Shas Vilna, Yosef Reuven Romm Printing Press - 1859-1866 - an Edition that Caused a Great Controversy in the ...

Shas Vilna, Yosef Reuven Romm Printing Press - 1859-1866 - an Edition that Caused a Great Controversy in the Religious World - Includes the Baba Batra Tractate with the Approbations referring to the Controversy
Rare and Special!
The Babylonian Talmud before us was printed by Yosef Reuven Romm from the city of Vilna between the years 1859-1866.

There was a tremendous polemic around the printing of this edition of the Talmud which agitated the entire Torah world of the time. In 1862, in the middle of the printing, Nachman Avraham Goldberg and the printer Julius Zitenfeld of Berlin began to print a new edition of the Talmud. It appears that Goldberg even approached those who had subscribed in advance, who had already guaranteed to buy the (Romm) Vilna edition, and offered them his edition for a lower price!
Goldberg chose to begin printing the Talmud from the order of Nezikin, as the Romm printing press had not yet printed those tractates. And indeed, many of the customers who had already begun to buy the Vilna Talmud cancelled their guarantees to the Romm printing press and deposited their money with the printer from Berlin! This initiative threatened to financially ruin and to destroy the senior status of the well-known printers in the cities of Zhitomir (the Shapira family from Slavita), Warsaw (Shmuel Orgelbrand) and Vilna (Romm).
In response, the printing presses of Vilna, Warsaw and Zhitomir turned (separately) to the great Poskim of Russia with the request that they protect their copyright, and to obligate those who paid in advance to keep their guarantees to the printers (who depended on those payment). And indeed, the Great Rabbis agreed and gave approbations expressing their support of the Vilna printing press. It is interesting to note that some of them mentioned the prohibition of the Russian censor to import books from outside the Russian empire. Yosef Reuven printed the approbations in very few copies of the Baba Batra volume, which was published in the midst of the controversy. The approbations contain interesting scholarly discussions about the prohibition against trespassing.

In order to emphasize the severity of the trespassing done by the printer from Berlin, the printers of Vilna printed the approbations of the important Polish Rabbis in this volume, who gave their approbation to the printing of the Babylonian Talmud of the Warsaw printing press.

In two tractates are inscriptions indicating that the book belonged to Rabbi Yehuda Leib Shachor (died in 1953), who was known throughout the Yeshiva world as Rabbi Leib of Alirita.

All of the volumes have original leather bindings. The Talmud is perfect condition.

Tractate Baba Batra contains the rare approbations. These approbations do not appear in almost any other copy of this tractate!

Before us are fifteen volumes (six volumes are missing from the complete set).

Condition: Very Good. Original bindings with slight blemishes.