Six Years of Farts, Magic, and Misogyny
What does the Talmud say about commemorating an anniversary? Something in great and elaborate detail, no doubt, perhaps touching on the necessary benedictions, suitable fabrics for table cloth, and precautions regarding menstruating women.
Six years ago, Tablet’s Adam Kirsch began his reading of Daf Yomi, the page-a-day cycle of oral law and rabbinic exegesis that covers all 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud. The current cycle, the twelfth Daf Yomi will be completed in January 2020. The 13th begins the following day. As it never ends, we only pause here, as on the banks of a great river, to take stock.
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