11 The Printing of the Talmud AFTER THE FINAL REDACTION of the Talmud, the need arose for copies of the completed work for study purposes. At that time books were copied out by hand, and the weightier the work the more expensive and laborious the task. The few precious exemplars were jealously guarded by their owners, who were not always willing to loan them, even for copying purposes. Several of the books written in the Middle Ages contain words of praise for those loaning and copying books, services that were regarded as an important aspect of scholarship. One has only to recall that the Talmud contains approximately two and a half million words to understand why copies were few and far between, even at times when there were no stringent restrictions on its distribution or when the economic situation of the Jews permitted widespread copying of texts. Many copies of the Talmud were apparently written out by the students themselves from the books available in the academies and were not earmarked for public use, as they were often filled with written comments. In the period of the geonim, the great Babylonian academies were often asked to supply copies of the Talmud, and the first copies in Spain were apparently made from a version that a visiting gaon dictated from memory. It was the custom for scholars to memorize large quantities of material from the oral law. Certain individual tractates were widely disseminated because they contained frequently taught material of practical importance or were regarded as part of the basic curriculum, but complete editions of the Talmud were rare. Rashi’s teacher, for example, never studied the Avodah Zarah tractate, simply because he never succeeded in obtaining a copy of it. Similar conditions apparently prevailed in many Jewish communities throughout the world. Although the shortage of copies could be attributed to technical difficulties alone, the problem was exacerbated by persecution. The Talmud was banned several times during the Middle Ages, a fate it has also suffered on occasion in modern times. Many volumes were lost or mislaid in the course of the wanderings resulting from frequent decrees of expulsion, and some books were confiscated by order of the authorities. Particularly destructive in its impact was the interdict against taking books out of the country during the expulsion from Spain, when many volumes were buried. It is not surprising, therefore, that Jews took a great interest in the printing press from the outset. It was necessary for them to study the techniques of printing and to produce the letters themselves, from the design stage to the casting of the lead molds. The first printed Jewish books apparently date from the 1470s. After these first successful printing efforts, the printing of the Talmud as a whole was undertaken. The technical difficulties were many, and the project entailed an enormous amount of work, from compiling and proofreading the manuscripts to the actual printing. The first known printed edition appeared in Guadalajara, Spain, in 1482. We do not know whether the entire Talmud was printed there, as only remnants have survived. During the expulsion of the Jews from Spain ten years later, and from Portugal several years after that, all Jewish books were confiscated. The existence of this particular edition was unknown until very recently. A better known edition—apparently never completed—was printed in the towns of Soncino and Pisarro, and other editions appeared elsewhere. Throughout this period the Jews were fearful of engaging in printing the Talmud because of the negative attitude of the Catholic Church, but in 1520 Pope Leo X gave permission for publication, and printing of the first complete edition of the Talmud commenced in Venice. The work was carried out by the Christian printer Daniel Bomberg, who had moved to Venice from Antwerp. Bomberg played a very important part in the annals of Hebrew printing. Many basic works were first printed at his press and received their accepted format there, and his was the definitive edition of the Babylonian Talmud. The basic format of the pages, the number of sheets, and the location of the main commentaries on the page were determined in that first edition, and almost all editions since have copied this format. Here and there we find exceptions to the rule, but they generally refer in some way (through special markings or divisions) to the original text. The talmudic text is printed in the center of the page, with the Rashi commentary on one side and the tosafot on the other. In order to differentiate between the text and the commentaries, the former was printed in square letters—a simpler form of the script in which Torah scrolls are written—while the latter appear in cursive script. Since the Jews of Western Europe were unfamiliar with the square letters, which are of Sephardi origin, they called them “Rashi’s script” (that is, the letters in which Rashi’s commentary was printed). The Bomberg press was not the first to utilize them, but it helped bolster the tradition, and exegetic and rabbinical literature was printed in these letters for hundreds of years afterward. The order of the pages and sheets was of great practical importance. The appearance of this edition made it possible to introduce an accurate method of denoting quotations by name of tractate and number of page and sheet—the sheet is the double page, each side being numbered. The printing of the tosafot by the side of the text was of more theoretical significance. In the seventeenth century, the Maharal of Prague complained about the study methods of his day and pinned part of the blame on the fact that the tosafot were printed adjacent to the talmudic text, so that a tendency developed to accept specific formulae based on the views of the baalei tosafot. This first edition was far from perfect and suffered from various flaws, errors, and a large number of omissions, which were corrected in due course. Other editions—particularly that of another Christian printer, Justinian of Venice, which also served as a model—generally tried to improve on previous versions. Subsequent editions were proofread with great precision and included more detailed indices for biblical verses and halakhic rulings and appended commentaries by contemporary scholars. This process has continued to the present. Pope Julius III intervened in the process of printing and disseminating the Talmud shortly after this period by prohibiting publication of the work and ordering the burning of existing copies (1553–54). Thus the Talmud could not be printed in Italy, and other European countries were indirectly affected. In many countries the Talmud could only be printed after official permission was obtained, and often only Christian printers succeeded in obtaining the necessary permit. Censorship of Jewish sacred literature in general, and the Talmud in particular, became more stringent. The Basel edition (1578 onward) is an extremely truncated version that omitted an entire tractate, Avodah Zarah; unfortunately, other editions were based on this incomplete one. Several editions were printed in Poland before that country came under the influence of the Jesuits, and a number were printed in Amsterdam (which, as part of the tolerant Netherlands, permitted the publication of almost any Hebrew book) and in Protestant Germany. Two important editions whose impact is felt to the present day appeared in Slavuta and Vilna. The Russian authorities, for reasons of their own, decided to confine the publication of Jewish books to as few centers as possible, and requests for printing permits encountered enormous obstacles. The two above-mentioned printings were carried out under license, and the work went into a number of editions. From the mid-eighteenth century it became the custom to print in editions of the Talmud rabbinical warnings against the printing of any new edition for a specific period of time. The demand for books was apparently limited, and since printing costs were extremely high, the publishers were afraid that some other printer might produce a new edition, thus competing with them and causing them financial loss. These warnings constituted the first copyright rules and served to encourage printers to continue their work. But since there was no central religious authority for the entire Jewish world, it often occurred that, because of lack of information on events in other communities, or for other reasons, haskamot (literally agreements, that is, authorizations) were granted for the production of several editions of the Talmud almost simultaneously. This led to disputes among the publishers and sometimes among the rabbis who had signed the different haskamot. Thus, certain editions—some of high quality—could not appear in full because of competition among printers. Sometimes the project was divided up among different towns. The important Slavuta and Vilna editions were also the subject of controversy. The Slavuta printers produced a beautiful edition of the Talmud, which was rapidly sold out, and the Vilna printers then decided to issue their own edition within the period of the printing ban. As the status of the Slavuta edition was not sufficiently clear; the latter also decided to obtain an impressive number of haskamot from rabbis in their region. A large-scale feud ensued when the facts came to light; almost all the rabbis in Poland and Galicia sided with the Slavuta printers, while the Lithuanian rabbis supported the Vilna printing press. This controversy had political implications as well, since the Slavuta printers were Hassidim, and their rivals were Mitnagdim (opponents of the hassidic movement), who were closely connected with the Enlightenment movement. The dispute ended in tragedy when, as the result of the activities of informers, the Slavuta printers were sentenced to heavy prison terms and their press was closed down. In fact, they were punished as a direct consequence of their ties with the Hassidim and not because of their printing activities. Although the work of the Slavuta press was continued to some extent at Zhitomir in the Ukraine, initiative was now in the hands of the Vilna press. It was owned by members of the Rom family, who produced a large number of editions of the Talmud, several of which are still regarded as exemplary. In some places, particularly among Polish Hassidim, there was categorical refusal to use these editions, one of the main reasons being the appending of commentaries by scholars who were not universally approved. In general, the Vilna editions are considered works of art, with higher standards of proofreading than other editions; hyperbolic stories were told about the editions’ great accuracy. These last editions of the Talmud, published at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, contained new material in the form of a number of ancient commentaries copied from manuscript, which expanded the horizons of scholarship by enabling students to engage in comparative analysis. The proliferation of students, amelioration of the economic conditions of Jews in certain countries, and lowering of the cost of books have led to the publication of a large number of editions of the Talmud in our century. The introduction of modern printing methods has made printing both easier and cheaper. The second half of the twentieth century has produced an abundance of photographed editions of the Talmud (based mostly on the Vilna editions) in various sizes and forms, and the number of complete and partial editions must now run into the hundreds. At the same time the invention of offset printing hindered progress in that the talmudic text itself is no longer subjected to the close scrutiny, examination, and amendment once customary, and errors (including printing mistakes) are perpetuated from edition to edition. It should be noted, however, that in some countries, particularly Israel, attempts are being made to arrive at improved versions, to add punctuation, vowelling, and various illustrations; this marks the beginning of a new kind of development in publication of the Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud has always been regarded as inferior to the work produced in Babylonia. Fewer manuscripts of the former were produced, and it was disregarded by the great commentators. The first printed edition of the Jerusalem Talmud was produced by Bomberg in Venice in 1524 from a single manuscript (the Leyden manuscript, now in a library in that city). Several editions were printed from this source, which is still regarded as the basic edition. Another important edition was published in Amsterdam, apparently on the basis of several different manuscripts; in the nineteenth century editions were produced in Zhitomir and Vilna (by the Rom family), but, generally speaking, few editions of the Jerusalem Talmud appeared because it was studied by fewer scholars and because of the problems involved. Only about thirty editions have been produced to the present day, and they cannot compare in precision and in the quality of the commentary to the Babylonian Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud still awaits its redeemer.