Vagshal's revision of the history of the Vilna Talmud, or, One of the most egregious examples of censorship I have ever seen.

The Romm printing firm of Vilna ("The Widow and Brothers Romm") published an edition of the Talmud in the years 1880-86. Although this edition had its flaws, it also had many virtues, among them the inclusion of an incredibly rich array of commentaries never before included in a Talmud, or never included together. Some of them were printed on the Talmud page directly, and therefore were elevated to a status which was previously impossible for them to have, such as the comments of Rabbenu Hananel or, more recently, the annotations of Rabbi Akiva Eger. In additional, the original print was beautiful. Since the Romm edition was photographed and reproduced countless times, most people are familiar with its look, but not necessarily the grandeur of the original. Almost every edition since has merely reproduced images of this Talmud, to the point where the look of this edition has become nearly synonymous with the Talmud itself, and most people would find using other editions a little strange.

Be that as it may, the printers left much room for improvement, many mistakes in need of correction, and good ideas to be implemented. Not professing to be a historian of the evolution of the Romm/ Vilna Shas, my impression is that something like 20 years ago new editions began to implement improvements, some of them really worthwhile. For example, in the original edition the dibur hamaschil of Rashi, the quoted phrase in the Talmud to which his comments are appended, was printed in precisely the same font as the rest of his commentary, with only a period separating. Example, from the beginning of Rashi's commentary:

קורין את שמע בערבין. משעה שהכהנים נכנסים לאכול בתרומתן. כהנים שנטמאו וטבלו והעריב שמשן והגיע עתם לאכול בתרומה: עד סוף האשמורה הראשונה. שליש הלילה כדמפרש בגמ' ומשם ואילך עבר זמן דלא מקרי תו זמן שכיבה ולא קרינן ביה בשכבך ומקמי הכי נמי לאו זמן שכיבה לפיכך הקורא קודם לכן לא יצא ידי חובתו. אם כן למה קורין אותה בבית הכנסת כדי לעמוד בתפלה מתוך דברי תורה והכי תניא בבריי' בברכות ירושלמי. ולפיכך חובה עלינו לקרותה משתחשך. ובקריאת פרשה ראשונה שאדם קורא על מטתו יצא: עד שיעלה עמוד השחר. שכל הלילה קרוי זמן שכיבה: הקטר חלבים ואברים. של קרבנות שנזרק דמן ביום

You can plainly see that it is not easy to immediately find the comment you are looking for or are up to. So newer editions began to bold the dibur hamaschil, like this:

קורין את שמע בערבין. משעה שהכהנים נכנסים לאכול בתרומתן. כהנים שנטמאו וטבלו והעריב שמשן והגיע עתם לאכול בתרומה: עד סוף האשמורה הראשונה. שליש הלילה כדמפרש בגמ' ומשם ואילך עבר זמן דלא מקרי תו זמן שכיבה ולא קרינן ביה בשכבך ומקמי הכי נמי לאו זמן שכיבה לפיכך הקורא קודם לכן לא יצא ידי חובתו. אם כן למה קורין אותה בבית הכנסת כדי לעמוד בתפלה מתוך דברי תורה והכי תניא בבריי' בברכות ירושלמי. ולפיכך חובה עלינו לקרותה משתחשך. ובקריאת פרשה ראשונה שאדם קורא על מטתו יצא: עד שיעלה עמוד השחר. שכל הלילה קרוי זמן שכיבה: הקטר חלבים ואברים. של קרבנות שנזרק דמן ביום

Instant worthwhile improvement. Another useful improvement was to give the entire text of verses quoted in the Gemara or in Rashi or Tosafos. In a world where tampering with classics usually results in an inferior product, few would argue that these changes were unwelcome. Some new versions even took a text critical approach, and tried to correct printer errors using venerable old printed versions. In addition, the old approach of printing from photographs of the Vilna Shas, or worse, from photographs of photomechanical editions, led to blurred words, especially in the small print in the back, which apparently no one cared much about. The new editions are clear and in some cases even quite attractive. One of these new editions is by Wagschal (or Vagshal), but more below.

The production of the original Vilna edition was exceedingly labor intensive, expensive and ambitious. It required manuscripts, copyists, proofreaders, scholars, rabbis, libraries and time. The story of how all these many moving pieces came together was included in the Talmud at the very end, right after the commentaries to Massekhes Niddah. Seven pages long, titled אחרית דבר, (Afterword, or When All is Said and Done, from Ecc. 7:8), the tale of the many labors and mountains which needed moving are recounted by the man who made this Talmud possible, Shmuel Shraga Feigensohn, who was the director of the Romm firm since 1867. In my view he was also a modest man, since his name appears only one time in the many volumes of this Talmud, at the very end of the אחרית דבר.

A copy is here:

Feigensohn including some notable tangential "extras" in the footnotes. For example, the first page includes a complete reckoning of the dates of completion of individual tractates. He also included tombstone inscriptions on some of the Romm family member's graves - graves which have since been destroyed. He also included thrilling bibliophiliac intrigues, such as the adventure of how they got the Vatican Library to let them work even though it was already summer vacation - the library would be closed for four months out of the year (!) and they needed to see certain manuscripts of Rabbenu Hananel found only in that library.

Apparently they had not realized this, and were stuck in Italy without a gondola oar, so to speak. Worse, the plan was to print the Talmud according to the order of the tractates given by Maimonides, so it wasn't as if they could have skipped these specific tractates. Considering that the entire project took 6 years, clearly a four month delay was a huge problem. That is, until Rabbi Raphael Nathan Nata Rabbinowicz, author of Dikduke Soferim, stepped in. He was persona grata at the Vatican Library, and that summer he happened to be in Rome. He was given full library privileges, even though it was closed altogether. This meant that not only was he able to use the library, but even on minor Catholic holidays, when normally it would be closed, and he also could use it after noon, when normally scholars had to leave. In short, he had a golden ticket. And he used his influence to obtain special permission for the copyists working for Romm to gain access. The Cardinals involved are thanked by name in the footnote.

Getting back to Wagschal, in the most recent edition they reprinted the Acharis Davar, in newly set type! This was most welcome, as in the original it is a bit hard to read. Lo and behold, it is one of the most censored Jewish texts I have ever seen. Whole footnotes are missing; no tombstone inscription, no list of when the tractates were complete, no Cardinals. Incredible. Looking deeper one noticed various spelling mistakes, and the fact that Shmuel Shraga Feigensohn's name has been totally excised (more on that below). Here's how the end appears in the original, followed by the Wagschal "version."

Romm:

Wagschal:

As the expression goes, I know what you did, Wagschal. Furthermore, (although this is obviously more trivial) Feigensohn used a Hebrew chronogram to indicate the year 5646/ 1886. That is, he dated his document - and it is his document - יום א' י"ג ניסן שנת גמר וסיום תלמוד בבלי לפ"ק, or Sunday, 13 Nisan, the year of the completion of finish of the Babylonian Talmud. The latter sentence, or part of it, adds up to 646, which is 1886. The word גמר is part of the chronogram, but it isn't meant to be counted, so it is printed in a smaller font than וסיום תלמוד בבלי. Yet in Wagschal the entire phrase is written in the same size font, which means that if you count it all up you get the year 889, or the year 2129.

Now, although I suppose the reader doesn't have to imagine too much to think of a reason why they would remove the names of Cardinals (wrong as it is) why would they have removed this man altogether?

The answer most assuredly lies in the fact that Feigensohn was a kind of maskil. Not the pork-eating kind (were there those?) but the sort of S.J. Fuenn-Matisyahu Strashun kind. An example of the sort of thing which probably makes people uncomfortable is his introductory essay to the Vilna edition of the Talmud Yerushalmi (link) called שערי חומת ירושלים, which relies extensively and frankly on Zecharia Frankel's מבוא הירושלמי, which is mentioned (both the man and the book) countless times (see, for example, pages 9 and 10 of that link). Dan Rabinowitz has already noted that the Israeli Yated Ne'eman based a large article in 2003 on the history of the Vilna Shas on another lengthy essay written by the same Feigensohn, also excising portions of it, and totally failing to mention his name - although referring to him all the same as "One of the workers on the project" as it directly quotes him (saying something inspirational and frum I might add). Speaking of Frankel, see here where I showed the excision of Frankel's haskama in a book of sermons of a disciple of the Vilna Gaon.

Unfortunately as of this moment, these are the only two pictures of him that I could find. I will of course add a clear one if I can get it:

People should also know that Feigensohn edited the אוצר התפלות, which might be the most popular work on prayer there is. It certainly is the source for a great deal of the Artcroll siddur commentary, so it is not as if Feigensohn's work is marginal or he can be totally ignored.

Interestingly, whomever was responsible for these changes in the Wagschal edition also revealed a certain ignorance by not removing certain names that no doubt it would have wanted to, if only they knew who these people were. See the list toward the end of the Afterword, which gives the major scholars who helped make the edition happen - not the money men, I might add.

Here is the original and the Wagschal, which you can see is unchanged:

Romm:

Wagschal:

I suppose it would be particularly outrageous to remove any names from the very passage which begins with a quote from the Rashba explaining how important it is to publicize the names of those involved in a mitzvah. Nevertheless, it's hard to see how they would not have wanted to remove the name of S.Z.H. Halberstamm, a maskil, or Alexander Kohut, who was formerly a Status Quo rabbi in Hungary, and at the time a rabbi in a Reform congregation in New York (albeit he himself was a Historical School type of rabbi). You can also see in the next paragraphs how it also mentioned Salomon Buber (who is mentioned numerous other times in the Afterword). It mentiones Adolf Neubauer of Oxford (in this post I showed an excerpt from a review by Neubauer in which essentially he calls out Frankel for being too Orthodox), but at least it calls him Professor Dr. Buber, though, is even given a שליט"א after his name. If anyone has a better explanation for why these names were left in - my explanation is they didn't realize - I'm all ears.

Readers might find it interesting that in fact in the original Wagschal edition the Afterword remained unchanged, and photomechanically reproduced from the original, so that when I called it to the attention of some they replied, "What do you mean? I don't see what you're talking about." However, in the 2007 Wagschal edition you will find this censored Acharis Davar.

Another scholar pointed out to me that the Wagschal edition also seems to have forgotten to remove Mordechai Plungian's name (note 1), something which is of concern to Steipler circles. He allowed himself the theological speculation of the significance of this "miss"

למעשה, Plungian was not such a terrible guy, and I view Vagshal's error in this case as a siman min ha-shamayim that Plungian has been vindicated (if you like, Plungian's תשובה has apparently been accepted on High).

Not that long ago I came across a Wagschal catalog for the new edition, describing all the many useful additions and changes, with scintillating examples. Of course this one wasn't mentioned, although I did notice that it actually referred the reader to Acharis Davar for some other, trivial point. Here is the new improved Acharis Davar in the Wagschal 2007 edition. Remember, you can also download Scribd documents. I invite readers to comb it more carefully and help notice all the changes.

Also see this post about a claim from 1904 that the Romm firm had a plan to expand to New York and print English judaica, including an English translation of the Talmud.