Ed Sheeran is popular but not as popular as the Talmud, according to attendance figures at MetLife Stadium

(JTA) - British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran came close to setting the attendance record at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Sunday, drawing a crowd of 89,106 concertgoers.

The current record-holder? A celebration of Talmud study in 2012 that filled the seats and stands with 93,000 people, most of them Orthodox men.

That gathering, called the Siyum HaShas, marked the completion of the seven-and-a-half year cycle of Daf Yomi, the practice of studying one double-sided page of Babylonian Talmud per day.

The 2012 ceremony re-entered social media discourse this week due to a tweet from PopCrave, an...