For over a decade, a talented member of Klal Yisroel has been producing creative “mock Gemaros” in honor of Purim, displaying his brilliance and wide-ranging knowledge.
“My goal in doing this is to give the reader the sense that he can make it through a piece of Gemara without the need for assistance,” the writer, preferring anonymity, told Matzav.com in an exclusive interview. “I generally distribute it to my email contacts. Some years it goes viral and some years it doesn’t.”
The author doesn’t put his name on his creations, because the people who know him know that he wrote it, but they also know that he does a lot more important things for Klal Yisroel.
Last year, his “Gemara” piece on Donald Trump went viral. In fact, dozens of elementary and high school rabbeim used it as a tool for teaching Gemara. Rav Eytan Feiner and other shul rabbonim also used it as a tool, and an “ArtScroll version” was released by someone else.
“While that wasn’t my intended goal,” he told us, “it gave people a sense of contentedness to Gemara and hopefully contributed to talmud Torah in some sense.”
And his rabbeim encouraged him to continue doing it.
Our friend’s contribution this year, seen above and shared exclusively with Matzav.com, is about “fake news.” He made the “kuntrus” reflect more of a liberal, anti-Trump personality, while Tosafos responds with a pro-Trump interpretation.
The message that the author put on the bottom is: “Whether one’s views are more aligned with the kuntrus or with Tosafos, we should all be מבקשי אמת in מילי דעלמא and certainly in מילי דשמיא including the realization that if we made it through this daf, we have the ability to work out, with יגיעה ועמל, the אמיתה של תורה in a real daf of Gemara, Rashi and Tosafos.”
Enjoy!
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