Q&A: Completing One of the Rabbi’s Books
Completing One of the Rabbi’s Books
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Can finishing one of your books (Quartet, Trilogy, Soft Trilogy) be considered a significant completion like finishing a tractate, for purposes of exemption from the Fast of the Firstborn?
Would finishing the book Laws of Evil Speech count as a completion for this purpose?
And a broader question: what counts as a completion for granting this exemption?
A tractate in the Mishnah?
A tractate in the Talmud?
Any book written by some rabbi? (Apparently not.)
Answer
Something whose completion is significant enough to justify making a celebratory meal. The halakhic decisors suggested various possibilities, but to the best of my understanding none of them has any other criterion. In my opinion, only Torah as an object in itself is included here (Talmud, Mishnah, and their commentaries). Not aggadic literature, not philosophy, not ethics, and not Jewish thought.
Discussion on Answer
Did you read what I wrote above? It doesn’t seem like you did.
You wrote in several places that the Five Books of the Torah are also Torah as an object in itself. Is it possible to make a siyum on one of them (or on all of them)?
And is the criterion for a significant completion the length, or the fact that it is a self-contained unit? (For example, the first chapter of Kiddushin is longer than several tractates in Seder Moed, and still I haven’t happened to see anyone make a siyum on it alone.) What is the minimum measure, if there is one at all?