Dirshu Siyum dancing
Dirshu Siyum dancingINN:Dirshu

Over 2,000 people attended the three day North American Dirshu siyum held at the Crowne Plaza in Stamford, Connecticut from last week to celebrate the completion of study of part three of the Mishnah Berurah, the authoritative halakhic text written by the halakhic sage, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, known as the Chafetz Chaim, and first published in 1904..

This is just the first of several siyums that will be taking place around the world in 2019 leading up to the worldwide siyum at the Prudential Center in New York in 2020.

Dirshu, the largest Torah organization in the world, has changed the lives of the 150,000 people who have participated in its educational programs.

HaRav Dovid Hofstedter addressing the Dirshu Conference
HaRav Dovid Hofstedter addressing the Dirshu ConferenceINN:Dirshu

While it has become commonplace in modern society to use education as a means to attain financial success, Dirshu’s program focuses on creating a populace highly educated in Torah, Talmud and other Jewish texts. Rabbi Dovid Hofstedter’s goal is to bring Jewish scholarship to the level where it was in the great yeshivas prior to the Holocaust.

Dirshu's program includes study and regular examinations as students progress. Binem Naiman, owner of a well-known glatt kosher restaurant in Brooklyn, Glatt A La Carte, is one of the students. He has said that the Dirshu program profoundly changed his life in the short time he studied with it so far. He spends an entire month prepping for each test and he said he likes the diverse group of people he studies with from a produce seller to a successful real estate professional.

Another siyum attendee, successful businessman Motty Gross, said that despite his busy professional schedule he spends six hours each day studying and “always studies each page six times before taking the test.”

Even those who are teachers and rabbis themselves have joined the program. A father and teacher from Brooklyn, Shaya, who attended the siyum with his wife, also a teacher, said it is is not just the male students who love the program, but their wives love it too.

Shaya’s wife said she found the convention very inspiring and uplifting and that, “it made us feel like we are all in this together. This program brings so much meaning to our lives. At the convention, it didn’t matter where you came from or what you do — we are all in this together and the speakers were very inspiring.”

“Nothing satisfies me more than to study God’s word,” Motty Gross said and Binem Naiman added that Dirshu keeps him from getting distracted by the unimportant things that abound in today's world web and social media world. "Anyone can join and now is the time."