The entire Chicago Mesivta gathered this week for a special siyum as 17-year-old Yossi Cadaner of Bettendorf, Iowa, was mesayem Shas Bavli, completing all 2,711 dafim just weeks before finishing Mesivta.

The siyum, held at Yeshivas Ohr Eliyahu-Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago, was attended by Yossi’s classmates, parents, younger siblings, his grandfather Rabbi Shlomo Bendet of S. Paul, Minnesota, and the Mesivta hanhala and staff. It marked a major milestone in limud haTorah and the fifth siyum Hashas celebrated by a talmid of the Chicago Mesivta in recent years.

Yossi is the son of Rabbi Shneur Cadaner and Chana Cadaner, shluchim of the Rebbe to the Quad Cities, where they have directed Chabad-Lubavitch of Quad Cities since 2005. Their shlichus serves the Jewish communities of Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline, on the Iowa-Illinois border.

Growing up on shlichus in Bettendorf, Yossi learned through the Nigri Shluchim Online School. Already before his bar mitzvah, he showed unusual dedication in learning, memorizing the first 53 perakim of Tanya baal peh.

After his bar mitzvah, Yossi set a goal to learn the entire Shas Bavli. When he entered yeshiva in Chicago for eighth grade, he began taking the goal seriously, adding more and more to his learning of Gemara.

“Whenever Yossi comes home, he sits and learns Talmud,” his father told Chabad.org, “sometimes three or four hours in a row. There are not many people to learn with here, so he’s often learning by himself.”

Over the years that followed, Yossi continued learning steadily, completing one masechta after another, until this week’s siyum on the entire Shas Bavli.

Rabbi Cadaner said he did not know that Yossi was preparing to finish Shas until the milestone was already approaching.

“I had no idea that Yossi was even planning to finish the Talmud,” he said. “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.”

At the siyum, Yossi spoke about the effect of one person adding in limud haTorah.

“We are all interconnected,” Yossi told Chabad.org. “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.”