Seats for Every Tractate
When Rav Meir visited the Chofetz Chaim, the old sage told him what Daf Yomi would mean in the World to Come.
A story ofRav Yehuda Meir Shapiro of Lublinהרב יהודה מאיר בן יעקב שמשון שפיראProfile ›
It is told that after Daf Yomi had begun to spread, Rav Meir travelled to Radin to visit the Chofetz Chaim. The elder of the generation received him warmly and called him the one who had devised the daily daf.
The Chofetz Chaim then explained why the idea moved him so deeply. In the World of Truth, he said, the honor given to Torah learning is beyond anything we know, and each person is received according to the tractates he learned. He pictured each tractate as having its own seat in the world above. For generations many of those seats had stood empty, because most Jews kept to the few tractates they had met in their youth and the rest were left to a small circle of scholars.
Now, he told Rav Meir, that would change. With every Jew turning the same page each day, every tractate would be learned, and every seat would be taken. For the Chofetz Chaim, a Jew who learns even a single page has a place waiting for him, and a Jew who finishes the whole Talmud fills a place that had long stood vacant.
Source: Rav Moses M. Yoshor, The Chafetz Chaim: The Life and Works of Rav Yisrael Meir Hakohen Kagan (Mesorah, 1984), the account of the Radin visit about Daf Yomi (page not confirmed); a shorter form appears in Dei'ah veDibur, 14 Adar I 5765, in the feature on Reb Meir Shapiro and the Chortkover Rebbe.
Most of us return again and again to the parts of Torah we already know and leave other parts untouched. Today, pick one area you have never opened: a tractate, a book of Tanach, a section of halachah. Learn one page of it, and tell yourself that a place was waiting for exactly that page. If you can, ask a friend to join you for the same page tomorrow. A small step into unfamiliar learning fills a place that would otherwise stay empty.