Like most people I have been blessed with the good fortune of having had the opportunity to participate in many siyumim over the years some even my own. There was one twenty-four-hour period however in which I participated in two siyumim that both celebrated a completion of sorts but were otherwise as different as could possibly be.

The first siyum took place on a recent Motzaei Shabbos at Yeshiva Darchei Torah. Two hundred forty-seven talmidim completed the masechta they had learned in yeshivah the previous year. To the hundreds of participants and observers it was truly a “grand” event as it was billed. Hundreds danced through the streets to the yeshivah some holding brightly lit torches and some their Gemaras. When they reached the beis medrash the dancing and ruach reached an even higher level of intense joy.

As at every siyum one could not help but be inspired and uplifted by the simchah shel Torah. But after I left the thoughts that poured into my mind were not joyous ones but rather thoughts of painful realization. As images of those youthful faces radiating with pure simchah flitted through my mind I was overwhelmed with envy. I longed to feel the joy that enveloped these young future talmidei chachamim. While the middle-aged body can no longer dance with the vigor and abandon of youth the soul still longs for the joy that these young boys exuded.

I was particularly struck by one seventeen-year-old boy who was dancing with uninhibited joy while embracing his Gemara. It reminded me of something I heard from Maran HaRav Shach’s grandson. Several years before his passing Rav Shach’s eyesight began to fail and it caused him great distress. His grandson showed him a computer image of the Rashba that could be greatly enlarged but he wouldn’t hear of learning from it. “When I learn” he explained “I have to be able to hug the sefer and if I can’t then I cannot learn from it.” In this bochur’s exuberant dancing while hugging his sefer I saw that Rav Shach’s legacy lives on.

I wish all 247 “chassanim of Torah” not only the brachah to be zocheh to make many more siyumim in their lives but also to do so with the feelings of pure simchah that they felt at that magical “grand” siyum.

THE NEXT DAYI attended another siyum. This was a siyum on all of Shas but that was only one aspect of what made this siyum so very different from the one the night before. With only twenty-five people in attendance it did not have the “grand” feel of the first siyum but not one person left without a heart filled with tears.

A little background is in order.

Almost twenty-five years ago I and my young family moved to the wonderful community of Hillcrest Queens and together with a small group of special and dedicated Yidden opened a new shul named after the departed gadol hador Maran HaGaon Rav Moshe Feinstein ztz”l. One of those truly special Yidden is Moshe Berkowitz who moved into the community around the same time we did and faithfully served as gabbai of our shul for many years. Among Moshe’s myriad qualities his greatest is his love for learning and his quest for emes (truth). In all those years Moshe never missed a shiur and would constantly challenge me when either he didn’t fully understand the shiur or he felt it wasn’t 100 percent emes.

For years I tried to get him to join the small daf yomi shiur I gave but he always declined. He felt or rather the emes in him felt that he needed a stronger background in Torah before he could properly tackle the daf yomi regimen. And so he spent the better part of ten years studying Chumash Nach and other things slowly building the foundation necessary for studying Gemara.

Seven and a half years ago Moshe was ready. He didn’t wait for the daf yomi cycle to begin again — he was ready and every moment was an opportunity for growth not to be wasted. And so Moshe joined daf yomi when it began Masechta Horiyos (the last masechta in Seder Nezikin) and became attached to his daf heart and soul. Each and every day the daf was not just there to be learned but to be learned reviewed reviewed again and become part of him.

About one and a half years ago with Moshe well on his way to completing all of Shas he was struck with a debilitating illness: ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease) which robs a person of the ability to control his body.

As the months passed he had to curtail many of his daily activities but not the daf. Never the daf. As the terrible effects of the illness progressed it didn’t matter how difficult or even how ludicrous it was to keep up the pressures of a daily daf. Everything could be stopped but not the daf. Masechta after masechta Moshe continued his upstream swim through the Yam HaTalmud with an eye on the finish line.

In the days just before Moshe was about to conclude his first siyum on Shas there was concern that due to the effects of this terrible disease he wouldn’t be able to participate in the siyum if it were to be held in a public venue. The decision was made to have the siyum in Moshe’s home and only have a small group of relatives and friends in attendance. Moshe was no longer able to actually recite the Hadran himself so a rav recited it and Moshe silently followed along.

Every siyum is a joyous celebration of accomplishment but for those privileged to attend that siyum it seemed clear that no siyum celebrated a greater accomplishment than that one. Not only did Moshe have every excuse to halt his daf yomi regimen; many would say it was ludicrous for him to even try to continue. But not if you know Moshe Berkowitz. His deep love for Torah and his natural attachment to emes compelled him to complete what he had begun more than seven years earlier despite the Herculean efforts needed to clear all the hurdles in his way.

AGAIN THESE SIYUMIM were so very different. Moshe’s siyum had no dancing in the streets lacked the exuberance of youth that feeling of the best is still ahead and was sparsely attended. But it is hard to say whether one siyum brought more simchah and pride to the Borei Olam than the other.

In my remarks at Moshe’s siyum I shared a thought I heard from Rav Shach ztz”l issued to me as a mild rebuke for something I was about to do.

Approximately thirty years ago I spent a year in Eretz Yisrael learning and teaching in Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim in Yerushalayim and used that wonderful opportunity to visit with and learn from the gedolei hador. I was truly blessed to develop a close relationship with Rav Shach ztz”l who despite his overwhelming responsibility of leading Klal Yisrael would make time for me each time I came and would sit with me and answer all my questions.

One Friday morning I went to the Rosh HaYeshivah’s home and was disappointed to find a house full of people which meant I would not be able to engage him in a conversation. His grandson told me that Rav Shach ztz”l was making a siyum. I decided to wish the Rosh HaYeshivah ztz”l a good Shabbos and try my luck the following week. He stopped me in my tracks and shared the following story:

Many decades earlier a young woman from Bnei Brak was to undergo a serious operation that would jeopardize her ability to have children. She was advised to travel to Yerushalayim (in those days a trip of several hours) and go to the Brisker Rav ztz”l for a brachah. When she entered the Brisker Rav’s home she told his son why she had come and that she desperately needed a brachah from the Brisker Rav.

His son approached the Brisker Rav and asked him if he could bring this woman in for a brachah. The Rav responded “Let her come back tomorrow.” His son was taken aback — the woman came all the way from Bnei Brak desperate for a brachah how could his father tell her to come back tomorrow? The woman returned again the next day only to be told that she should return later that evening. His sons were incredulous at what seemed like such insensitivity which was so out of character. When she returned that night she finally received a heartfelt brachah from the Brisker Rav.

Rav Shach happened to visit the Brisker Rav that day and his sons described their father’s strange behavior and seeming insensitivity. Rav Shach was perhaps the closest person to the Rav and he approached him to ask for an explanation. The Brisker Rav explained that he had been planning a siyum on Masechta Yevamos and he wanted this woman to come to him for a brachah at the time of his siyum because a siyum is an eis ratzon a time of goodwill and he wanted to give this woman a brachah at the most opportune time.

Needless to say after hearing those words from Rav Shach I stayed until the very end of his siyum so I too could benefit from the eis ratzon.

After recounting this story at Moshe’s siyum I added that in Shamayim the great Tannaim and Amoraim of the Mishnah and the Gemara were looking down at Moshe’s home witnessing the siyum of a person who with superhuman efforts and commitment persevered and completed all of Shas under the most trying of circumstances. With those great Sages joining arm in arm in a heavenly dance to participate in this special siyum it must have been a great eis ratzon for Moshe for his family for his kehillah and for all of Klal Yisrael.

Later that night I could not fall asleep partly due to the pain of seeing such a wonderful Yid and dear friend suffering so much but there was also something more profound. I think every person in that room looked at Moshe and then looked at themselves. How many times do we start something and not complete it? How many times have we begun a seder limud (a set time for Torah study) only to be sidetracked by a minor ache or pain or by just plain fatigue? How many siyumim do we have in us to make but we just let the days and years fly by?

It is known that Rav Moshe Feinstein ztz”l made a siyum on Shishah Sidrei Mishnah every thirty days as he would review the Mishnayos in the few moments between aliyos. Hashem doesn’t expect to do what Rav Moshe ztz”l did but we are expected to be able to achieve what my dear friend Reb Moshe Berkowitz did. He found the inner strength to complete what he started seven and a half years earlier in the most difficult of circumstances. What about the rest of us? We who due to Hashem’s chesed don’t have to face those types of challenges — have we completed what we began or did we even begin?

THESE SIYUMIM WERE SO DIFFERENT but there are similarities as well. They are similar in that they both instilled in me a deep sense of envy: one at the exuberance of the youth and one at the depth of commitment. They are also similar in the great eis ratzon that was created at the sight of 247 young accomplished bnei Torah dancing with abandon and at the sight of a siyum haShas made from a wheelchair.

May the inspiration and new commitment that are certain to come from readers be a zchus for a refuah shleimah for Moshe Eliezer HaKohein ben Esther Miriam along with all of cholei Yisrael.

Rabbi Aryeh Z. Ginzberg is the rav of the Chofetz Chaim Torah Center of Cedarhurst and the founding rav of Ohr Moshe Torah Institute in Hillcrest Queens. He is a published author of several sifrei halachah and a frequent contributor to many magazines and newspapers where he writes the Torah hashkafah on timely issues of the day. He is also a sought-after lecturer on Torah hashkafah at a variety of venues around the country.