Celebrations marking the completion of the seven-year cycle of the Talmud occurred in the religious communities of Jerusalem and Bnei Brak tonight. This was the seventh such cycle, terminating a page per day of the 2711 pages of the Talmud, which originated with Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the founder of the Lublin Yeshiva and the spokesman for Polish Jewry in the years preceding World War II, Rabbi Menashem Porush, a member of the Knesset, headed the Jerusalem ceremony at the Belt Yacov Yeshiva. Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef also attended.
The Witnitz section of Bnei Brak held a similar celebration and also marked the commencement of an expansion program for the Witnitz Yeshiva, The ground-breaking ceremonies for the new yeshiva for boys aged 13-16 were attended by Rabbi Moses Hager, head of the Witnitz rabbinical court and Rabbi Itzhak Mair, the mayor of Bnei Brak.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
