Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Hebrew books, which were then almost exclusively of a religious nature, such as prayer-books, Bible and Talmud editions, rabbinic, cabalistic, and hasidic writings, were then issuing from the printing presses of Vilna, Slavuta, and other places, and were subject to a rigorous censorship exercised by Christians or by Jewish converts.
They did not keep luxurious "courts," did not hanker so greedily after donations, and laid greater emphasis on talmudic scholarship. Hasidism produced not only leaders but also martyrs, victims of the Russian police regime. About the time when the Tzaddik of Ruzhin fell under suspicion, the Russian Government began to watch the Jewish printing-press in the Volhynian townlet of Slavuta.
Under the supervision of a censor, and with but slight interruptions, the Jews published their own books, and in 1806 Slavuta, in Volhynia, saw the first complete edition of the Talmud on Russian soil. The story of the Vilna-Grodno edition of the Talmud is interesting as well as illuminating. It depicts the relation of the Jews among themselves and to the Government.
After a protracted imprisonment of the two Slavuta printers in Kiev, their case was submitted to Nicholas I. who sentenced them to Spiessruten and deportation to Siberia. During the procedure of running the gauntlet, while passing through the lines of whipping soldiers, one of the brothers had his cap knocked off his head.
The Slavuta publishing house, it is claimed, was closed, and the Schapiras met with their tragic end, because "as printers they scrupulously abstained from publishing Haskalah literature."
The litigation continued for some time, and was finally decided in favor of the Vilna firm. The publishers of Slavuta, however, having the Polish rabbis and zaddikim on their side, continued to publish the Talmud, regardless of the protests of Rabbi Akiba Eger and the "great ones" of Lithuania. But a terrible misfortune befell the Slavuta publishers.
The publication of the Talmud had always been supervised by the prominent rabbis of the land, and their authorization was necessary to make an edition legal. This the rabbi never granted unless the previous edition was entirely disposed of. The Slavuta publishers claimed that their edition had not been sold out when the Vilna publishers started theirs.
Word Of The Day