Yossi Cadaner, 17, grew up amid the peaceful cornfields of flyover country.
Heaven? No, Iowa—Bettendorf to be exact. Located on the Iowa-Illinois border, Bettendorf is smack dab between Chicago to the east and Postville to the west.
But Iowa is also famously the place where dreams come true. And for Yossi that meant studying all 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud, a feat he completed this week in at the Chicago Mesivta, where he is currently a student.
His parents, Rabbi Shneur and Chana Cadaner, established Chabad-Lubavitch of Quad Cities in 2005 to serve the small pockets of Jews sprinkled across Davenport and Bettendorf west of the Mississippi, and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline on the eastern side.
Like many smaller communities in the Midwest, a century ago the area was home to a thriving Jewish community with as many as eight Orthodox synagogues. There were Torah scholars, Chassidim, kosher butchers and every other amenity needed for Jewish life. Everything, that is, aside from a Jewish day school. That historic lack of Jewish education meant that by the time the Cadaners arrived, things had dwindled to the point that there were just two congregations, one Conservative and one Reform.
Despite there being only an estimated 1,000 Jewish souls between all five cities, the Cadaners have made it a point to provide a full Jewish experience with services on Shabbat and Sunday, a just-completed mikvah, programs for men and for women, Torah classes and a Hebrew school.
As a boy in Bettendorf, Yossi was drawn to study and committed the entire Tanya—spanning 53 chapters—to memory shortly after his bar mitzvah. Growing up with virtually no observant peers, Yossi excelled at his Judaic studies at the Nigri Shluchim Online School, where he developed the base for his Talmudic pursuits.
In a world full of distractions that too often capture the attention of young minds, the Cadaners work hard to ensure the computers and other devices in their home are used only as educational tools. This helped Yossi develop his discipline, focus and love for learning. That’s not to say he isn’t a regular teenage boy with different hobbies and interests. Yossi loves sports and music, among other things, but a healthy approach to technology helped shape him.
For eighth grade, he left home for Chicago, about a three-hour drive away, where he was finally in a brick-and-mortar school. Ready and motivated to be learning in person with yeshivah students his own age, Yossi enjoyed the transition. It was as an eighth-grader that he began learning Talmud voraciously.
And, as they might say in Iowa, if you build it….
“Whenever Yossi comes home, he sits and learns Talmud,” attests Rabbi Cadaner, “sometimes three or four hours in a row. There are not many people to learn with here, so he’s often learning by himself.”
For the past three years, Yossi has been a student at Yeshivas Ohr Eliyahu-Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago. And now just weeks from graduating high school, his classmates joined him for a grand celebration: the completion of all 2,711 double-sided pages that make up the Babylonian Talmud.
“I had no idea that Yossi was even planning to finish the Talmud,” says Rabbi Cadaner. “It was his classmates who let me know that the milestone was approaching and his teacher who suggested that we come to Chicago to celebrate the accomplishment at a grand event.”
And a grand event it was. In addition to his parents and younger siblings, Yossi was also joined by his grandfather, Rabbi Shlomo Bendet, an educator from St. Paul, Minn., as well as Mesivta staff.
Yossi’s siyum was the fifth such accomplishment celebrated at the Mesivta in recent years, a testament to the school's efforts to nurture and guide each student to maximize his potential. Yet, Mestiva staff work hard to make each siyum unique, as befitting the herculean accomplishment they celebrate.
The Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, would often call for increased Torah study and continual growth in learning. In a pastoral letter addressed to the Jewish community at the conclusion of the High Holiday season in 1984, the Rebbe addressed perceived individual boundaries in Torah study. The Rebbe encouraged all Jewish men and women to systematically add new, challenging periods of study:
“...a suggestion and urgent appeal to all of you, men and women... To take upon yourselves... new (additional) shiurim (regular study periods) in Torah, each one on his/her level; especially those who do not yet have any regular Torah study periods…As for those who, seemingly, have a full schedule of Torah shiurim, surely they will wish to fulfill the rule of ma’alin b’Kodesh (matters of holiness should be on the ascendancy), which (also) implies ascendancy to an ever higher level in the quality of Torah comprehension, in greater depth and with greater enthusiasm, vitality and joy.
“We are all interconnected,” explains Yossi. “When one person pushes himself to do a bit more than he would have otherwise, others will do the same, and they will then have an effect on even more people, ultimately raising the bar for the entire Jewish people. Every person can achieve and every person can influence others in his or her own way.”
Start a Discussion