Among the more curious acquisitions to cross my desk this week was a pair of rare Talmud volumes that owe their existence to one of the most brilliant – and most vexing – rabbinic figures of the early twentieth century: Rabbi Joseph Shapotshnick (1882–1937).
The books are part of an abortive publishing venture grandly titled Shas Ha-Gadol She-bi-Gedolim – roughly “The Talmud, Greatest Among the Greats,” though one suspects the more accurate translation would be “the biggest of the big.” It was advertised, without exaggeration, as the largest Talmud ever printed. Physically massive and typographically extravagant, the work was meant to encompass the entire Shas in an outsized format. In practice, it never progressed beyond Tractate Berachot.
The volume contains the standard Vilna-style text, but what distinguishes it is its sheer scale and the author’s idiosyncratic marginal material – commentary that reflects both a sharp mind and a temperament unwilling to conform. That the project collapsed is hardly surprising. Printing costs were ruinous, demand was limited, and its author was already a deeply controversial figure in London’s East End. Today, surviving copies are scarce, prized by collectors of Hebraica and rabbinic curiosa alike.
Rabbi Shapotshnick himself remains an enigma. Born in Kishinev to a chassidic family, he arrived in London in 1913 and quickly became a fixture of immigrant Jewish life. To his supporters, he was a prodigious scholar, a tireless advocate for the poor, and a fearless critic of the Anglo-Jewish establishment. To his detractors, he was reckless, self-aggrandizing, and ultimately untrustworthy.
What cannot be denied is the devotion he inspired among the East End’s working-class Jews. Shapotshnick reportedly gave away the bulk of his income to charity and was unrelenting in his criticism of communal leaders whom he believed had abandoned immigrant education and welfare. Some followers attributed to him almost supernatural powers. When he died in 1937, an estimated 5,000 people attended his funeral – an unmistakable testament to the affection he commanded among the “simple folk” he claimed to represent.
His downfall came with the so-called Agunot affair. In the mid-1920s, Shapotshnick issued sweeping halachic rulings permitting women whose husbands had vanished or refused to grant a get to remarry. While the plight of agunot was – and remains – a genuine tragedy, his solutions were viewed by mainstream rabbinic authorities as reckless and unfounded. Matters worsened dramatically when it emerged that he had appended the names of leading rabbis to his rulings without their consent. The response was swift and devastating: in 1928, a formal condemnation bearing some 600 rabbinic signatures was published, effectively placing him beyond the pale.
Other controversies followed. He styled himself “Chief Rabbi,” a title already occupied and jealously guarded. He established an independent kashrut authority, which collapsed amid allegations of non-kosher meat being sold under his supervision. His prolific writings ranged far beyond conventional rabbinics, including speculative works attempting to locate atomic theory within biblical and kabbalistic texts.
In the end, Rabbi Joseph Shapotshnick occupies an uncomfortable place in Anglo-Jewish history. He was neither charlatan nor saint, but a gifted, troubled figure whose compassion for society’s margins was matched by a fatal disregard for communal discipline and halachic restraint. His colossal Talmud – ambitious, impractical, and unfinished – stands as an oddly fitting monument to a man whose reach consistently exceeded his grasp.