75 Years Since the American Army Printed the Shas

In the days when both the right-wing and the left-wing discuss the American aid that was or was not given to the IDF in this difficult war, I am reminded of the aid that the American Army provided seventy-five years before this current Iron Swords war, “military” aid that played a large part in reestablishing the Torah world after the Holocaust.

“A War of Torah” – a sentence that every yeshiva student knows well, took on a special meaning in those fateful days, when the strongest and largest army in the world sponsored and actually printed the first elegant and complete Shas (6 orders of the Mishna) after the Holocaust.

In this letter, which was printed on the day after Sukkot in the year 5709 (1948), the two rabbis describe the trouble they faced until they had the privilege of printing the new Shas. In fact, the work of printing was completed in May 1949 (exactly 75 years ago), and the dramatic innovation in this edition was that, as the letter says, during the days of the long exile, the books of Israel were often burned by the authorities and none of them existed for us; this was the first time in the annals of Jewish history that a government helped publish the books of the Talmud which “are our life and the length of our days.”

“The army of the United States saved us from death and they protect us even now in this country, and with their help the Talmud appears again in Ashkenaz…” – Rabbi Shmuel Abba Snieg and Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Roz upon the new volumes of the Shas

The printing of the elegant Shas was not easy. The two individuals who worked on it, Rabbi Shmuel Abba Snieg, rabbi of Munich, and Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Roz, one of the rabbis in Munich, both survivors of glorious Lithuanian Jewry, invested a great deal of effort to obtain a complete Shas from which it will be possible to copy a new Shas, using the technique used at that time, but unfortunately it was not possible to obtain even one complete Shas throughout Europe, since the Nazis, aimed to destroy and wipe out every vestige of the synagogues and holy books that filled Europe for centuries.

Piles and piles of holy book were burned in the years of wrath; the wicked ones looked for them crazily, and at the end of the war there wasn’t even one large Shas from which to produce a new edition (there were small sets of the Shas, but for young students, survivors, and the rabbis were looking for a large Shas, which was not available).

Soldiers from the United States Army painstakingly transported two sets of 19 Shas volumes from study halls in the United States, and the printing work was carried out at the printing house of Karl Winter in Heidelberg, Germany.

In the same printing house, a few years earlier, poisonous incendiary materials were printed from the feverish minds of the Nazi propagandists, and hundreds of meters from the same printing house, thousands of books were burned on Kristallnacht (1938).

Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Roz, 34 years old, who lost his entire family during the years of wrath – his father, mother, three brothers and a sister, may G-d avange their blood – was entrusted with the task of proofreading. He himself was very ill at the end of the war and the Allied Forces transferred him to a hospital, where he was treated for four months until he recovered.

The funding for the printing was given by the commanders of the American Army to the German government, and the actual work was carried out by the order of the American General McNairney, at the request of the American military rabbi, Rabbi Philip Bernstein, by American soldiers and with the assistance of the Joint.

In his first letter to the American general, Rabbi Philip Bernstein noted the fact that the Nazis personally fought against the book of the Jewish Talmud and made great efforts to destroy and burn it, therefore, as an expression of the victory of the enlightened world over the Nazi beast, it was appropriate to reprint the Jewish Talmud.

“They almost destroyed me on Earth, but I did not forsake Your precepts” (Psalms 119:87) – Tractate Chulin – With the assistance of the American Military Government

“A work barrack in which we sat and learned and prayed in secret”

Thanks to “Lechatchil Ariver” on his wonderful article on the forum “Yiddishe Velt Forum,” “American Army Shas” (November 2011)