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Does anyone know if there’s anyone alive today who has done and passed a shas pin test?
about a quarter of the guys in my yeshiva could.
what, maybe I went to a zilberman school.
PBA: Even Zilberman guys can’t do pin tests, unless they’re geniuses to begin with, in which case they didn’t need to go to Zilberman’s.
WIY: I have met several people who can do passably well in several Masechtos (one guy is up to half of Shas and will probably be able to do all of this some day), but no one who can do the whole thing. I’m sure Rav Ovadiah could though. I do know someone who knows good chunks of Shas word for word Ba’al Peh, but his memory isn’t visual so he can’t do a pin test.
It should be noted, though, that modern inventions have made the pin test actually feasible. On an old Gemara, it was impossible because the same page in different Gemaras could come out differently, either by the binding being off by a little or the page not being printed at the same precise angle and things like that (look at two versions of an old Tal-Man Shas and start comparing, you’ll see that the same Dapim are a little different some times). Laser print and Gemaras like Oz Vehadar and Vilna have fixed that issue.
Rav Yehoshua Cohen of Yerushalayim, author of Kerem Yehoshua, can do it and I have personally seen it.
I have seen people wear Israeli flag pins, but have never seen a shas one.
42, the Democrats and Republicans have them; why shouldn’t Shas?
you need to show up during elections
No, but i know somebody who went arround collecting on Purim, and challenged people to ask him any question on Moed, Nashim, Nezikin, Kodshim (Gemoro, Rashi, Tosfos), Harry Potter or Football. He earned a lot.
Another boy in my Yeshiva learnt Shas before his Bar Mitzvah – he started when he was eight (He wasn’t in school during the afternoons; he learnt with his father) and finished the entire Bavli and Yerushalmi for his Bar Mitzvah. He has a phenomonal memory and he can cite any omud in shas (Yerushalmi he doesn’t know by heart yet). He knows the Shakla VeTaria of the first half of Shas, and is continuing to memorize it. He knows the ???? of most things, and he knows the Rashis as well. We tried to catch him out a few times, but he is really very very good.
DY – hey, you stole my joke. I find that you often post what I was gonna post, are you from Chicago? or maybe it’s that “singular mind” thing.
Maybe there were 4 guys in PBA’s yeshiva.
WIY, why not, there have always been people with photographic memories. Even Rabbeinu Google can pass the pin test.
My grandfather Ztl i believe could have done it before he went blind from macular degeneration. it was unbelievable.
And a pin test is…
wrtiersoul: A pin test means you stick a pin in one word on an amud in shas- and the person can tell you what is on the other side of the amud ,continuing through the masechta.
I think I can do the pin test on Tehillim, if it’s just continuing from anywhere. But there are different versions so it wouldn’t work anyway.
Torah- wow, now I wish I was you!
Whose idea was it to allow (and even encourage?) something as disrespectful as putting pins through seforim just so that someone can show off how well they can memorize a set of images?
The Wolf
That’s a good question wolf. I also don’t see the value in memorizing what word is on the opposite amud. Better to know the Gemara very well, as well classic rishonim and acharonim,, rather than simply memorizing the Gemara.
Wolf: When I was given a pin test on Maseches Megillah when I was younger, the Rabbi didn’t actually put a pin through a Gemara. He just pointed to a spot on 2a and had me try to say whatever words were directly beneath it and then estimated (it’s not so hard) where that would be on every later page.
(I wasn’t given this test because I had a phenomenal memory. Rather, the Rabbi was trying to prove the Gadlus of certain people. My classmates knew that I had one of the best memories in the class and I got a grand total of 2 words right. He was showing how big Rabbis are so much smarter than even the smartest of us. He gave the same test to the other smartest people in the class.)
Syag: 🙂
I’m not sure why this is considered an accomplishment unless you aspire to be an idiot savant.
If it’s unaccompanied by understanding, and based on pure memorization, then it’s no big deal. If it comes from years of intense learning, then it is.
I’m sure there was a time when my brother could do the pin test with the TV guide. I could probably do it with some DR. Suess books. But I must say that a part of me is in awe of the knowledge our forefathers had, and another part of me mourns the loss.
***** I hope it is obvious that that was not to make a mockery of the pin test or the wisdom of our Sages, it was to make a mockery of where my own kochos were spent. *****
brony be right
brony be right
bring be missing da point
Nobody thinks passing the pin test is an accomplishment. It represents something special, though.
Special indeed.
Special in deed.
Someone could really make an app that tests you on that… Stick a pin in a virtual shas and it gives you a random daf, and offers you a choice of four words that can be there. It shouldn’t be too hard to make.
WIY: The majority of Gedolim now (or ever) probably couldn’t do a pin test. It takes a certain type of memory. You can recite Shas word for word but still fail a pin test. You can ace a pin test and barely read Hebrew. Brony and Popa are both rightly saying (though probably for different reasons) that knowing where every word on the page is is in and of itself inherently meaningless. Nor should it be a yardstick that we measure Gedolim by. Some can do it; some can’t. It doesn’t make the ones that can do it greater than the ones that can’t.
Sam2- it has to do with what type of memory you have. If you have a strong visual memory, you can probably pass a pin test without much difficulty. I used think it was cheating for me to study, because when I studied I retained an image of my notes in my head, and would read them during the test. It took a lot of time for people to convince me that there’s nothing wrong with memorizing the image of the notes…
You can ace a pin test and barely read Hebrew.
We’re not talking about people who studied for a pin test. We’re talking about people whose hasmada happened to yield the ability to pass a pin test.
Nobody, including WIY, claimed it’s inherently valuable.
Gamanit: That’s my point. And having such a memory doesn’t automatically make one a Gadol. Nor does a less pictorial memory preclude one from being a Gadol.
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