New Book Announcement: Mesoras Torah Sheba’al Peh by Harav Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin

By Eliezer Brodt

ר‘ שלמה זלמן הבלין, מסורת התורה שבעל פה, יסודותיה, עקרונותיה והגדרותיה ב–ג [ב‘ חלקים], 1048 עמודים

I am very happy to announce the recent publication of an important two-volume work, which will be of great interest to readers of the Seforim Blog. Mesoras Torah Sheba’al Peh by Harav Professor Shlomo Zalman Havlin, of Bar-Ilan University’s Talmud department.

There are various “agendas” in the following post:

The first: to further the Seforim Blog’s mission to inform its readership of new works and furnish them with a descriptive review; case in point these two incredible new volumes recently published.

Second: making some of the seforim mentioned and reviewed here available for sale; the proceeds help support the Seforim Blog.

Professor Havlin is one of the more prolific writers in the Jewish academic scene, having authored hundreds of articles and edited and published numerous seforim.

His articles cover an incredibly wide range of subjects in many areas of Jewish Studies; Geonim, Rishonim and Achronim as well as Bibliography, to name but a few. It is hard to define his area of expertise, as in every area he writes about he appears to be an expert!

He also served as chief editor of Bar Ilan University’s bibliographical journal, Alei Sefer for many years; in this capacity he also wrote numerous short but immensely insightful book reviews.

Over his career, RSZ Havlin devoted a lot of time and energy studying and analyzing various important Rishonim. Of note is the Rashba, he expended immense energy in publishing numerous manuscripts alongside his own in-depth essays regarding them. These were collected a few years back and published in two volumes by Mechon Even Yisroel.

He has edited and printed from manuscript works of Rishonim and Achronim, being firmly of the opinion, contrary to that of some other academics, that there is nothing non-academic about publishing critical editions of important manuscript texts.

His uniqueness lies not only in the topics he has taken up, but also in that his work has appeared in all types of publications running the gamut from academic journals such as Kiryat Sefer, Sidra, Alei Sefer as well as many prominent Charedi rabbinic journals such a Yeshurun, Moriah and others.

Another point unique to Havlin’s writings, besides his familiarity with all the academic sources, is that he shows prodigious familiarity with all the classic sources from Chazal, Geonim, Rishonim and Achronim, to even the most recent discussions in Charedi literature – this bekius was apparent well before the advent of search engines such as Bar-Ilan’s Responsa Project, Hebrew Books and Otzar Ha-hochmah. Alongside all this is his penetrating analysis and ability to raise interesting points.

A few years ago, my dear friend Menachem Butler made available dozens of RSZ Havlin’s publications online at his academia page available here.

About ten years ago, he published volume one of his writings, which contained fifteen chapters spanning from Chazal all the way until the Chazon Ish.

At the time, Professor Havlin mentioned to me that he hopes that he will find the strength and funding to publish the rest of his material. Over the years I reached out to him about it and he said he had no luck finding funding. To my great surprise, a few months ago he reached out to me and sent me the Table of Contents, saying the work has been finally published.

As one can see from the Table below, lots of material is devoted to the Rambam – to whom Havlin has devoted years researching all aspects of his writings from the manuscript to early printings. At one point, he published under Mechon Ofek the “Sefer Mugah (Authorized Copy) of the Rambam’s Yad and included an incredible introduction. This classic essay is included in this new collection alongside numerous essays of his on the Rambam many of which have also become classics.

These volumes have other important essays on Rishonim; included are his lengthy introductions to the Meiri’s Seder Kabbalah and his work on Avos, both of which he published critical, annotated editions through Mechon Ofek a few years back.

Some other essays in these volumes worth pointing out are his excellent introduction to the set Torasan Shel Geonim (published by Vagshal), and his essay on the authorship of the Kol Bo and Orchos Chaim.

There are also very important essays starting with the earliest Achronim to various essays on the Chazon Ish; sandwiched between are important essays on the Gra and others. One essay I enjoyed learning through a few times is his material on R’ Yechiel Ashkenazi from the time of the Rama. Another important essay of his which I enjoyed and use often is on Pilpul which was based on a talk in Harvard he gave many years ago.

There are also various book reviews of editions of seforim (some are rather sharp) all worth learning through carefully.

There is much more to say about the materials and essays in these two volumes but time is short.

Some of the essays were updated with new material or corrections from when they were published the first time.

Two minor complaints I would like to voice, one is there is no index to these works which makes it impossible to maximize all the nuggets all over in his various tangents. I imagine the reason for this is because indices costs lots of money to produce and the raising of funds for the publication was long, tedious and painful as it is so no index was included.

Another complaint which I have not come up with a good defense for is not every article has the original publication information included in the beginning of the chapter or at the end of the volumes. I imagine this too had to do with the budget.

Be that as it may, these two small complaints are negligible; these incredible volumes are worth owning and learning through carefully to gain from the research and discoveries of Havlin of over fifty years of learning.

I am the distributor of this work and I am selling copies of this work (currently it is not for sale anywhere else), so for more information about ordering\purchasing this work, contact me at Eliezerbrodt@gmail.com

Here are the Table of Contents of the book:

Vol. I:

Vol. II: