What began as a spur-of-the-moment initiative, just one day before Rosh Hashanah, has become a magnet for tens of learners in Haifa who found themselves “addicted to the Daf.” A story about a single screen, a tripod, and a bar mitzvah boy that moved Rabbi Eli Stefansky.
Sometimes major change begins with one unexpected phone call. A week before Rosh Hashanah, Yitzchak Sheinberger, the gabbai of a local synagogue in Haifa, received a surprising request from one of the overseas MDY Daf Yomi facilitators. On the line was Sheinberger’s good neighbor, who lived abroad at the time. “I saw someone overseas learning in his spare time and I was jealous,” he told him. “I want to open a viewing point in Haifa, but I’m out of the country most of the year. Are you willing to step it up?”
Sheinberger’s answer was an immediate “yes”—and from there, the rest is history. Within less than 24 hours, a tripod and screen were set up in the synagogue, and the Haifa branch of the MDY community was underway.
The beginning was modest, but word spread like wildfire. “Word of mouth, WhatsApp statuses, group chats—I never imagined it would gain this kind of momentum,” the organizer recounts. “During the previous tractate we were over twenty people, and yesterday, with the start of the new tractate, we had already crossed forty.”
The scene in the shiur room is striking in its simplicity. Around the tables sit Sephardim and Ashkenazim, Hasidim, Lithuanians, and members of the Religious Zionist community. Divisions dissolve in front of Rabbi Eli Stefansky’s screen. “They’ve simply become addicted to the Daf,” he says with a smile. “Everyone says the same thing: it changed our lives. Or more accurately—it saved our lives.”
In an open conversation with members of the community, they describe how that daily hour with the Gemara transforms the atmosphere at home. “Things become more gentle. When a person is about to react with anger or impatience, he remembers: ‘Wait, I sit and learn for an hour every day—that obligates me.’ It affects their marriages, their finances, and most of all their children, who see a father who simply doesn’t give up on his learning.”
The emotional peak came at the bar mitzvah celebration of the organizer’s son. The boy, inspired by his father’s enthusiasm, did not miss a single day of learning. In what felt like remarkable Divine providence, the day he completed the tractate fell precisely on the eve of his bar mitzvah.
Members of the shiur—who had by now become like a second family—came to celebrate with him and surprised him with a beautifully arranged fruit platter bearing the organization’s logo. The highlight of the event was a joint trip by father and son to Beit Shemesh, where they met Rabbi Eli Stefansky at the central shiur. The rabbi, deeply moved to hear about the young man who had completed a tractate and about the community that had taken root in Haifa, strengthened them with words that were etched into their hearts: “It’s not about changing your life—it’s about finally beginning to live.”