The Talmud Manuscript Which Puzzled Researchers

00:40 We have mentioned in the previous short lecture that in the year of Reich Main Base, fourteen eighty-two, they have started printing the Shas with Rashi in Spain. We have here in the library, found in one of the covers of the old book, ten pages, twenty amudim, of a very unique Shas, Maseches Kidushin. In the center you have the Talmud, and in the margin you have Rashi. It's very, very unique. In the old years, they used to write the Talmud on parchment. And the reason is because in those years, generations earlier, people didn't have formatted paper. It was easier for each one to get parchment, because when he's shechting a behemah or a keves or a eis, he gets the parchment, he could write on it. The Rambam is writing in one place that I checked the nusach of the places where there is in the Talmud in a old Talmud written, written on parchment five hundred years ago. That is about two hundred years after the completion of forming the Talmud Bavli. They completed to, uh, uh, uh, prepare the Talmud Bavli about the year of Reish Samach, which is about the year of five hundred. The Rambam lived in the twelfth century, about six hundred and fifty or seven hundred years after the completion of Talmud. When he checked everything ac- according to a Talmud that was written on, written on parchment five hundred years ago, means that this written Talmud was written about a hundred and fifty or two hundred years after the

02:56 completion of the formation of Talmud Bavli. And that's how they used to write in those days, the Talmud. We have in this library several pages of the Talmud written on parchment, several pages of Maseches Shvuos and several pages of Maseches Sanhedrin. That's how they used to write then. But here we have the twenty pages, the twenty sides of Gemara written on paper in the center, and around it is Rashi. The papers have watermarks. The watermarks shows that this paper was formed in the year of Reish Lamed, about, about the year of fourteen seventy. So it's obvious that several years later these pages was written with the Gemara and the Rashi. Somewhat before the first print of Talmud and Rashi that was printed in Spain. What was the purpose of it? Those years they used to write either Gemara for itself or the Rashi for itself. It's difficult to write Gemara and Rashi, because when you write Gemara and Rashi, you have to write the Gemara and finish it with the lines that you assume that the Rashi that are related to these lines will fill up till the end of the page, and you have to make a lot of calculations to know that. So why would one do it? Could be it was a rich man and he gave the, the, the scribe the, the job to make a nice one that he should be able to learn Gemara and Rashi. But there is another assumption. Since in those years they started to publish

04:55 in s- Spain the Gemara and the Rashi around it, it's even more difficult in those days to print Gemara and Rashi on the same page. Because when you form the lines of the Gemara, it's a whole job then. You have to take each letter in a separate copper piece. You have to get all the letters together in words and then prepare so many lines and then assume which line would finish that you should be able to fill out the Rashi and it should related to these words, should end by the end of the page. It's a big job. So could be the printer gave it to a scribe to try to do it in writing, and then according to the writing, they would be able to do it in printing. But in any case, so or so, these ten pages, these twenty amudim of Maseches Kidushin written on paper, in the center is the Gemara and in the margin it is Rashi, in the period right before they started to print the Shas in the same format in Spain, is a very, very unique item that while cataloging the old volumes of this library, we found these pages as used as a hardcover binding for the books.