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Daf Yomi

This would turn into a massive page during the project going through the entire cycle. What I’m going to do is put the section of whichever tractate I’m currently going through on this page, and as I finish them during the cycle, I’ll move the finished one onto a separate linked sub-page. I’m going to organize it as an outline so it’s reasonably easy to follow. I’m also, while well aware of the deep spiritual stuff that’s going on in each discussion, not going to go down that path – there are a zillion websites and commentaries that already do that. In general, I find the idea of a glimpse of a historical culture from what amounts to transcripts of conversations between spiritual and secular leaders to be fascinating, and not surprisingly, for me, I’m particularly drawn to topics that relate to food and wine, sexuality, and comedy.

  • Seder Zeraim – “Book of Seeds”
    • Berakhot – “Blessings” – Blessed things, actions, and events
    • I hit a momentary “WTH?” when Berakhot finished and we didn’t move on to Pe’ah, the next tractate in Zeraim. Apparently the remaining ten tractates in Zeraim do not have Gemara commentary in the Babylonian Talmud, just the Jerusalem Talmud, which the Daf Yomi doesn’t cover. Despite living in a predominately agrarian society, the Babylonian rabbis apparently had nothing to say on agriculture and related subjects like tithing, offerings, and challah bread. Though now I get “Book of Seeds”, I do feel a bit cheated and I want to know if there’s a good challah recipe in there. My plan is to at some point read through the various tractates throughout the Talmud that aren’t included in the Daf Yomi, just out of curiosity. I’ll put those in a different color so that they stand out.
    • Pe’ah – “Corner” – Pay it Forward
    • Demai – “Doubtful” – Provenance and Taxes
    • Kil’ayim – “Mixed Species” – Mixing it up in the Fields
    • Shevi’it – “Seventh” – Taking a Sabbatical from Life
    • Terumot – “Donations” –
    • Ma’aser Rishon – “First Tithes” – 
    • Ma’aser Sheni – “Second Tithes” – 
    • Challah – “Dough” – 
    • Orlah – “First Fruits of Trees” – 
    • Bikkurim – “First Fruits” –
  • Seder Moed – “Book of Festivals”
  • Seder Nashim – “Book of Women”
  • Seder Nezikin – “Book of Damages”
  • Seder Kodashim – “Book of Holy Things”
    • Zevachim – “Sacrifices” – God’s Grill
    • Menachot – “Meal Offerings” – Holy Carbs Batman!
    • Chullin – “Mundane” – Any Way You Slice It
      • Chullin vs. Zevachim is the rabbinic split‑screen with a new knife and a new backdrop. Zevachim is temple slaughter as sacrificial theater where animals are consecrated, blood flung altar‑side, meat consumed in sacred precincts. Chullin takes that choreography and drags it into daily life, stripping away incense and priestly pomp to focus on the mechanics of everyday kosher butchering. Where Zevachim dramatizes sacrifice as divine spectacle, Chullin insists that Tuesday’s chicken dinner is still covenantal, provided the blade is sharp and the cuts precise. One sanctifies the act of slaughter through ritual context, the other through technical perfection. It’s a continuum where holiness doesn’t vanish when the altar is gone, it migrates to the kitchen counter, carving knife in hand.
      • 7/17/26, Chapter 5, Page 78 – Referring to a basis of Leviticus 22:27–28 the rabbis assert that: a newborn animal must spend eight days with its mother before sacrifice, and mother and offspring cannot be slaughtered on the same day. However, they entangle this with the case of a fetus discovered only when the mother is slaughtered. That yields a paradox: if maternal nurture is required, how can the law apply when nurture is impossible because the mother is already gone? But here’s the kicker… anyone versed in animal husbandry would know a cow, sheep, or goat is pregnant long before slaughter. The last chapter’s surprise pregnancy scenario is implausible, another one of those “what if?” scenarios that keep coming up, though rarely garnering an entire chapter devoted to them.
      • 7/18/26, Page 79 – The sages continue in the world of animal husbandry implausibilities. First, they permit mares to mate with stallions to produce foals and with donkeys to produce mules, sidestepping the Torah’s ban on interbreeding, by treating those pairings as naturally existing categories. But then they reverse course, forbidding mule–horse unions on the grounds of “mixing species.” But, since mules are sterile, the prohibition legislates against an impossibility. It’s another rabbinic exercise in boundary‑drawing, where the law polices symbols even when biology already closed the case.
      • 7/19/26, Page 80 – More ridiculousness in the animal breeding world, as the rabbis discuss whether the offspring of intermating between, sheep, goats, deer, oxen, and/or aurochs, produce a “partial sheep” that is suitable for sacrifice. With the exception of a very rare, sterile hybrid that can result from sheep and goats mating, called a geep or shoat, none of these can interbreed. A sheep is a sheep. I realize they’re trying to make a point about purity of species, but it seems a silly way to go about it.
      • 7/20/26, Page 81 – The rabbis break out their micrometers and calendars to argue over the fine print of kosher slaughter. Is “on the eighth day” literal, or does holiness only kick in once you’ve crossed into day nine? Does “outside the designated spot” mean a few feet off, or does sacred geography extend like a chalk line around the altar? From the outside, these look like quibbles over inches and hours, but for them, the tiniest misstep could collapse the scaffolding of sacrifice, much like engineers scrutinizing tolerances in machinery. It’s rabbinic stress‑testing: probing the Torah’s edges to see how far the law bends before it breaks.
      • 7/21/26, Page 82 – We’ve seen in this chapter that there’s a strong rule prohibiting the slaughter of a newborn calf within roughly a week of its mother’s slaughter. But what about a non-newborn? A similar prohibition applies to slaughtering the adult offspring on the same day as its mother, though limited to same day, rather than same week. Which leads to a weird discussion, where the adult daughter also has a calf. If one slaughters the… grandma, then the mama, and then the calf, one is punished with eighty lashes. However, if one slaughters the grandma, then the calf, then the mama, it’s only forty lashes. And, if one slaughters the calf, then the mama, then the grandma… no punishment. It’s, to my mind, excusing behavior based on following the letter, not the spirit, of the law – an absurd fidelity to textual precision over sentiment.

[A pretty chart of the whole thing lifted from Wikipedia]