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Three tractates of the first complete Talmud printed in North America. Among the casualties of World War I were the important Hebrew printing presses of Eastern Europe, which resulted in a sharp decline in the supply of Talmud sets throughout the Jewish world. To fill this gap, Agudath Harabbonim and R. Bernard [Dov] Revel of RIETS agreed in 1918 to collaborate to publish the first American edition of the Talmud with traditional commentaries, to be based on the standard Vilna edition. Although it was a photo-reproduction of the Vilna (Romm) edition, the American publishers never secured permission to use it (Habermann and Rabbinowicz). The American editions lacks the commentaries included at the end of each volume in the Vilna edition.
R. Israel Rosenberg of Agudath Harabbonim was selected to be the chairman of the joint Publication Committee (referred to as the Ha-Talmud Publication Society in advs. and later official documents) and Revel the honorary chairman. One third of the stock was controlled by Agudath Harabbonim, another third was controlled by RIETS and the final third was controlled by R. Isaac Siegal, R. Israel Rosenberg, R. Joseph Konvitz, R. Hirsch Cohen and R. Louis [Eliezer?] Silver. The advisory committee for the project consisted of R. Moses Zebulun Margolies [Ramaz], R. Shalom Elhanan Jaffe, R. Bernard Louis Levinthal, R. Philip Hillel Hacohen Klein, R. Elazar Meir Preil and R. Moses Simeon Sivitz. Many RIETS partisans were more than happy to support the project, but RIETS eventually withdrew its participation because of complaints that it was not dignified for a yeshivah to partake in a business venture and because of gossip that certain rabbis stood to reap significant profits. Agudath Harabbonim assumed complete control of the project and RIETS received thirty sets in return for its initial investment of three thousand dollars. |
