Neh Grant Will Enable Editing of Rabbi Isaac Krasilschikov’s Commentaries to the Jerusalem Talmud

Rabbi Isaac Krasilschikov’s commentaries to the Jerusalem Talmud will be edited as a result of a $56,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to the Al Tidom Association, it was announced here by Rabbi Harry Bronstein, head of Al Tidom. The grant was described as one of the largest from the NEH for research projects in Judaica.

Krasilschikov was one of the last great Talmudic scholars in the Soviet Union. He dies in 1965 at the age of 77. Without a Jewish library and under constant fear of discovery and reprisal, he labored in Moscow for 20 years in the shadow of the Kremlin to produce what is destined to become a classis commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud, according to Dr. Lawrence Schiffman, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies in New York University’s Department of Near Eastem Languages and Literature.

Schiffman is directing the project of editing and publishing the commentaries, 20 volumes of handwritten manuscripts in notebooks in Hebrew, which is being carried out by the Mutzal Me’esh Institute, the researen arm of Al Tidom dedicated to publishing works of Jewish scholarship from the Soviet Union.

Krasilschikov had been a rabbi in Poltava until 1931 when Soviet authorities ordered Jewish studies activities disbanded, Schiffman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. As a result, he and other rabbis there left the town. Krasilschikov went to Moscow and became a bookkeeper, but devoted all of his spare time to the study of the Talmud and continued to perform some rabbinical duties, but not as the rabbi of a synagogue, Schiffman said.

LABORED UNDER EXTREME ADVERSITY

Bronstein said that while Krasilschikov worked on the commentaries he labored courageously under unimaginable adversity. In the very midst of an environment so hostile to Judaism and to all things Jewish, he boldly persevered in the pursuit of his gool, the completion of a major commentary to the Jerusalem Talmud.

Schiffman said Krasilschikov apparently retained a copy of the Jerusalem Talmud, which had been published in Zhitomer in the early 1900’s, after to left Poltova and apparently continued to receive books on Judaica as time went on. Schiffman said he did not know what happened to the Jeursalem Talmud after the rabbi died.

Bronstein said that while the rabbi was on his deathbed he asked the Al Tidom leader, who was then on one of his missions to Moscow, to make every effort to rescue the manuscripts of the commentaries and to publish his life’s work. After 13 years of effort, the manuscripts were removed from the Soviet Union with the help of a friendly government. The original manuscripts are now in the Library of Congress, Schiffman said.

SEEN AS A MONUMENTAL CONTRIBUTION

According to Schiffman, who is also the author of two books on Jewish law in the Dead Sea scrolls and a noted authority on Talmudic literature, Krasilschikov’s work constitutes a monumental contribution to the study of the text of the Jerusalem Talmud and serves as the focal point of a new edition of this Talmud undertaken by the Mutzal Me’esh Institute. Tractates Berachot (two volumes) and Shevi’it have already appeared, and tractate Pe’ah is scheduled to appear within two months, Bronstein said.

The editorial collegium in Israel, where Krasilschkikov’s volumes are being printed from xeroxed copies, is headed by Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, one of lareal’s leading Torah scholars and an expert on he Jeursalem Talmud.