The tractate your school is learning this year — with everything on the page
Yeshiva 101 puts the whole page in one place: the Talmud text, every commentary anchored to the words it explains, and the Chassidic teachings that cite the discussion. Nothing to look up, nothing to carry — open a page and it is all there, ready for class.
Chabad yeshivas study one tractate in depth each year, on an eight-year cycle. This year every Chabad yeshiva is learning Pesachim — 240 pages, from the start of Elul through to the celebration on finishing it.
שואלין ודורשין בהלכות הפסח קודם הפסח שלשים יוםOne asks and expounds the laws of Pesach thirty days before Pesach — Pesachim 6a
Where the tractate sits in the Talmud
The Talmud is arranged in six orders. Pesachim is the third tractate of Seder Moed — the order dealing with the festivals.
How Shas is arranged — and who arranged it
Around the year 200 CE, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi — known simply as Rebbi — gathered the Oral Law, until then not written down, and redacted it into the Mishnah. He divided it into six sedarim (orders): Zeraim (agriculture), Moed (the festivals), Nashim (marriage), Nezikin (civil law), Kodashim (the Mikdash), and Taharos (purity). Each seder holds a set of masechtos — sixty-three in all.
Over the next three centuries the Amora'im of Bavel debated and expanded the Mishnah. Around the year 500 CE, Rav Ashi and Ravina collected those discussions, arranged them by masechta beside the Mishnah they explain, and sealed them as the Gemara. Mishnah and Gemara together are the Talmud Bavli — the Shas a bochur opens today.
Not every masechta of the Mishnah has Bavli Gemara. Zeraim has it only on Berachos; most of Taharos has none. Of the six sedarim, Seder Moed — where Pesachim sits — is the seder of the festivals, and the one a yeshiva reaches early.
The tractate, chapter by chapter
Ten chapters, 240 pages. Open any chapter at its first page — or go to the full index of every page.
1 On the Evening of the Fourteenth The search for leaven on the night before Passover eve — how it is done, and how ownership is given up. אור לארבעה עשר 2–21 2 For the Entire Time Until when leaven may be eaten, and the ban on deriving any benefit from it. כל שעה 21–42 3 These One Transgresses Mixtures containing leaven, and the duty to remove them. אלו עוברין 42–50 4 A Place Where the Custom Was Local custom and its binding force; working on the eve of Passover. מקום שנהגו 50–57 5 The Daily Offering Is Slaughtered The order of the Passover offering in the Temple, and the daily offering before it. תמיד נשחט 58–65 6 These Override Shabbos Which parts of the Passover offering override Shabbos — and which do not. אלו דברים 65–73 7 How Does One Roast? Roasting the offering, and the laws of ritual impurity affecting the community. כיצד צולין 74–86 8 A Woman Who is counted in the Passover group — the woman, the servant, the minor. האשה 87–92 9 One Who Was Impure The second Passover — for one who was impure or far away at the time. מי שהיה טמא 92–99 10 On the Eve of Passover The Seder night: the four cups, matzah and bitter herbs, Hallel, the afikoman. ערבי פסחים 99–121