3

What is the shortest amud or daf in Shas? I vaguely remember seeing a daf that was only a couple lines of gemara or so (maybe in Pesachim?) but don't remember where it was.

Daf in this case, referring to:

  • the least amount of words of gemara on an amud
  • the least amount of words of gemara on a whole daf

(or both)

Anyone know?

(like a previous question "Which mishnah has the most daf between it and the subsequent mishnah?" asking as a fun fact- obviously this has no practical implication)

alicht
  • 12,091
  • 4
  • 23
  • 59
  • 1
    Doesn't this question make more sense with at least one line of Gemara? – Kazi bácsi May 16 '19 at 06:19
  • @Kazibácsi that would be great too! If you know of the shortest daf with at least some gemara on it, please share – alicht May 16 '19 at 06:23
  • I haven't seen it yet, but I hope one day I'll come across... :-) – Kazi bácsi May 16 '19 at 08:45
  • 1
    To close voters: I don’t see why this is any less on-topic than https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/2672/ or https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/99997/ or https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/102168/ or https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/37426/, or pretty much any question in the [tag:statistics] tag. – DonielF May 20 '19 at 20:11
  • @sabbahillel the tos you're referring to is referenced in the 2nd answer to this q – alicht May 20 '19 at 23:46

2 Answers2

14

The shortest amud is Nazir 33b which contains precisely zero words of gemara.

enter image description here

alicht
  • 12,091
  • 4
  • 23
  • 59
Joel K
  • 43,068
  • 4
  • 62
  • 166
  • 3
    Yeah, I think that definitely takes the cake for the shortest amud of Gemara, but that's one heck of a long Tosfos. That makes the bochur in me shutter... – ezra May 16 '19 at 05:39
  • What about the shortest daf that has at least SOME gemara on it? (as @Kazibácsi mentions above in the comments to the question) – alicht May 16 '19 at 06:25
  • 1
    @ezra it's not one long Tosafos, but a bunch of short ones. For some reason, the printers alternated the Mishnayos and Gemara in that perek as usual, but then put all the Tosafos for all the Mishnayos first, and then all the Tosafos for all the Gemara. – Meir Jun 17 '19 at 15:09
13

Shortest Amud

1st place: Bava Kama 77a has 9 words of gemara on it and is thus the shortest amud with words of gemara on it in shas. The Tosfos that fills the page is very VERY big.

A close 2nd place is Yoma 56a with 12 words.

Shortest Daf

The Shortest Daf in shas that has words on both pages is Nedarim 45a-b which has 69 words (not including Hadran Alach).
Nedarim 45b happens to also be the 3rd shortest Amud with 20 words.

Though (@JoelK mentioned it with regards to shortest amud but was able to verify it's the shortest daf of gemara) the shortest daf which has only one page with words from the gemara is Nazir 33a-b which has 38 words.

Community
  • 1
user15464
  • 11,447
  • 26
  • 103