Almost three decades after his petirah, the voluminous treasury of Rav Moshe Feinstein’s zt’l unpublished chiddushim are being brought to Klal Yisrael.
In a historic event in the world of Torah, ArtScroll/Mesorah has announced the publication of Dibros Moshe on Mesechta Sanhedrin, an 802-page compendium of Rav Moshe’s chiddushim on Sanhedrin.
This new volume of Dibros Moshe includes all of Rav Moshe’s unpublished chiddushim on Sanhedrin plus everything he wrote on the mesechta in the published volumes of Dibros Moshe, Igros Moshe and Darash Moshe.
An illustrious team of talmidei chachamim spent several years on the project. Rav Moshe left over 80 handwritten 250- page notebooks – over 20,000 pages of chiddushim – on Shas and other areas of Torah. First, the team organized the unpublished writings on Shas that appeared in all his “kuntreisim.” Then they selected everything connected to Mesechta Sanhedrin for inclusion in this volume. They worked closely with Rav Moshe’s family, and Rav Moshe’s son, Rav David Feinstein shlit”a, reviewed every page of the monumental work.
This new work differs in many ways from earlier volumes of Dibros Moshe.
“The notes left by the Rosh Yeshiva were written in a shorter style than those published in previous Dibros,” explains Rav Moshe Kaufman, General Editor of the project and a member of the Chicago Community Kollel. “We worked hard to publish this volume in a more contemporary style, to make the work easier to learn. 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 Mesechta Sanhedrin. We hope b’ezras Hashem to publish an additional six to eight volumes on other mesechtos 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 Mesechta Bava Kamma, was published in 1947. In the Preface he wrote: “The benefit of publishing that which Hashem Yisbarach 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.
(YWN – Studio B)
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One Response
Yishar Koach to all involved and to YWN for the article.
Might I suggest that YWN regularly publish articles on new seforim? I think that it would be a fairly unique service and one that many of your readers would appreciate.