App-ortioned Learning

The genius creator of this app, Rabbi Mordechai Groner, did not take his idea to investors or to the moguls. Instead, the rosh ha’yeshiva of Yeshiva Ateres Shimon made the app free for all.

To understand the engine behind the app, a little Talmudic knowledge is necessary. The Mishnah in Makkos (5b) discusses the severe punishment for the zomemim variety of false witnesses: They receive the exact punishment they wanted to wrongly inflict on a poor innocent soul. If they wanted an individual to be wrongly condemned to death, then they are condemned to death.

In Jewish law, the highest form of evidence is the testimony of two witnesses. There is no benefit to adding a third. Yet, Rebbe Akiva points out, if a third witness provides the same false testimony as the original two witnesses, that witness will be liable for the same severe punishment as the first two. This is mind-boggling. The third witness’s testimony was totally superfluous. It accomplished nothing. The first two witnesses were initially believed by beis din, and the new testimony did nothing to further their diabolical plot. Yet, when all three witnesses are found to be liars, they are all subject to the same awful punishment. The third witness cannot claim that his testimony was meaningless.

Rebbe Akiva states that this teaches us that if someone joins together with people committing a sin, he will suffer the same fate no matter how minuscule or unimportant his involvement was. However, on the flip side, if someone joins with people performing mitzvos, they will all receive the same reward, with no regard to the necessity of his input. In fact, Chazal tell us, based on pesukim, that the reward for mitzvos is 500 times as good as the punishment is bad. So as harshly as the person who joins with sinners will be punished, the reward of the person who joins those who do mitzvos will be 500 times as great.

Rabbeinu Yonah in Sefer HaYirah says the halachah is in accordance with this dictum. If someone helps with a b’ris milah, it is as if he performed the b’ris milah himself.

The Nachalah L’Yisrael says this explains the ancient custom of the chevrah haShas. Everyone in shul used to take a masechta and they would make a siyum haShas together once or twice a year. At first glance, this is totally illogical. Every individual could make a siyum on his own masechta, but no individual finished Shas. So what is the point of making a siyum haShas if no one finished Shas? The answer is that since they all joined together to finish Shas, each participant gets credit for finishing Shas even though he only learned his own portion.

While this may seem just an esoteric concept, some Acharonim base practical halachah on this idea. The Beis Ephraim, for example, writes that people who join together to write a sefer Torah each independently fulfill the mitzvah of kesivas sefer Torah. In another area of halachah, the Shu’t Kinyan Torah B’Halachah writes that if people get together to finish a masechta of Gemara together, they can make a bona fide siyum, which has practical halachic ramifications.

Siyum Daily takes the chevrah haShas concept and makes it available to everyone who can learn a Mishnah. Everyone is assigned one Mishnah to learn a day. The user learns that one Mishnah every day for a week. Thousands of other people are learning the other Mishnayos. In this way, a siyum is made every day on all the Mishnayos in Shas. When an individual learns his Mishnah, he is joining the siyum haShas and is credited, according to the Nachalah L’Yisrael, as if he had finished all the Mishnayos in Shas that day. Of course this doesn’t absolve him from actually finishing Shas himself or utilizing his free time to study Torah. However, in terms of reward, Rebbe Akiva taught us when you join with others performing a mitzvah, you are rewarded for the entire mitzvah.

The user of the Siyum Daily app, by dedicating just a few minutes a day, can reap huge rewards. The program was so successful that now the app, which is available for Android and iPhone, has added Tehillim daily. Eventually, it will encompass all facets of Torah. As an added benefit, after someone participates for 100 days, the learner earns the right to post a sponsorship message to dedicate that day’s learning. This message will be visible to all the participants. You can be that individual who utilizes train time and makes it holy.