מועד קטן · Moed Katan

About Masechta Moed Katan · מסכת מועד קטן

Moed Katan learns Chol HaMoed - the days between the first and last days of Pesach and Sukkos - and the laws of mourning.

The first perek learns which work may be done on Chol HaMoed: watering a field that needs it, work that would be lost if left, what a person may do for the festival and for the public - repairing the roads and marking the graves - and what he must not, because the days are given for Torah and simchah. The second perek learns the person whose olives were overturned or whose work was ready to be lost. The third perek, V'Eilu Megalchin, learns who may cut hair and wash clothes on Chol HaMoed.

From there the masechta turns to aveilus: the laws of the mourner in the seven days and the thirty, tearing kriyah for a father and mother and for a talmid chacham, how a Yom Tov ends the shivah, and the words said to comfort mourners. Its pages carry many of the hespedim the Amoraim said for each other, and the teaching that the death of the righteous atones, like the Parah Adumah.

From the pages of Moed Katan

Three days for weeping, seven for hespedim, thirty for the mourner's clothes and haircut - and from there on Hashem says 'you are not more merciful than I'; children, life and livelihood depend not on merit but on mazal; and a tzaddik's word can stand even before a decree of Heaven. When Dovid HaMelech sat learning Torah he made himself soft and humble as a worm, and when he went out to war he made himself hard as wood; and when Shlomo HaMelech dedicated the Beis HaMikdash the people feasted seven days, through Yom Kippur, and a voice from Heaven told them that all of them have a share in the World to Come.

This page holds 130 shiurim on Masechta Moed Katan from 5 maggidei shiur; the most come from Dirshu (28), Rabbi Eli Stefansky (28) and Rabbi Shmuel Silber (26). 122 of them learn the whole daf and 8 are short reviews. 28 dafim have their own shiurim here, each in its own row above, and “Learn in the Daf Room” opens that daf with its text and its shiurim side by side.

Masechta Moed Katan in the Daf Yomi

The 14th Daf Yomi cycle learned Masechta Moed Katan one daf a day for 28 days, from daf 2 to daf 29, from January 14, 2022 to February 10, 2022; the 15th cycle, which opens with Berachos on June 8, 2027, reaches it on June 17, 2029. Masechta Moed Katan is in Seder Moed, the second of the six orders of the Mishnah, and in the order of the Daf Yomi it comes after Masechta Megillah and before Masechta Chagigah. On each of those days the Daf Room opens the day's daf with its text and every shiur on it, and the rows above keep the shiurim of every daf of the masechta for anyone who learns at his own pace.

The perakim of Moed Katan

Masechta Moed Katan has three perakim, from daf 2a to daf 29a. Each perek below opens its first daf in the Daf Room, where the Gemara’s text and every shiur on that daf sit together.

1. Perek 1 משקין בית השלחין 2a – 11a
2. Perek 2 מי שהפך 11b – 13b
3. Perek 3 ואלו מגלחין 13b – 29a