It’s 1:30 in the morning on Friday, May 1, 2026 and I’m still awake, blogging. Why am I still awake? Because I stayed up to learn the final Daf of Menachos with Reb Eli Stefansky’s shiur with MDY.
109 days ago, I started to learn Daf Yomi, the daily cycle of Talmud Study in which one learns two pages of the Babylonian Talmud every single day. There are 2,711 folio in the Talmud, front and back, for a total of 5,422 pages; the full cycle takes about 7.5 years to complete.
The current Tractate, called Menachot, started on January 13, and I started just a couple of days later. I quickly caught up and, every single day since then, I either watched Reb Eli’s videos, listened to his podcast, or learned the page on my own. I missed days here and there, but I managed to make them up, doubling up when I had to, and tonight I stayed up to watch the live broadcast, which begins at 7:10 am each morning in Israel (12:10 am here).
The last time I completed an entire Tractate was the year after I graduated high school - I completed Tractate Kedushin over the course of the entire year. Kedushin is only 82 pages. The previous year, we completed Makkos in school (22 pages); that also took an entire year. Those are the only ones I’ve completed.
So, tonight, I completed a tractate of Talmud for the first time in 33 years. And, later today, we begin the next.