The purpose of the blog

There are thousands and thousands of people who learn daf yomi but unfortunately most people don't have a lot of time to spend learning the daf. In yeshiva we could spend weeks and weeks learning a daf of gemara and then hopefully we really understood it. Now, I'm lucky if I spend two hours a day learning the daf. I'm lucky if I get through all the Rashis and some Tosafosim on the page but rarely do I get a chance to look at any other Rishonim who wrote on the daf and certainly not the Acharonim. Occasionally, I'll have time to look up the halacha in the Shulchan Aruch or Rambam but certainly I'll never have time to analyze it. Besides all of that, there are numerous publications that are specifically intended for daf yomi. Artscroll (ok, it's not only for daf yomi but I'd guess that most users of Artscroll are learning daf yomi), Kollel Iyun Hadaf, Al Hadaf (publication), etc. Those all have great stuff and if I had time to read all of those then I'd really have a good understanding of the daf but there's no time for all that either.

Ok, you ask, if there's a ton written out there on the daf already and I'm not learning any of that then what is the purpose of starting a blog? It's just going to be more stuff about the daf that people won't read (I'm assuming that most people who learn the daf are like me as far as not learning much more than what's on the page). That's why I hesitated so much about starting the blog. My sister recently started a blog (about nothing) and she's been encouraging me to start a daf yomi blog. At first I thought it was pointless for the reasons stated. Besides, who would ever read a blog about daf yomi written by me - I'm not a rabbi or a talmid chacham or anything? Then after considering it for a few days, I decided that if I got some friends, rabbeim, etc. who also learn the daf to post then maybe we could discuss various insights that we came across or questions that we had. We might be more likely to read this because these will be specific things that one of us came across while we were learning the daf that we found interesting and wanted to share. Or just because we know if it's posted here it's because someone else was bothered by this while they learned the daf and maybe we'll be able to answer it or just reading the question will help us realize that we didn't understand it as well as we could and we'll be encouraged to go back and review. (UPDATE on 1/30 - I've discovered that the best thing about the writing the blog is that it forces me to organize my thoughts on at least one topic from the daf and often encourages me to look something up that I wouldn't have otherwise. So even if nobody ends up reading this, at least I've learned more because of it.)

So, in the beginning the blog will basically be for a few people to discuss today's daf (or yesterday's or the day before). My goal would be that we'll have some good discussions and 'Chavrech Chavra Is Leih, ve'Chavrech de'Chavrech Chavra Is Leih' and word will spread and others will come and join our discussion. A certain number of people will have posting authority and will be able to start discussions on there but anyone can comment on the discussions started. If someone without posting authority wants a new discussion started then they can email me and I will start the discussion for them. Hopefully, we'll be able to build a community where we can all learn something and help others learn something.

We'll see how it goes.