without and by renegades and detractors within, the Russian Jews
nevertheless clung to them with a tenacity unparalleled even in their
own history. Danzig's _Life of Man_ (_Hayye Adam_, Vilna, 1810),
containing all Jewish ritual ceremonies, was followed out to the least
minutiae. Despite the poverty of the Jews and the comparatively
exorbitant price the publisher had to charge for the Talmud, and, aside
from the many sets of former editions in the country and those
continually imported, and in addition to the Responsa, commentaries,
Midrashim, and other works directly and indirectly bearing on it, more
than a dozen editions of the Talmud had appeared in Russia alone since
the ukase of Catherine II (October 30, 1795) permitting Russian Jews to
publish Hebrew works in their own country. This ukase had been intended
originally to exclude seditious literature from Russia, but what was
unfavorable for the rebellious Poles proved, in a measure, very
beneficial to the law-abiding Jews. Under the supervision of a censor,
and with but slight interruptions, the Jews published their own books,
and in 1806 Slavuta, in Volhynia, saw the first complete edition of the
Talmud on Russian soil. Then followed another edition in the same place
(1808-1813), a third in Kopys (1816-1828), and a fourth in Slavuta
(1817-1822), and several others elsewhere.

The story of the Vilna-Grodno edition of the Talmud is interesting as
well as illuminating. It depicts the relation of the Jews among
themselves and to the Government. Begun in 1835, at Ozar, near Grodno,
an imperial ukase directed the removal of the work to Vilna, the
metropolis of Russo-Poland. When the publishers, Simhah Ziml and Menahem
Mann Romm, had completed their work in the new quarters, the copies of
the book were destroyed by incendiaries (1840). After some time, an
effort was made by Joseph Eliasberg and Mattathias Strashun to continue
the publication, but the Warsaw censor prohibited its importation into