Last Thursday night, the tables of the auxiliary bais midrash of Yeshivas Ohr Eliyahu Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago were pushed together into long rows, set with fine linen, and piled high with a festive meal. The reason: Leibel Kaplan, a native of Pennsylvania, who originally came to the Mesivta as a student and has since returned as a junior member of the faculty, was completing the entire Shas, a task that began and ended in that very institution.
Kaplan says the inspiration for his accomplishment came from a farbrengen with his maggid shiur, Rabbi Levi Stern. “Rabbi Stern inspired us to learn Gemara every day on our own, in addition to what we’d learned during our official study sessions that day,” said Kaplan. “I took it seriously and learned every day, studying one mesechta after another, but not thinking about finishing.”
The next boost came when his yeshiva study partner, a bechor, was learning the mesechta of Zevachim, known to be long and difficult, to complete on Erev Pesach. “I saw how he was learning and decided to become more serious, learning a blatt or two, every day, no matter what.”…