"Printed in the Year GEMARA": Soncino and Bomberg

00:48 We have discussed in the previous short lecture about the Talmud published in Spain between the years of Reish and Beis and Reish and Beis, between the years of 70-- 1482 and 1492, Gemara and Rashi itself. The f-- Two years later, they have started printing in Italy a Talmud with Gemara in, in the center, Rashi on one side and Ta- and Tosefta on the other side, like we have it in our Gemaras in our days. They have started printing it in Reish and Dalet, 1484. In the colophon of the first volume, Berachot, it says that it was published in Gem- Shnat Gemara, that Gematria of Gemara is Reish and Dalet. Reish Mem and Gimel Alef is Reish and Dalet. We have in this library the last five pages of this Masechet Berachot, including the page of colophon. He published several volumes in the next few years. But then one of the printers, this print house was in Soncino. One of the printers of this family moved then to Pizarro, another city in Italy, where he opened a print house. And then, there he continued printing some Gemaras of this set. Since he came from Soncino, he took for himself as last name Soncino. He published several more volumes, but they didn't succeed to do the whole Shas. Only several volumes in Soncino and several volumes in Pizarro, the same family that moved from here to there. First time that the whole Shas was published was the Bomberg Shas several years later, in the years Reish Peh

03:21 till Reish Peh Gimel, 1520 till 1523. It was Bomberg that he opened in, in Ven- in Venice, in Italy, a large-scale Jewish print house. Printed there seforim not only for Italy, but for the whole, so, uh, uh, other countries around in Europe. That was in the same format like Soncino and Pizarro. In the center of the page is the Gemara, and on the sides, one side is the Rashi and one side in the Tosefta, like we have in our days. But it's not the same because when they finished printing the whole Shas in Venice by Bomberg from 1520 till fifty-four-- fif- fifteen twenty-three, they have decided that all future prints of Shas should be the same format, daf al daf. Every page should start the same word and end the same word. All the future prints. The reason for is-- for it is because usually seforim, mechabrim are being metzayin look up in this Gemara, this page says so and so. If each print of the Shas would have starting other pages and finishing it in other words, so then when you are s- when you see, etzir look in Bava Batra daf Lamed Gimel Lamed Beis, you'll never find it because in your print it's not Lamed Gimel Lamed Beis, it's Mem Beis Lamed Beis. So they have decided then since now we have a whole Shas with Rash- Gem- Rashi and Tosefta on the page, all the future printing of Shas in the next hundreds and hundreds of years are always in the

05:37 same format, starting the same word every page and ending the same word every page. In the Soncino and Pizarro, those few volumes they have printed, they didn't have this rule. They didn't have yet the whole Shas. So they made it by Bomberg Shas, and this was a success. It was published with a, a large staff within three years and was sold all around in Europe. Till several years sirta, uh, later, he had to reprint the whole Shas, like six, six li- six years later, like Reish Peh Vav till Reish Peh Ches, like 1526 to 1528, in those years, he published another edition of the same Shas, everything the same. And this was also a success. So several years later, in the 1540s, he published it a third time. And these three prints became the foundation for all future prints of Talmud for the next hundreds and hundreds of years.