Daf Yomi (Hebrew: דף יומי, Daf Yomi, "page of the day" or "daily ") is a daily regimen of learning the Oral Torah and its commentaries (also known as the Gemara), in which each of the 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud are covered in sequence. A daf, or blatt in Yiddish, consists of both sides of the page. Under this regimen, the entire Talmud is completed, one day at a time, in a cycle of seven and a half years.
Tens of thousands of Jews worldwide study in the Daf Yomi program, and over 300,000 participate in the Siyum HaShas, an event celebrating the culmination of the cycle of learning. The Daf Yomi program has been credited with making Talmud study accessible to Jews who are not Torah scholars, contributing to Jewish continuity after the Holocaust, and having a unifying factor among Jews.
The novel idea of Jews in all parts of the world studying the same daf each day, with the goal of completing the entire Talmud, was put forth at the First World Congress of the World Agudath Israel which took place in Vienna starting from Elul 3, 5683 / August 15, 1923 and which lasted for ten days. The proposal for the study of Daf Hayomi was made on Elul 7 or 9, 5683 (August 19 or 21, 1923) by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, then Rav of Sanok, Poland, and future rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin and the resolution was adopted on Elul 10, 5683. In those years, only some of the 63 tractates of the Talmud were being studied regularly, such as Berachot, Shabbat, and Eruvin, which deal with practical laws, while others, such as Zevachim and Temurah, were hardly studied. Rabbi Shapiro also viewed the program as a way to unify the Jewish people. As he explained to the Congress delegates: