Siyum: The best part of certain parties

As 'twas said in the days of yore: 'In the siyum, the love you take is equal to the love you make.'

Celebrating an important 'siyum'. Photo by Dreamstime

In religious Jewish circles, a siyum, meaning “end,” “completion” or “conclusion,” is a celebration marking the fact that one has completed the study of an entire tractate of Talmud or other religious text.

It’s considered enough of a celebration that taking part in a siyum is all you need to do to get out of a low-level fast day like the fast of the firstborn, held the day before Passover to mark the death of the Egyptian firstborn sons.

The siyum hashas marks the completion of not just a single tractate of the Talmud but all 37, a cycle that is completed every seven and a half years and has attracted tens of thousands of people to massive stadiums like New York’s Madison Square Garden.

There are also the other kinds of siyumim (to use the plural) that take place every year around this time.

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At the end of the academic road (or not, depending on how long that road extends), you get graduation: siyum limudim, or the “completion of studies.” Graduation ceremonies, naturally, feature the distribution ofte’udot siyum, or “completion certificates.”

End-of-year celebrations (no cap and gown necessary) are called mesibot siyum, or siyum parties. At the preschool and kindergarten level (and possibly further on, but I haven’t gotten there yet to know for sure), these often feature a singing and dancing routine of some sort and a Hebrew rhyming poem about what a great year it’s been (plus the requisiteburekasim).

If you’re particularly unlucky, the party will start after your child’s bedtime or feature preschool boys lifting toy barbells to show off their ostensible muscles while the girls sit in a circle and watch, in either case leaving you at your wit’s end and at an ending party you’ll be happy to see end. Lucky for me, the kindergarten end-of-year party I attended this year was kept short enough that cute didn’t have time to morph into endless – one of those mesibot siyum with no siyum in sight.