New Volume is Added to Schiff Jewish Classics Library, Adler Announces

A new volume in the Schiff Library of Jewish Classics will appear today, according to the announcement of Dr. Cyrus Adler, chairman of the Classics Committee of the Jewish Publication Society.

The new publication is a text and translation of the treatise Taanit of the Babylonian Talmud, edited and translated by the late Professor Henry Malter. The text in this volume is based upon a careful collation of all the existing manuscripts- twenty-one in number-of the earliest editions and of all other known sources, such a critical edition being the first attempt in connection with the Talmud. The result of Professor Malter’s labors is a text which differs in many respects from that used in the editions of the Talmud in current use, Dr. Adler said.

It is hoped that this publication will act as a forerunner for similar editions of other tractates of the Talmud, whose text, second in Jewish literature and importance only to the Bible, may thus be made accessible in a worthy form, freed from the errors and incorrect reading which gathered and multiplied during many centuries.

The choice of this tractate for the series of Jewish Classics was made in the beginning of the enterprise by the then Chairman Doctor Solomon Schechter, because of its great value as a source for Jewish History, Liturgy and Folklore.

The preceding volumes in this series have been the Religious Poems of Gabirol. edited by Professor Israel Davidson and translated by Israel Zangwill, a Selection of Poems of Jehudah Halevi. translated by Mrs. Nina Salaman: and Hebrew Ethical Wills in two volumes. edited and translated by Israel Abrahams.

The series was made possible by a fund created by Jacob H. Schiff.