Q&A: The Matter of Falsifying the Daf Yomi
The Matter of Falsifying the Daf Yomi
Question
A lot of people are busy these days with the Daf Yomi,
because, as is publicized, today is the yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin, who is presented as the originator of the idea.
They encourage people to study according to this framework, and there’s a lot of fanfare…
Bottom line: anyone who knows the history knows this is a falsification. The one who conceived of and spread the Daf Yomi was Rabbi Shpivak, of blessed memory, a Gur Hasid who was the rabbi of a town near Lublin, wrote books, received approbations from leading rabbis, and was murdered in the Holocaust.
It seems to me that some of his family survived, but today they aren’t interested in stirring things up.
He published the initiative under his own name in the first issue of the newspaper Degaleinu, which came out on Hanukkah 5681.
Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin published the idea much later, in Elul 5683.
Rabbi Shpivak apparently was angry about the theft and even confronted Rabbi Shapiro over it, but this is how things stand in the public mind.
In general, they had good relations, and Rabbi Shpivak, of blessed memory, took part in the dedication ceremony of the Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin building.
But it is known and clear that the whole story of the Daf Yomi is apparently a kind of theft.
If Torah is spread through theft,
is there reward for the learning?
Will it make people better and more upright, or the opposite?
Answer
I’m not familiar with the details, but even if someone came up with the idea, the person who saw to its implementation may rightfully be considered its owner.
Above all, even if the idea was stolen—so what? Because of that we shouldn’t learn? What’s the connection?
In the past, when the issue of Rabbi Shpivak and the publication in Degaleinu a year and a half before Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin became a matter of public discussion,
I met a few Gur Hasidim in Europe.
I asked them why they "appropriate" only the Jerusalem Talmud Daf Yomi for themselves,
and keep quiet about the Babylonian Talmud Daf Yomi, which was actually stolen from Rabbi Shpivak, of blessed memory, who was a Gur Hasid.
Most of them were surprised and didn’t know about the issue,
but there was one there who told me, in the name of his grandmother, that when she was a girl in the town with Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin, he used to go around saying that when he grew up he would make sure all Jews studied a page of Talmud every day…
So according to the grandmother, the idea ostensibly "belongs" to Rabbi Meir Shapiro and not to Rabbi Shpivak,
even though Rabbi Shpivak published it first.
Bottom line, Rabbi Shapiro also actually got the whole thing off the ground,
so it makes sense that it is associated with his name.