As hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide celebrate the completion
of the seven-and-a-half-year long cycle of daily Talmud study, and as
women for the first time in history held their own celebration in
Jerusalem, one 17-year-old girl is believed to be the youngest woman to
ever mark this achievement.
Hila Schlakman of Efrat, a senior at Ohr Torah Stone’s Neve Chana
High School, began this learning cycle with her father after her older
brother had completed the previous one with their father in 2012. Though
her original plan was only to learn with her father until the
celebration of her Bat Mitzvah, her piqued interest drove her to
continue.
Over the course of the first four years of the 2,711-day cycle, she
worked with her father’s schedule, sometimes sacrificing and adapting
her own social plans in order to gain a mastery of the basics and set
the foundation for her future learning. For sleepovers at friends, she’d
need to plan to arrive late in order to study with her father
beforehand, and in order to travel for summer vacation, she and her
father would learn ahead so as not to miss a page. Later on, she would
be joined by her younger sister and ultimately their grandfather, too,
sometimes learning together and at other times on their own.
