3/5/16
Gitin 84: Jewish writ of divorce given on condition wife must eat pork- #verysneaky

Gitin 83 3/4/2016. 

Summary: Divorce documents written with certain stipulations and conditions may not be legally forcible.

Notable finding: If I were to marry my niece, I could uproot an entire mitzvah from the Torah (levirate marriage) -and she's only 10 months old.

Blog Explanation/ Readme

I was interested in starting Daf Yomi since the last siyum.  Don’t remember when that was, but I think it was within the past 2 years.  I believe the last time I got interested in Daf Yomi was 7 years ago when I was driving in LA traffic for 1 hour every day to get to my hospital rotations.  The good thing about traffic was that I could do a daf podcast on the way, and a chapter of Nach on the way home.  Thank you, OU. 

Anyways, 3 kids later and back on the east coast, I have now restarted listening to a daf yomi shiur once a day.  There are significant problems.  The commute is no longer 1 hour uninterrupted slow driving on the LA freeway system.  Now Rav Elephant’s melodious voice is in competition with making lunches, breakfast, changing diapers, driving carpool, and walking from the parking lot on noisy streets to an office- and there it stops. 

This made me realize that there may be a much wider spectrum of studying gemara- it’s not just b’iyun or b’kiyus.  I have reached a new zone consisting of nebulus daf exposure, where only minimal facts are absorbed and major components are lost forever.  Fortunately, I am familiar with something close to this state of mind from many years of early-morning gemara classes in Baltimore’s Talmudical Academy.  In studying daf yomi now on podcasts, I am trying to only achieve a minimal understanding I will call “Daf Awareness”. 

In daf awareness, one is conscious of a single theme within the daf, but is unqualified to discuss any other aspect of the daf.  It could be argued that nothing at all has been learned while a single moment of Daf Awareness was achieved.  This is a state of zen that will never put me on the podium in siyum hashas.  In recording these moments of daf awareness, I hope to generate a useful outline of my understanding of the Babylonian Talmud, one daf at a time.   

There will be a one-sentence thematic summary of the daily daf, and perhaps accompanied by one “fun fact” from the daf.  That is it.  If you like it, or have a better summary or fun fact- please let me know.

If you have studied today’s daf, please rate my summary and “fun fact” to keep me on the straight and narrow. 

Veiter!