c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Three days prior to the start of the Jewish High Holy Days, New York’s Madison Square Garden will be packed with 26,000 Orthodox Jews in a powerful public expression of traditional Judaism’s tenacity and unity of purpose.

At the same time, another 18,000 Orthodox Jews _ linked to the Garden by satellite broadcast _ will fill the Nassau Coliseum on nearby Long Island. At 31 other sites across North America, Orthodox Jews also will gather in hotel meeting rooms, synagogues, convention centers and private homes to watch the New York proceedings.

In all, some 70,000 Orthodox Jews are expected to participate, which would make this, the 10th”Siyum HaShas of Daf Yomi”set for Sunday (Sept. 28), the largest Orthodox Jewish event in American history, according to organizers.

The core of the siyum (Hebrew for”finish”) is a religious service marking completion of 2,711 consecutive days _ nearly 7 1/2 years _ of studying one two-sided page daily of Talmud, the authoritative body of Jewish law and other rabbinic writings.

It’s a commitment undertaken by tens of thousands of Orthodox men around the world (women are excluded by male-dominated Orthodoxy’s rigid separation of the sexes). Participants _ who generally meet in small study groups _ all begin and conclude the process the same day.

But the siyum is more than a religious service. Given the current, often mean-spirited conflict between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, it is also an in-your-face, intra-religious assertion that Orthodox Judaism _ once written off as a fading anachronism _ remains alive and well.”It’s about saying, `Look, we have survived and have not compromised,'”said Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor at the City University of New York who writes widely about Orthodox Judaism.”And to do this at Madison Square Garden, a temple of the secular culture, is to do it in grand style. It’s a finger in the eye.” Orthodox Judaism is the most traditional of contemporary Judaism’s various branches and is synonymous with classical European Judaism, which barely survived the Holocaust. Orthodox Jews range from the so-called”modern Orthodox,”who interact freely with secular society, to dark-suited, right-wing Orthodox who generally separate themselves from society, minimizing all contacts with non-Jews and even liberal Jews.

What unites Orthodox Jews is their full acceptance of the divinity of the Hebrew Bible and the authority of traditional Jewish law governing virtually every human action _ from the moment of awakening to the moment preceding sleep.

Because Orthodoxy sees itself as the only legitimate Jewish religious expression, it is in constant conflict with Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform and other non-traditional _ and more liberal _ expressions of the faith.

Today, that conflict is most visible in the dispute in Israel over legislation proposed by Orthodox politicians to give Orthodoxy formal legal say over all conversions to Judaism in the Jewish state.

In the United States, about 8 percent of the nation’s 5.9 million Jews self-identify as Orthodox. Conservative and Reform Judaism, which claim about 1.5 million followers each, are the dominant movements. Most of the remainder of U.S. Jews are not affiliated with any movement.

But in Israel, Orthodoxy is the dominant force _ even though the vast majority of Israeli Jews are non-Orthodox _ because of a political arrangement stemming from the creation of the nation in 1948.

An Israeli government commission established to defuse the conversion controversy so far has been unable to reach a compromise. Originally scheduled to report back to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by mid-August, the panel has twice asked for more time and now faces an Oct. 22 deadline.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Reform Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which is a party to the negotiations, said in a recent interview he remains skeptical a compromise can be achieved.

The daf yomi (literally”page a day”) Talmud study program was started in 1923 by Agudath Israel, an international Orthodox group on the movement’s right-wing. Agudath Israel’s U.S. branch, with headquarters in New York, organized the Madison Square Garden event and the satellite broadcast, which will be seen in cities from Los Angeles to Boston, and Minneapolis to San Antonio.

In its early years, the daf yomi program was largely confined to members of Agudath Israel and other ultra-Orthodox groups. As recently as 1982, just 5,000 Orthodox Jews attended the siyum that marked the completion of the eighth daf yomi cycle (20,000 attended the ninth siyum in 1990 and held for the first time in the Garden’s main arena, with no satellite hookups).

Today, daf yomi has been embraced by a broad spectrum of Orthodox Jews, who view it _ and the upcoming siyum _ as a show of unity with like-minded co-religionists.”It’s a statement of support for religious study in a world where this sort of study is not the norm,”said Heilman.”That’s the greatest success here.” Many of those participating in the siyum have never completed the daf yomi study cycle _ which will reach its tenth conclusion at the Garden with the reading of the last page’s last few lines _ or live fully Orthodox lives.”This is a celebration of Jewish heritage and learning in general. You don’t have to complete daf yomi to be part of it,”said Rabbi Howard Kutner of Omaha, Neb., one of several cities with relatively small Jewish populations where groups will gather to watch the Garden proceedings.

Kutner, spiritual leader of Omaha’s Beth Israel Synagogue, the city’s only Orthodox congregation, said there are less than 50″fully”Orthodox Jews among Omaha’s Jewish population of about 6,500.

Still, he expects about 100 Jews to gather in a room at the University of Nebraska at Omaha to watch the Garden telecast, even though there is no daf yomi study program in his city.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust _ which saw the destruction of centuries-old Orthodox communities across Europe _ most Jewish leaders predicted the eventual disappearance of all but a few remnant pockets of Orthodoxy. In both Israel and the Jewish diaspora, non-Orthodox academics and community leaders concluded that modernity and assimilation would within decades peacefully end a process violently begun by the Nazis.

That certainly appeared to be the case in 1950s America, as Jews began abandoning life in self-contained big-city Jewish neighborhoods for the suburbs, where Orthodox life was largely absent. In ensuing years, however, a confluence of factors allowed Orthodoxy to not only survive, but to grow.

One was the arrival in the United States of many of the few Orthodox scholars who managed to survive the Holocaust. Their determination, said Rabbi Moshe Sherer, president of Agudath Israel of America,”to not give Hitler a posthumous victory”invigorated American Orthodoxy, which was then in its period of decline.

A more recent factor was the”ba’al teshuva”movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which prompted thousands of Jews raised in non-Orthodox homes to become Orthodox. The movement was a Jewish reflection of the contemporary return to more conservative beliefs also evident in the growth of evangelical and other conservative Christian churches.

As it gained new strength, American Orthodoxy also become more assertive in maintaining its standards and attacking Reform and Conservative Judaism, in particular, as inauthentic forms of the faith.”What is happening today must be measured by its quality in addition to numbers,”said Sherer.”Yes, the number of Orthodox schools has grown. But just as important the standards of study within the community have become more rigorous and the observance of kashruth (traditional Jewish dietary laws) is more rigorous.”Despite all the prophecies of doom and gloom for the Orthodox community we are here, we are flourishing and we expect to keep growing.” When an Agudath Israel leader in Poland first announced the daf yomi study program in 1923, he did so just days prior to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year celebration that kicks off the 10-day High Holy Day period beginning this year on Wednesday evening (Oct. 1).

Seventy-four years later, the Hebrew lunar calendar has brought the latest daf yomi cycle to its conclusion just as Rosh Hashanah is about to be celebrated once again.

In Sherer’s view, this is no accident.”It’s a great gift from God,”he said,”because this is the season when Jewish hearts are most open to introspection. To have the siyum now will inspire more Jews to join daf yomi study groups.” And 7 1/2 years from now, he predicted, the siyum that will be held”easily will fill (57,545-seat) Yankee Stadium … The resurgence of Orthodox Judaism is nothing short of miraculous. We will be here until the Messiah comes.”

MJP END RIFKIN