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On Wednesday (so right before Simchat Torah), someone proposed on a mailing list for (Reform) worship leaders and hangers-on that we form a group to do online talmud study following the Daf Yomi cycle. (Daf Yomi = "a page a day".) There were a bunch of messages that day that I didn't have time to read before the holiday.
Thursday night there were something like 150 messages on this topic, mostly "sign me up"s and a few with real content (format, moderation, sources, just for Reform Jews?, etc). I sent private mail saying "sign me up" and posted publicly saying hey, this sounds interesting, and are we all aware of how big a task this is? A page of talmud has a lot packed on it, after all; do we want to attempt that or study talmud at a slower pace and not following this cycle? (While I didn't post this, I believe that it takes people who already know what they're doing, and who are working on-on-one with a partner in person, at least an hour to cover that much ground. Every day.) I also made some comments about the content issues others had brought up. Finally, because someone had suggested asking the rabbis and rabbinic students on our list to lead discussions in turn, I said that I'm neither of those but I have some clues here and I'd be willing to take a shot at leading a day (or a daf, or whatever).
I got two responses, one (public) from the original poster kind of blowing off everything I said, and one (private) from someone saying I rock (or words to that effect). Shrug. Just trying to help; if you don't want it that's fine too.
Friday morning a rabbi I hold in high regard academically (from his posts, and from studying with him at HUC) posted an amplified form of my concerns (independently; I don't think he had read my message) and rather strongly urging this group to begin with the basics (how to study talmud), choose some easy tractates to start with, and ignore Daf Yomi. After some back-and-forth the original poster concurred.
Friday mid-day someone in an official position at URJ posted saying "we at URJ, HUC, and CCAR are in the process of organizing this study for you; please sit tight", or words to that effect. This prompted responses ranging from "we didn't ask for your help, actually" to "how dare you try to take this away from us". Since then there has been a little discussion of good texts for beginners, and that's about it.
From enthusiastic pie-in-the-sky idea to reality check to apparent hostile takeover, all in about 48 hours. This sort of thing used to take weeks on Usenet. :-)
Personally, I'm torn (while recognizing that I only somewhat have a horse in this race). On the one hand, I think the folks trying to organize this should go ahead; we should enpower laypeople, and this isn't in the context of any congregation. It's just people who want to get together. On the other hand, I think it was probably doomed without a higher proportion of experienced/educated folks stepping in; the vast majority of people who said anything at all said they'd never touched talmud before. If it proceeds as an informal group, I will do my best to teach what I can (deferring to my betters, of course) but suspect I will get frustrated and give up. (As a friend recently said when leaving a doomed organization, "this isn't working and I don't have time to teach a class".) If The Powers That Be step in, the result will probably be a good, but somewhat sterile, online class.
There is one positive outcome if TPTB take it over. There is one poster on the mailing list who is rude, arrogant, hypocritical, and willfully non-compliant with basic email etiquette. (Why hasn't this person been booted off the list? My best guess is that the list owners don't have the backbone for it.) This person was one of the ones who strongly objected, saying "if you do that, count me out". I would be pleased with that outcome, personally. :-)
I see a few possible outcomes now, and I'm curious which way it will go. There's a non-trivial chance that the whole thing will fizzle by, say, Wednesday. There's a good chance that we will end up with two efforts, which dooms the informal one as those who could best help will be involved with the formal one. We could get a good formal class, but it can only take advantage of the wave by starting within a week or two, I think, and I don't know if TPTB are used to moving that quickly. Or we could get just the informal effort, which will have some good discussions but bog down in people who don't know how to participate politely on active mailing lists until most of the knowledgable people leave. We'll see.
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But hey, Daf Yomi is owned and operated by Agudas Yisroel. As much as I believe in achdut Yisrael, I think this would be a great opportunity for UAHC --- or just a bunch of committed Reform Jews --- to say "hey, let's develop a daily Talmud study program that works for us." Take Masechet Berakhot, divide it up into a year of study, with a siyyum planned for next Simchat Torah, and with a managable amount of text each day, but with coordinated online and offline classes to teach it along the lines of the daf yomi model.
The best part about doing "the Daf" was being able to walk into any Orthodox community and be literally on the same page with them, and to take advantage of all the online resources that are "in sync" with one another. Capture that power, but don't feel bound to the DY schedule.
Especially don't jump in here. In addition to the other reasons that you suggest such a plan might be doomed, I don't think this segment of seder nashim would endear Talmud study to the members of a liberal movement, if you catch my drift.
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Ha!
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Especially don't jump in here.
Err, yeah.
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"(While I didn't post this, I believe that it takes people who already know what they're doing, and who are working on-on-one with a partner in person, at least an hour to cover that much ground. Every day.)"
I would say about an hour, as a good average day. It is by no means a minimum. I've heard of a 20 minute daf yomi class. But I don't expect there's a lot of understanding or retention there. And this requires that the person be capable of "leining" the daf, ie being able to read and understand the words printed there.
My suggestion for such a group would be to pick a start date based on the daf yomi calendar (likely either the beginning of Nezikin at the very end of 2008 or beginning of Shas in Aug 2012)and prep from now till then. One could easily be daf yomi ready by the next siyum hashas. Going from never-seen-gemara-before to daf-yomi ready in 15 months requires a greater commitment than most people otherwise employed are able to make, I would venture to guess. If I wanted to run a marathon, I might start training tomorrow, but I wouldn't do the marathon tomorrow.
I like the idea of dividing up a smaller portion of the Talmud. However, another possibility which is perhaps in the opposite of the correct direction for this effort is the method proposed by the Tanya(and used by others, probably even before the Tanya): divide Shas into some large number of portions. Assign said portions to individuals/small groups. Meet up after a year (or other appropriate length of time). Celebrate communally having finished the whole Talmud. Repeat. Dividing the 40 someodd masechtot of Shas between that many communities could be interesting. This could require TPTB to help organize, but would be quite an accomplishment if done. Simchat Torah seems an excellent time to cycle through this. There is a community I know of in Beit Shemesh which every month learns the entire 6 orders of Mishnayot, divided among individuals. It has now been going on so long that any person who started at the beginning has finished the whole thing him/herself. Another possible direction for this excitement.
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I-Worship, which is a mailing list run by URJ for worship leaders, chairs of worship committees, sometimes congregational officers, and such-like. And ex- of all of those; you have to present a credential to get onto the list, but no one ever checks up later to see if you still have it.
The list doesn't have any sort of binding power on anyone; it's more a place to share ideas and resources, and tends to cover issues like engaging more congregants, service times, music trends, choosing people to receive honors, special events (do you have a service where you honor the sisterhood?, etc), and all sorts of nuts and bolts. So sure, there are people from URJ monitoring the list, and sometimes they pipe up with a pointer to some resource (usually on their web site), but mostly they sit back. I was pretty surprised by the "we'll handle it" message in this case.
I would say about an hour, as a good average day.
Thanks. And as soon as you move it to email, taking away both the in-person aspects and the time pressure ("oh, I'll just read it later", and suddenly a week has gone by), it would take a lot longer. So even "allocate an hour every day" wouldn't work online, though it sounds like it would work in person. (I suspect that almost no one on this list has an hour a day to dedicate to this. I know I don't, which is why I've never kept up with Daf Yomi on my own.)
Your suggestion is a good one. I would take it a step farther: start with basic preparations and skill-teaching and only pick a target date once that's far-enough along to gauge. People might decide that the study is more important than the schedule, and that's a fine outcome too. We don't need to ever hook up with Daf Yomi to get benefit out of this, after all.
When it looked like Daf Yomi was still the focus I suggested that different people could take different days, preparing a lesson to start from. This is sort of like your "each person learns a different part" model, but rolling out the sharing on a daily basis. The original poster didn't seem to care for that idea. Oh well; she's more invested than I am at this point, so she gets to make decisions and then see who follows.