3 - Elite Literature: Halakhic Works and Textual Commentaries

Summary

HALAKHIC AND TALMUDIC LITERATURE

This book is concerned primarily with literature other than the key works of halakhic and talmudic literature that form the main corpus of study in traditional Jewish education. I cannot, however, completely neglect the great changes that took place from the end of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth century in the methods of study and in the approach to the talmudic and halakhic texts that had moulded earlier generations.

Until the nineteenth century the Talmud was not sold as a single unit containing a complete set of tractates; the standard practice was to print it tractate by tractate, as required for study. The condition of the tractates that have come down to us from the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, particularly from eastern Europe, is poor; this suggests that they were in short supply, with each copy being used by many students. This was because the Jewish printing houses in eastern Europe could not compete with those elsewhere during this period, and as books had to be imported they were in relatively short supply. Even so, this did not prevent the study of the traditional texts, and the development of new techniques for studying them. Since the sixteenth century the influence of the technique of meticulous examination of the text inspired by the writings of Solomon Luria (the Maharshal) had been spreading. As it spread, it developed into the logical method of disputation known as pilpul or ḥilukim—a degeneration, in the opinion of some rabbis.

However, pilpul did not prevent the development of textual correction and emendation, editing, and close reading which are the basis of all critical study dating from the time of the yeshiva of the Maharshal.

Examination of data published by Yeshayahu Vinograd confirms, despite the inevitable errors and omissions, that the spread of printing made it possible for many writers to make their work known. Books by the most important authors were reprinted frequently, enabling their expert knowledge on such subjects as the laws of ritual slaughter to be disseminated to a whole new generation.