Turnout for the Talmud : A Thousand Orthodox Jews Finish One Cycle of Reading, and Embark on Yet Another

More than a thousand Orthodox Jews gathered in the unlikely confines of the Hollywood Palladium on Wednesday night for the festive end to one 7 1/3 -year cycle of reading the Talmud,and the beginning of a new cycle.

Outside, the marquee announced that “Big Band Dancing Is Back,” but the crowd swayed to a different rhythm as prayers mixed with speeches extolling the virtue of daily religious study.

“You don’t eat once or twice a week--you eat every day. The same is true for study, only more so,” Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Bick of New York told the participants.

The turnout was a testimony to the increased visibility of Orthodox believers, who make up no more than 10% of the 600,000 Jews in Los Angeles.

Just seven years ago, the last such event was held in the much smaller social hall of a synagogue, and the one before that was celebrated in a private home.

The Talmud, compiled about 1,500 years ago, is a law book and biblical commentary, a gnarly and prolific text that helps guide the lives of strictly observant Jews.

Written largely in Aramaic, a language that was common in much of the ancient Middle East, it explores biblical text and associated legends, asking question after question to extract all possible meanings.

It lays down guidelines on topics including the Sabbath, kosher food, charity, tort law, marriage and divorce, and it includes discourses on astronomy, agronomy, mathematics and anatomy, among other topics.

Under the daf yomi (Hebrew for daily page) program, which has now been completed for the ninth time since 1923, thousands of Orthodox Jews around the world plow through the Talmud’s 20 tomes in concert.

Under a schedule thought out by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, of Lublin, Poland, in 1923, all of them study the same new page--actually both sides of a page--each day. There are 2,711 double pages, known as folios.

“This particular program, because of the demands it puts on people, because it never lets you alone, people get addicted to it,” said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, who studies with a group every morning at 6:30.

“People appreciate the structure it gives their day, knowing that they’re spending some time on intellectual activity,” he said.

Although only 17 men were listed Wednesday as having finished the seven-year cycle, their numbers are growing. There are now about 20 daf yomi groups in Southern California, with regular attendance of between 10 and 20 men each. An unknown number of others study on their own.

Some women also study the Talmud, but separately. The women at Wednesday’s gathering were seated behind a six-foot-high partition intended to minimize distractions.

Not all Orthodox Jews follow the daf yomi program, which is tailored for businessmen and professionals who do not have more than an hour a day to devote to study.

But the Wednesday gathering included many more who came out of respect for those who do.

“This is quite an evening, because it’s rare that you get all the wings of the Orthodox community together under one roof,” said Adlerstein, who teaches Judaic studies at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles.

Some of the men wore the long beards, black hats and knee-length coats that mark them as Hasidic Jews, followers of charismatic rabbis whose dynasties trace back to the small towns of Eastern Europe.

But others, except for their skullcaps, were as fashionably dressed as they might have been the Palladium’s Saturday night salsa show.

Some said they found the Talmud useful in their daily lives.

“The Talmud gives you an analytical approach to everything,” said Yakov Genauer, a first-year student at Southwestern College of Law. “It makes you look at both sides of the coin, and in law you’re supposed to be able to argue both sides of an issue.”

Others spoke of Talmud study as a spiritual exercise.

“Being very involved in the secular world, I felt this was something important to hold on to,” said Charles Katz, whose advertising firm produced a series of striking commercials for the C & R clothing chain.

The Talmud teaches, he said, that “unless we have a moral plateau from which to operate, we are misdirected by our basic instincts.”

Most of the participants launched their Talmud studies in Jewish day schools at the age of 8 or 9, but Adlerstein noted that Rabbi Akiva, one of the most famous of ancient sages, did not begin until age 40.

At his three-times-a-week “masochists class,” several adults have begun from scratch and made “immeasurable progress,” Adlerstein said.