Almost three decades after his petirah, the treasury of Rav Moshe Feinstein’s  zt’l unpublished chiddushim are being brought to Klal Yisrael.

As daf yomi begins its study of Beitzah,  ArtScroll/Mesorah announces the publication of Dibros Moshe with Likutei Igros Moshe on Maseches Beitzah.

This new volume of includes all of Rav Moshe’s unpublished chiddushim on Beitzah plus everything he wrote on the masechta in the published volumes of Dibros Moshe, Igros Moshe and Darash Moshe.

Rav Moshe left behind some 80 handwritten 250-page notebooks – over 20,000 pages of chiddushim – on Shas and other areas of Torah. An illustrious team of talmidei chachamim have spent several years on the daunting but rewarding task of arranging those chiddushim and bringing them to the public.

First, the team organized the unpublished writings on Shas that appeared in all these “kuntreisim” (notebooks) and then selected everything connected to Masechta Beitzah for inclusion in this volume. They then pored through the vast body of Rav Moshe’s published works, culling and integrating material related to the mesechta. All the while, they worked closely with Rav Moshe’s family, and Rav Moshe’s son, the Rosh Hayeshiva HaGaon HaRav David Feinstein shlita, reviewed every page of the monumental work.

“We worked hard to publish this volume in a contemporary style, to make the work easier to learn,” says Rav Moshe Kaufman, General Editor of the project and a member of the Chicago Community Kollel. “We arranged the chiddushim according to the daf, and divided them into short pieces with subtitles that introduce the content.

“The sefer has a detailed mafteiach (index) that lists both subjects and places throughout the Torah that are discussed in the volume. At the end of the sefer we added the complete text of the teshuvos in Igros Moshe that relate to Masechta Beitzah.  We hope b’ezras Hashem to publish many additional volumes on other masechtos in this style.”

Rav Moshe zt’l was a prolific writer; indeed, he was always writing. Even as a young Rav in Luban he wrote his chiddushim, but unfortunately most of those writings were lost, many maliciously destroyed by the Communists. His first published work, Dibros Moshe to Masechta Bava Kamma, was published in 1947.  In the Preface he wrote: “The benefit of publishing that which Hashem Yisborach has helped me to understand… is obvious… It seems to me that one who has the ability to publish his chiddushim and does not has not fulfilled the mitzvah of teaching Torah to others in its fullest sense…”

According to the classic bestselling biography, Reb Moshe: The Life and Ideals of HaGaon Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, “…while he was best known for his [eight volumes of] Igros Moshe on Halachah, in his own mind, Reb Moshe placed greater emphasis on his Dibros Moshe to Gemara… Rebbetzin Feinstein… remembered her husband’s boundless joy when he would receive a letter pertaining to something he had written in Dibros Moshe.”

That boundless joy is no doubt shared by the Torah world today, as more of Reb Moshe’s genius becomes accessible to us.

(Studio B – YWN)