This is a large folio volume of Rabbi Israel Chaim Daiches’ commentary on the tractate Bava Metzia of the Jerusalem Talmud. It was printed on good quality paper by Express printers of 89, Commercial Street, London. Bound with it is Rabbi Daiches commentary on the tractate Bava Basra, and at the end two short pieces by his son, Rabbi Samuel Daiches of Jews College, London.
Rabbi Israel Chaim Daiches was the Rabbi of the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, from 1901. This Shul was founded in the 1870s and grew until it was able to appoint an Eastern European Rabbinical scholar as its Rabbi.
Israel Chaim Daiches was born in 1850 in Darshunishek, Lithuania, into a Rabbinical family. His father, Rabbi Arieh Leib Tzvi Hirsch Daiches was the son of Rabbi David Daiches, who had been the Rabbi in Eisishok, Lithuania. I have previously written about his early book, Pirchei HaAviv, published in Vilna in 1870, and his book of sermons, Derashos Machariach, published in Leeds, in 1920.
There are two versions of the Talmud, which are commentaries and elucidations on the Mishnah. One, which is widely studied, was written in Babylon. This one, rather smaller, was written in Jerusalem. There are three tractates of legal commentary and discussion, called the ‘Three Gates’ – Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia and Bava Basra. Rabbi Daiches had published the first volume of his commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud, on tractate Bava Kamma, in Vilna in 1880. Now in Leeds, 46 years later, he was able to complete the trilogy.
His grandson, David Daiches wrote about his grandfather, whom he knew as a relatively elderly man in Leeds, in a memoir published in Commentary Magazine in December 1955. “My grandfather, a famous Talmudic scholar of the first eminence, migrated to England while my father was still a student, to become rabbi of an Orthodox Jewish congregation—the Beth Hamedresh Hagadol—in Leeds… My father already knew English, and after a few years in England spoke it perfectly, while my grandfather never mastered more than the merest rudiments of the language. He and my grandmother represented for me a picturesque old world… “
Israel Chaim Daiches was recognised by his fellow Rabbis as an outstanding scholar. His book has haskomos (approbations from:
- Rabbi Yosef Zacharia Stern of Shavel in Lithuania.
- Rabbi Eliezer Landau, who was one of the great rabbis of his generation in Lithuania, and author of Damesek Eliezer on the Vilna Gaon’s elucidation of the Shulchan Aruch, which is extensively cited in halachic (Jewish legal) literature.
- Rabbi Eliyahu Chaim Maizel, the Chief Rabbi of Lodz.
Jewish Miscellanies 