תענית · Taanis

About Masechta Taanis · מסכת תענית

Taanis learns the prayer for rain and the fasts of the community. It opens 'from when do we mention gevuros geshamim' - mashiv haruach umorid hageshem in Shemoneh Esrei - and when we begin to ask for rain.

When the rains did not come by the seventeenth of Marcheshvan, individuals began to fast, and from Rosh Chodesh Kislev the beis din decreed fasts for the community that grew stricter one after another. The second perek describes a public fast: the aron taken out to the town square, ashes on the aron and on the heads of the leaders, an elder who speaks words of rebuke, and the brachos added to the Shemoneh Esrei. The third perek learns the other troubles a town would fast and cry out for, and brings the men whose prayers brought rain - Choni HaMe'agel, who drew a circle and would not leave it until it rained, and who slept seventy years; Nakdimon ben Gurion; Abba Chilkiya; and Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa.

The fourth perek learns the ma'amados, the Jews who stood for their region while the korbanos were brought, the five things that happened on the seventeenth of Tammuz and the five on Tisha B'Av, and the customs of the weeks before it. It ends with the two happiest days of the year, the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur, when the daughters of Yerushalayim went out in borrowed white clothes, and with the promise that Hashem will make a circle of the righteous in the World to Come.

From the pages of Taanis

The day of rain is greater than the resurrection of the dead; Torah is compared to water - as water leaves a high place and goes down to a low one, Torah stays only with one whose spirit is humble; and Nachum Ish Gamzu, who said on everything that happened to him 'this too is for the good'. Choni saw an old man planting a carob tree that would give fruit only after seventy years, and the man told him 'as my fathers planted for me, so I plant for my children'; and the whole world was fed in the merit of Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, while he himself lived on a measure of carobs from one Erev Shabbos to the next.

This page holds 103 shiurim on Masechta Taanis from 4 maggidei shiur; the most come from Rabbi Eli Stefansky (51), Rabbi Shmuel Silber (29) and Daf Yomi with Rabbi Phil Karesh (22). 80 of them learn the whole daf and 23 are short reviews. 30 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 Taanis in the Daf Yomi

The 14th Daf Yomi cycle learned Masechta Taanis one daf a day for 30 days, from daf 2 to daf 31, from November 14, 2021 to December 13, 2021; the 15th cycle, which opens with Berachos on June 8, 2027, reaches it on April 17, 2029. Masechta Taanis 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 Rosh Hashanah and before Masechta Megillah. 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 Taanis

Masechta Taanis has four perakim, from daf 2a to daf 31a. 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 מאימתי מזכירין 2a – 15a
2. Perek 2 סדר תעניות כיצד 15a – 18b
3. Perek 3 סדר תעניות אלו 18b – 26a
4. Perek 4 בשלשה פרקים 26a – 31a