I have a general question for the kollel about limmud daf yomi. If I want to learn mishnayos kesubos but I don't have time to learn all the perokim now. Which perokim have yedios that are nogea to the 1st 40 or so daf. I.e. how much perokim of mishnayos (1-4 1-6) have any connection with the daf of the next month?
Avrumi Hersh, London england
1) My suggestion would be to say that the first five Perakim are the most closely connected together, so that is the priority. The sixth and seventh Perakim are also connected, but from the eighth Perek onwards the topics get varied and I do not think they are so closely connected with the first 40 Daf of the Masechta.
I hope my assessment is accurate. You have to know a Masechta pretty well to say this sort of thing so, bs'd, we will see later on if I know what I was talking about!
2) My Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Tzvi Kushelevsky shlit'a, once said that Rav Elchanan Wasserman zt'l Hy'd taught that Bava Kama is like two Masechtos. The first five chapters are all closely tied to each other, dealing with the four Avos Nezikin, and the last five chapters are very different, not dealing with the same kind of damages. So Rav Elchanan learned Bava Kama in two halves in his Yeshiva in Baranovich. That is why, in Sefer Kovetz Shi'urim, Bava Kama starts from the beginning of the sixth Perek, because that Zman they learned the second half of Bava Kama in his Yeshiva, and the Sefer was prepared from the Shi'urim that Rav Elchanan gave, and we never were Zocheh to the Shi'urim that Rav Elchanan gave in a different semester on the first half of the Masechta.
3) I do not think there is such a clear division in Maseches Kesuvos. However, we can see that the first two Perakim follow from each other since they start discussing the Ta'anas Besulim with the ramifications of whether she will receive a Kesuvah of 100 Zuz or 200 Zuz and then the second Mishnah in the second Perek already broadens into cases of arguments between two groups of litigants. The third Perek is very different from the first two and discusses the penalty that the Ones and Mefateh pay, and the fourth Perek opens by continuing the subject of Kenas, but in the middle of the Perek, on 51a, the Mishnah starts teaching how to write a Kesuvah. The fifth Perek continues with this theme, and the fifth and sixth Perakim deal a lot with the financial affairs between husband and wife during the marriage. One of the topics of the seventh Perek is which women forfeit their Kesuvah and leave the marriage in the middle, but it seems to me that the eighth Perek is rather different because it discusses what properties the husband and wife receive from the marriage.
Hatzlachah Rabah with Kesuvos!
Dovid Bloom