-five thousand would be in our building, the Continental Airlines Arena and nearly a hundred thousand more around America.

It’s hard to imagine. The last time the Siyum (completion of the Talmud) was celebrated, we were all pretty much too young to remember. But we had a feeling that this would be something to remember. And boy, was it ever.”

“It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to be close to Hashem (G-d). But I feel that it must be something like that night. It was such a privilege to be there with our Papa (great-grandfather). And I was so proud that he completed the whole Talmud studying together with our Zaidy (grandfather), his son, every single day for more than 7 years!” Tzvi was already looking forward to being there next time as well.

“Do you think I was the youngest one there?” nine-year-old Efraim wanted to know. Though probably not the youngest he may have been close. But the thrill and excitement of attending the greatest modern day assembly for the honor of Torah had impacted these children in a way they could not yet possibly know. Looking at their faces, though, they seemed to have touched Heaven.

As the Speros left the arena, they listened as Papa spoke to them about the doubts he had growing up and how he had wondered if there would ever be Torah in America. In fact, he doubted it could ever be.

That night he lived it more powerfully than he would ever have dared to dream. His son was there, his grandchildren were there and so were many of his great-grandchildren – proud and knowledgeable Jews. Tzvi, Avromi and Efraim Spero were the glowing answers to every question he’d had. Torah was not only in America – it was filling its most famous arena.

“Daddy, are you going to finish Daf Yomi next time around?” the boys wanted to know as they were driving home. Their father smiled. He glanced over at Papa who was seated next to him and then lifted his eyes to the rear view mirror to see the three of them waiting for his answer. “All right,” he said to his children. “I’ll try.”

The completion of the next cycle is already scheduled for Thursday, August 2, 2012.

Article Two - Jewish Unity Live 2005
Kicking Off the 21st Century’s Movement for Jewish Unity

March 1, 2005 is a date that will one day go down as a historic date for 21st century Jewry. On that date, a group of visionary lay leaders, benefactors, and celebrities joined together to launch an international movement for one of the most central values in Jewish life - Jewish Unity.

Led by International Chairman Mortimer B. Zuckerman, celebrities, leaders and visionaries across the country have set out to bring the ideal of a vibrant Jewish Community united through the pursuit of Torah knowledge to every Jewish home in the world. Partnering with community Kollels and other Jewish organizations who have adopted “The Book” as their primary cause, they scheduled Jewish Unity Live 2005 - an evening in which to celebrate the unifying force of the Torah on the same date as the 11th completion of “Daf Yomi”, or, the page-a-day study of the entire Talmud. It takes studying one page a day (both sides!) for 2,711 days in a row to finish. The Siyum HaShas, or, completion of the Talmud, brought together over 45,000 Jews in New York’s Madison Square Garden and New Jersey’s Continental Airlines Arena and an estimated total of over 200,000 (!) Jews around the world.

Jewish Unity Live participants and supporters included Natan Sharansky, Dr. Elie Wiesel, Senator Joseph and Hadassah Lieberman, international performer Dudu Fisher, CBS correspondent Dan Raviv, actor Josh Malina, musician Peter Himmelman, actor Elliot Gould and others. Leading organizations were the Atlanta Scholars Kollel, the Phoenix Community Kollel and Torah Links of New Jersey. The program was presented as well on U.S. military bases around the world.

“Jewish Unity Live was about sharing the feelings of joy and unity Torah study brings to every Jew,” says Rabbi Zvi Holland, Dean of the Phoenix Community Kollel.

Rabbi Yitzchok Oratz, organizer of Jewish Unity Live, said that the new program’s goal was to “take the energy and excitement of tens of thousands of Jews gathering and extend it to Jews of a more secular background, to allow those who haven’t been studying Talmud to join in unity with their brothers and sisters who have.”

Atlanta’s event, which featured Dr. Elie Wiesel, was sold out weeks before March 1st. At the New Jersey Center for the Performing Arts Dudu Fisher and Dan Raviv headlined the event which included the premier of a feature film called “Passover with the Wellman’s” – an entertaining and insightful look at a Jewish family working to stay together. The Scottsdale Center for the Arts was the site of a magnificent performance by performer and song writer Peter Himmelman which culminated with Kol Zimra and the rabbis of the Phoenix Community Kollel joining him on stage as he led the crowd in a rousing jam of “Havainu Shalom Aleichem.” Other events took place in Long Island, NY and Ottawa, Canada. Attendees felt the power of getting together on that night as hundreds of thousands of Jews celebrated Jewish Unity around the world.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called this year’s event “one of the most significant events in American Jewish history; it shows the renaissance of the Jewish people after the Holocaust not only in population but in terms of a recommitment to their heritage.”

Adding a special connection to the past, some 200 Jews returned to celebrate in Lublin, Poland where the page-a-day program was first conceived in 1923 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro. All this was begun in those dark times. Although there is no Jewish community left in Lublin - once a major population center for our people - the priceless treasure they left us of Torah study and Jewish unity will never be forgotten.

Next year’s event will be Sunday, March 5, 2006.