Poland, where the bulk of the subscribers lived. To add to the calamity,
a feud broke out between the head of the Slavuta publishing company,
Moses Schapira (1758-1838), and the Vilna publishers. The publication of
the Talmud had always been supervised by the prominent rabbis of the
land, and their authorization was necessary to make an edition legal.
This the rabbi never granted unless the previous edition was entirely
disposed of. The Slavuta publishers claimed that their edition had not
been sold out when the Vilna publishers started theirs. The litigation
continued for some time, and was finally decided in favor of the Vilna
firm. The publishers of Slavuta, however, having the Polish rabbis and
zaddikim on their side, continued to publish the Talmud, regardless of
the protests of Rabbi Akiba Eger and the "great ones" of Lithuania. But
a terrible misfortune befell the Slavuta publishers. On account of some
accusation, the two brothers engaged in the business were deported to
Siberia, and their father, the head of the establishment, died of a
broken heart. This cleared the field for the Romms of Vilna, who
continue to prosper to this day, and have now the greatest Hebrew
publishing house in the world. "It is the finger of God," the pious ones
said, and studied the Talmud with increased devotion.[40]

The numerous Talmud editions indicate the demand for the work, and the
multiplicity of yeshibot explains the cause of the demand. We have seen
how the yeshibot destroyed by Chmielnicki were re-established soon after
the massacres ceased. Their number increased when the Hasidic movement
threatened to render the knowledge of the Talmud unpopular; and when the
Maskilim, too, made them a target for their attacks, there was hardly a
town in which such institutions were not to be found. But surpassing all
the yeshibot of the nineteenth century, if not of all centuries, was the
Yeshibah Tree of Life (Yeshibat 'Ez Hayyim) in the townlet of Volozhin.
There the cherished hopes of the Gaon were finally realized. Within its