You can never be in a warmer environment than a place where a hundred thousand Jews will be dancing together, sharing the joy in our eternal treasure.
ome of the jobs I do are annual, but there’s only one event that I do every 2,711 days, and that, of course, is the Siyum HaShas. Coming up will im yirtzeh Hashem be the 13th siyum, and the fourth one for which I will be coordinating the music segments.
In the summer of 1997, before the tenth siyum, I received a phone call from Agudath Israel to set up a meeting with Rabbi Moshe Sherer ztz”l. Years before, following the eighth siyum at the end of 1982, Rabbi Sherer, always a forward thinker, boldly announced that he wished to book Madison Square Garden for the next one. But people were skeptical: The eighth siyum had attracted a nice-sized crowd of 5,000, but the Garden, which seats 20,000? Rabbi Sherer went ahead anyway and paid a nonrefundable deposit two years in advance — and tickets were sold out for the ninth siyum in April 1990 weeks before the event.
There would be a repeat performance for the tenth siyum, but double: It would take place in two venues, Madison Square Garden and Nassau Coliseum, both of which hold 20,000. I was thrilled to be a part of it.
During that siyum, Reb Abish Brodt ignited the already excited crowd, who burst into impromptu dancing in the aisles. Now, the siyum program is calculated down to the very last minute, so it was a really special feeling when, toward the end of the dance set, I got a message from the organizers: “Keep the dancing going!”
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