סיום

The Hebrew root s-y-m means to end, to complete, to finish. The noun siyum is used in rabbinic literature for the conclusion of any significant undertaking, but the term became specifically attached to finishing a tractate of the Mishnah or Talmud. The Talmud itself (Shabbat 118b) records discussions about celebration at the completion of a book of study, and the custom of holding a seudat mitzvah, a commanded festive meal, at a siyum is documented in Geonic responsa from Babylon as early as the eighth century.

The most celebrated form of siyum is the Siyum HaShas, the completion of the entire Babylonian Talmud: 2,711 pages across 37 tractates. Daf Yomi, the practice of learning one page of Talmud per day, was proposed by Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin at the first World Agudath Israel Congress in Vienna in 1923. A complete Daf Yomi cycle takes exactly seven and a half years. The first global Siyum HaShas under this program was held in Warsaw in 1931; subsequent celebrations have grown from gatherings of thousands to events filling stadiums on six continents.

A siyum carries a specific halakhic privilege: those who attend may eat meat on minor fast days, including the Three Weeks period of mourning, because a siyum is classified as a seudat mitzvah. The formula recited at the conclusion of a tractate begins with the word Hadran, meaning we will return: the text addresses the completed tractate directly, as if it were a living presence that can be longed for and revisited. The formula ends with a vow that the tractate will not be forgotten and that the one who studied it will not be forgotten.

The 14th Daf Yomi cycle concluded in January 2020 with a global Siyum HaShas that drew over 90,000 people to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with hundreds of thousands more attending satellite events worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic began weeks later, making the January gathering one of the last mass Jewish assemblies before years of disruption. The siyum also travels at smaller scale: Jewish communities in Mumbai, Buenos Aires, Melbourne, and Cape Town hold their own ceremonies whenever a local study group reaches the final page of a tractate. The word travels with the practice.