This is the rarest of Soncino Press Talmud editions. The first edition of the Soncino Talmud, with translations into English by impeccably orthodox Rabbonim, was published in 1935. 1,000 regular sets were printed. There were also 35 special sets, leather bound, printed on handmade Barcham Green’s paper, and individually signed by the editor, Rabbi Isidore Epstein.
This is the first volume of set number 33. (I have some other volumes of this special set).
The Soncino edition of the Talmud, originally in English only, and later printed with interleaved pages of the Vilna edition in Hebrew, was the first complete translation done by orthodox scholars.
This is the first volume – Baba Kamma (it means the first gate – the first three volumes are Baba Kamma, Baba Metzia – the middle gate – and Baba Basra – the last gate). It introduces Talmudic civil law, and covers damages and injuries done by a defendant.
The translator was Rabbi Eliezer Wolf Kirzner, a native of Lithuania who learned with some of prewar Europe’s greatest Jewish sages in the yeshivos (Talmudic colleges) of Telz, Slobodka and Ponovezh. In 1921 he was rabbi and yeshivah teacher in Kharkov in the Ukraine, then returned to Lithuania to become Rosh Yeshivah in Ponovezh.
Invited to Berlin to join the Beth Hamedrash Elyon of Rabbi Dr Haim Heller, he started studying Semitic languages and philosophy at Berlin University. He gained his doctorate in 1928, two years after settling in London, where he married the daughter of Rabbi Bloch, Rav of the Stamford Hill (Grove Lane) Beth Hamedrash, and soon succeeded his father-in-law at the synagogue.
He continued his secular studies, gaining a Masters degree in oriental languages at King’s College, London, in 1930. He was called to the Bar, with distinction in 1934. This edition of Bab Kamma was published in 1935, and Rabbi Kirzner continued as Rav of the Stamford Hill Beth Hamedrash until 1940.
He then went to South Africa as Rabbi of the New Synagogue, Capetown, until 1948 when he went to the United States. In 1951 he was appointed as Rabbi of New York’s Bnei Yehudah congregation in Brooklyn.
In autumn 1966, he was invited back to London as Rav Rashi (head rabbi) of the Federation of Synagogues. He was inducted into office the following September at the Shaare Shomayim Synagogue, Lea Bridge Road, Clapton, by the newly appointed Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, Rabbi Dr Immanuel Jakobovits.
In 1969 he returned to New York, where he had retained his synagogue links and where he had spent much of his time, for both hospital treatment and family reasons. His grandson, Rabbi Asher Schechter was the first Rav of Young Israel of Merrick, Long Island, from 1991.
Rabbi Kirzner died in New York in 1991, at the age of 95.
Jewish Miscellanies 