ABSTRACT
A true sense of the life of lernen requires something more than even the most articulate of written records; it necessitates the actual experience. The siyum is the single most important festival of lernen, a commemoration of fellowship, an end and a new beginning, a nodal point in the cycle of lernen. It is a moment of effervescence during which the assembled find themselves aroused to an intensified communion, religiosity, and lernen. Everything they normally do they do with greater energy and devotion at the siyum. And added to all this social and psychological energy is a feast. It is an important meal, a happy one with the legal power to cancel less joyous events such as fasts and periods of Jewish national mourning. The custom of the siyum always includes not only the formal conclusion of one volume of study but also the ritualized commencement of another.
