The 63 tractates of the Talmud were not allowed to be printed in the Soviet Union even once during the 70 years of its existence. An amalgam of Aramaic and Hebrew, the ancient text contains the teachings and opinions of hundreds of rabbis on the widest variety of subjects, including Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs, history and lore. Now, with the publication of three initial volumes, a historic effort to translate the entire Talmud with commentaries into the Russian language has been launched in Moscow.
For more than 1,500 years, the Talmud has served as the central curriculum of Jewish education, studied by children sitting around a single volume in a one-room cheder and white-bearded elders bent over a yellowing synagogue tome. Wherever Jews have found themselves, they have printed and studied the Talmud—the most famous and widely reproduced edition being that of Vilna’s Romm printing house, first published in the 1870s.
But the Bolsheviks wanted to silence the distinctive sing-song tune of Talmudic learning that emanated from pre-Revolution Russian synagogues and schools, and so they banned it. In fact, they banned the printing of all Jewish religious texts. Until the 1980s, the last Chumash in Russia was printed in 1918 and the last volume of Torah scholarship in 1926—a slim commentary on Maimonides written by the rabbi of Poltava.
Now, the monumental task of translating the Talmud’s 5,422 pages into Russian has been undertaken by the Knizhniki publishing house, which is affiliated with the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FJC). When completed, it will be the first translation of the entire Talmud ever produced in Russian. Knizhniki has previously translated and published all six orders of the Mishnah, and is in the process of publishing Maimonides’ entire Mishneh Torah as well.
“We started with this current project three years ago, working out how we envisioned the layout and how we wanted to do it,” says Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Boruch Gorin, chief editor of Knizhniki. A concurrent effort had been started by Chabad Maor in St. Petersburg; Gorin found that their visions coincided, and so the two organizations decided to collaborate. The first half of tractate Brachot was published in January; the second half came out in May; and Makkot was released earlier this month.
“We hope to release about four volumes a year,” says Gorin. “If all goes well, the entire Talmud will be published in Russian within 10 to 12 years.”
During the planning stages, critics suggested that it was a fool’s errand. If a Russian Jew was actually interested in the material, the reasoning went, they could learn Hebrew and Aramaic, and study it in the original. Gorin says their Russian Talmud’s unexpected popularity and sales prove otherwise.
This is not the first project to translate the Talmud into Russian. Back in 1996, the pre-eminent Torah scholar, teacher and author Rabbi Adin Even-Israel (Steinsaltz) launched an effort to do in Russian what he had become so famous for: making the Talmud accessible to all Jews. Even-Israel—who in 2011 completed his 45-year effort to render the Talmud into Modern Hebrew, and whose trailblazing English-language edition is almost complete—published tractate Taanit and portions of Baba Metzia in Russian, and in doing so provided the first blueprints for similar efforts. His Russian edition of Taanit was republished by Knizhniki in 2011.
Gorin, who is also editor-in-chief of the Jewish literary magazine Lechaim, describes the Talmud’s translation as not only a religiously significant event for Russian Jewry, but a broader societal one as well. Soviet academic culture had a strong tradition of translating important texts from other cultures, and so for Gorin and the team working on this Talmud (the chief translator is Rabbi Reuven Piatigorsky), it has been important that the work be up to serious academic standards.
“We see a huge positive impact because of the high level of quality,” says Gorin. “There are a large number of people for whom this is intellectual and spiritual sustenance. When they did not have Jewish materials at this level, unfortunately, they looked elsewhere.”
Rabbi Berel Lazar, the chief rabbi of Russia, also heralded the newly published volumes: “This is an unprecedented project in the Russian-Jewish book publishing, and it is taking the development of Jewish life in Russia to a new stage.”
He adds that he hopes the new publication will enable “a deeper search for the truth” by all who study it.
Pro-Russian Jews, Not Anti-Soviet Politics
The first modern attempt to translate Jewish texts into Russian was undertaken by Professor Herman Branover in the early 1970s while the renowned physicist was still living in the Soviet Union. Following his emigration in 1972, Branover, a pioneer in the field of magnetohydrodynamics, was chosen by the Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—to become the head of the newly founded, Jerusalem-based Shamir Association for Jewish Professionals, as well as editor-in-chief of its publishing house.
“There was a stress on translating the fundamentals—the siddur, Chumash—the books needed to become acquainted with Yiddishkeit,” says the professor’s son, Brooklyn businessman Danny Branover. “Everything was coordinated very closely with the Rebbe.”
With most Russian-speaking Jews at the time living behind the Iron Curtain, the Jewish books being printed by Shamir were being surreptitiously delivered to the Soviet Union. Books such as This Is My G‑d, the Jewish primer written by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Herman Wouk, as well as the many works of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan were seeping into the bloodstream of Soviet Jewry, with Branover’s translations proving to have a profound effect on growing circles of newly inspired Jews.
“I’ve met countless numbers of Russian Jews whose first exposure to Judaism was through those basic Jewish works translated and published by my father,” says Branover.
Although obvious sources of inspiration for Russian Jews, the Rebbe gave direct instructions to Shamir’s staff that the books should avoid the appearance of being anti-Soviet. During a 1977 private audience with one of Shamir’s founders, British businessman Peter Kalms (Kalms recalls the Rebbe’s suggestion that they both destroy their notes from the meeting so as to err on the side of caution), the Rebbe explains his reasoning in no uncertain terms.
“Your publicity and writing should be directed to those who speak Russian, not only Soviet Jews. It should not make the customs man hostile before he has seen what is inside,” the Rebbe told Kalms. “It should ... appear to be directed to Russian-speaking Jews living in other countries, so that when it is received in the Soviet Union, they will not have a pretext to find it anti-Soviet, as it is directed also to Jews in other countries.”
The Rebbe’s additional instructions were that the books preferably not be printed in Israel, or at the very least, second editions be printed in countries with diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Additionally, if Shamir publications explicitly mentioned Russia—for example, when listing Shabbat candle-lighting times in large Russian cities—the Rebbe advised that the city names be mixed into a broader list of cities outside of the Soviet Union.
Throughout Kalms’ discussion, the Rebbe spoke of the need to light the spark within Soviet Jewry by teaching the fundamentals of Judaism they had so long been denied.
“Jewish people must survive even Bolshevism,” stressed the Rebbe. “It is not enough to dance once a year at Simchas Torah, but he must do something every day. [The Russian Jew must be taught] ‘Modeh Ani,’ not higher philosophy!”
With these published works, the flames of Torah study would continue to spread at the grassroots level throughout the Soviet Union. Following the Rebbe’s intricate guidelines, Shamir would publish 400 titles over the next few decades, printing some 12 million books in all.
Exported Around the World
Knizhniki’s offices and showroom are located in the heart of Moscow’s Marina Roscha district, a neighborhood that has in recent decades become the most identifiably Jewish in Eastern Europe. Sitting in a low-slung building between the seven-story Marina Roscha Jewish Community Center and the sprawling campus that contains, among other institutions, the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, the Shaarei Tzedek social-services center and the Beit Shvidler Jewish day school, the publisher’s modest headquarters belies its impressive output.
Initially founded in 1992 as L’chaim Publishing House, it was rebranded Knizhniki nine years ago and began publishing at a completely different tempo.
Since 2007, it has published more than 450 books—not just books but beautiful books, ranging from illustrated editions of translated Yiddish poetry, books of Jewish literature and history, and colorful children’s books. That same year, Knizhniki launched the Library of Classic Jewish Texts, and has translated and published Chassidic classics such as Torah Ohr and Derech Mitzvosecha, as well as the 13th-century Sefer HaChinuch and Rabbi Jacob Ibn Habib’s Ein Yaakov.
In the process, the Jewish publisher has become one of Moscow’s most respected book publishers despite its ostensibly niche market.
And while there was a time in the not-so-distant past that Russian-language Jewish books were printed exclusively outside of Russia to be sent into the country, today Knizhniki’s books are being exported around the world, having become popular sellers in Israel and the United States.
“Our books are sold everywhere,” attests Gorin. “That the Russian-language student of Jewish texts exists has been proven without a doubt.”
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