Were These Historic Booklets Saved from the Flames?

00:38 We have discussed in the previous short lecture that the main edition of Shas was published by Bomberg print house in Venice during the three years between 1520 and 1550, between the Reish Peh and Shin Yud. Then after that, there was a large print house opened in the city of Savignone in Italy, and there they started publishing the new ed- the new edition of the Talmud, but they didn't succeed. In middle of the first volume they published came out a Gezeiras Tairef of Talmud in whole Italy. They burned all the Talmuds that was in Italy, and if someone didn't give it away and they found it in somebody's house, there would be heavy penalties on him. So they stopped then this print, and even all the pages they have already printed in this town from this to- from, in this new print house of the first volume of this Shas, they also took everything away and they burned everything, so there's nothing left from that edition of Shas. It's very interesting episode. We have here in the library the Rosh that was attached to each Gemara in the editions of Bomberg. As in nowadays, the Gemara, after the Gemara comes the Rosh. That's how it was already in the Bomberg Shas. But there we see that there is a lot of of the Rosh for each masechta that we have here in the library. We assume the reason for it is when the soldiers came to one of the Ra- Rabbonim's house and took with force

03:17 the whole Talmud away from him to burn it, he pleaded with them and he said, "You're taking away the Talmud to burn it because you're not allowed to have it in the house, but to each Talmud there is the Rosh. There is no dec- decree that we have to burn the Rosh. There is no decree that you're not allowed to have the Rosh in the house, so permit me at least to get the Rosh off." They agreed, and he took out the Rosh from each volume, and he got it together as one volume, the Rosh and Talmud. For the next 25 years, the Talmud was n- not printed. All the S- Talmud that was in Spain was burned, taken away, confiscated, and they didn't have the Gemara, and they couldn't reprint it. And the main print house was then either in Italy, either in Spain. Spain, there was the expulsion already in the year of 1492. Italy was the Gezeiras of Talmud, Tairef of Talmud in the year of Shin Yud Gimel, 1553, so they didn't have any more of the Talmud till 25 years later. They opened the print house in Basel, which is not Spain and not Italy, and then they started printing the Shas in Shin Lamed Ches. We have several volumes of these Shas in this library. Since then, they've published the Shas in many countries, print house, print houses that they c- opened in different countries. Every 10, 20 years, they have published somewhere a Shas, and that's how the

05:36 Jewish nation had a Shas to learn from for the next hundreds of years. When it came to the Alter Rebbe, he also decided to publish a Shas, as we'll discuss in one of our next short lectures.