About a year ago, I received a group email from my wife's family. Their grandmother had passed on, and they were asking the extended family to join in studying Talmud in her memory. My wife has 15 siblings and a very large extended family, so they decided to ask everyone to commit to collectively completing the entire Talmud.
Now, the Talmud contains 63 tractates and over 6300 pages. Under normal circumstances, completing the Talmud requires intense study several hours each day for a full seven years! But in this case, if everyone agreed to chip in, and we were to divide it between so many willing participants, we should be able to complete it in just one year.
Asking people to study Torah in memory of the deceased is very common in Judaism. By learning something, or doing a mitzvah, specifically in that person's memory, we help elevate their soul in the higher world.
At the time, I was under a lot of pressure at work and unable to commit to anything, so I deleted the email, assuming they could do it without me.
But a few days later my wife's cousin called me. "I didn't see your name on the list!" he said. "We still have tractates available. Can you please commit to one?"
I tried to get out of it. Studying a tractate of Talmud is a serious commitment which takes hours and hours of time. Finally he wore me down and I agreed to take half the tractate of Berachot.
Months passed, and while I kept intending to start studying, somehow I got no further than the first page. As the end of the year drew near, I kept getting reminder emails but I simply ignored them...
...until the last minute! Sound familiar? We all leave things till the last minute occasionally.
But here I was, with everyone depending on me. Out of the 6300 pages of the Talmud, only my 80 pages hadn't yet been studied! And this wasn't simply an hour or two of reading. Each page requires hours of study to be understood.
What could I do? I refused to let the whole group down. I had made a commitment and I intended to honor it. So I turned to my trusty Whatsapp groups. I have a few family groups and a group of South Africans, so I posted in all the groups that I desperately need people to help me complete my pages of Talmud. Lo and behold! Within minutes, I had dozens of people agreeing to take a couple of pages each, and within a few hours we had finished my entire section. Mission accomplished!
In this week's Torah portion we read about the Jews carrying the Holy Ark through the desert. Every time the Jews camped, they collectively assembled it, until it was again time to travel, when they collectively dismantled it.
There are times in life when a burden is too big to carry alone. But if we work as a team, the task becomes suddenly surmountable. In this case, collectively completing the Talmud is what made it doable. When we unite, we become a powerful force, able to accomplish the seemingly impossible.