This letter, written by Rabbi Shabtai Shtrom-Bass, is addressed to his mechutan, R. Shimon of the holy community of Halberstadt. Rabbi Shabtai signs as: "Mechutan, Shabtai, called Sheftel, son of the Rav…"
Śrem, Ca. 1670.
On the reverse side of the letter, he wrote the address: To the holy community of Halberstadt, may they swiftly receive… to my dear mechutan, the noble Torah scholar, like Eldad HaDani, the esteemed Rabbi Shimon, may his light shine like a brilliant illumination, and anyone else under the Chrem of Rabeinu Gerson…
From the holy community of Shtrem."
No other letter from the great author of Siftei Chachamim is known to exist today!
This letter has been compared to the only known handwriting sample of Rabbi Shabtai Bass—his autograph additions on his sefer Siftei Yeshenim, which is preserved in the British Library (a scanned copy is available at the Israel National Library, catalog number F17302). The handwriting is fully identical.
The famous Rabbi Shabtai Bass, , was born in 1641 in Śrem, Poland, to Rabbi Yosef. His original family name was Śrem. (Some sources claim that he was born in Prague, but Shem HaGedolim HaChadash states that he was born in Śrem and was called Rabbi Shabtai Śrem (which was pronounced Shtrim in Yiddish). Similarly, the sefer Tzemach David also records his birthplace as Śrem.)
He was the founder of Jewish bibliography and author of the Siftei Chachamim supercommentary on Rashi’s commentary on the Pentateuch.
After the death of his parents, who were victims of the persecutions at Kalisz in 1655, from the Russo-Swedish War (1656–1658) Bass went to Prague. His teacher there in the Talmud was Meïr Wärters (d. 1693); and Loeb Shir ha-Shirim instructed him in singing. He was appointed bass singer in the celebrated Altneuschule of Prague, being called, from his position, "Bass, " or "Bassista, " or "Meshorer." His leisure time he devoted to literary pursuits, more especially to improving the instruction of the young.
Between 1674 and 1679 Bass traveled through Poland, Germany, and the Dutch Republic, stopping in such cities as Głogów, Kalisz, Krotoszyn, Leszno, Poznań, Worms, and Amsterdam, the centers of Jewish scholarship. He finally settled at Amsterdam in 1679, where he entered into friendly and scholarly relations with the eminent men of the German and the Portuguese-Spanish communities. That city was the center of Jewish printing and publishing, and Bass, becoming thoroughly familiar with the business, resolved to devote himself entirely to issuing Jewish books. With a keen eye for the practical, he perceived that the eastern part of Germany was a suitable place for a Jewish printing establishment. The literary productivity of the Lithuanian-Polish Jews was at this time obliged to seek an outlet in Amsterdam or Prague almost exclusively; Bass accordingly fixed upon Breslau as a suitable place for his purposes, on account of its vicinity to the Polish frontier, and of the large commerce carried on between Breslau and Poland. Hence, after a residence of five years, he left Amsterdam; going first, it seems, to Vienna, in order to obtain a license from the imperial government. The negotiations between Bass and the magistrates of Breslau occupied nearly four years, and not until 1687 or 1688 did he receive permission to set up a Hebrew printing-press.
Thereupon he settled at Dyhernfurth, a small town near Breslau founded shortly before 1663, whose owner, Herr von Glaubitz, glad to have a large establishment on his estate, was very well disposed toward Bass. In order the more easily to obtain Jewish workmen, Bass united into a congregation the small band of printers, typesetters, and workmen who had followed him to Dyhernfurth, for whose needs he cared, acquiring as early as 1689 a place for a cemetery.
But the ill-will against Jews, apparent since 1697 in Silesia, and especially at Breslau, greatly injured Bass’s establishment; he was himself forbidden to stay in Breslau (July 20, 1706). Another stroke of misfortune was the partial destruction of his establishment by fire in 1708. To this were added domestic difficulties. When an old man he had married a second time, to the great dissatisfaction of his family and neighbors, his wife being a young girl. He finally transferred his business to his only son, Joseph, in 1711. His trials culminated in his sudden arrest, April 13, 1712, on the charge of having spread abroad incendiary speeches against all divine and civic government. The Jesuits, who looked with an evil eye upon Bass’s undertaking, had endeavored, in a letter to the magistrate of Breslau, as early as July 15, 1694, to have the sale of Hebrew books interdicted, on the ground that such works contained "blasphemous and irreligious words"; and they had succeeded. As the magistrate saw, however, that the confiscated books contained no objectionable matter, they were restored to Bass.
In 1712 the Jesuit father Franz Kolb, teacher of Hebrew at the University of Prague, succeeded in having Bass and his son Joseph arrested, and their books confiscated. The book of devotions, Nathan Hannover’s Sha’are Zion (Gates of Zion), which Bass reprinted after it had already gone through several editions, was transformed in the hands of the learned father into a blasphemous work directed against Christianity and Christians. Bass would have fared ill had not the censor Pohl, who had been commissioned to examine the contents of the books, been both faithful and competent. In consequence of his decision, Bass was released after ten weeks’ imprisonment, at first on bail, and then absolutely. The last years of his life were devoted to the second edition of his bibliographic manual, which he intended to issue in enlarged and revised form. He died July 21, 1718, at Krotoschin without completing the work.
Bass’s chief work is his bibliographical manual Siftei Yeshenim (‘Lips of the Sleepers’; compare Shir haShirim Rabbah to 7:10). This work contains a list of 2,200 Hebrew books, in the alphabetical order of the titles, conscientiously giving the author, place of printing, year, and size of each book, as well as a short summary of its contents. The majority of the books described he knew at first hand; the description of the others he borrowed from the works of Buxtorf and Giulio Bartolocci (from the latter only in the first part).
His work Siftei Chachamim is a supercommentary to Rashi’s commentary to the Pentateuch and the five Megillot.Its general method is to identify the difficulty which made Rashi’s comments necessary. Much of its material is based on earlier supercommentaries such as that of Elijah Mizrachi; it summed up with brevity and clearness the best work of fifteen previous supercommentaries on Rashi.
Even today the book is considered a useful aid toward understanding and appreciating Rashi. It is considered so essential that there exists a summary work on it, called Ikar Siftei Chachamim. This work generally leaves out the questions that the Siftei Chachamim raises on Rashi, and simply sums up his idea that he culled from the Rashi in about a sentence or two equivalent to the paragraph-length entries in the Siftei Chachamim. (One example is Weinfeld, Joseph Halevi Shalom. Chumash Orech Yamim. Jerusalem: Orech Publishers, 1997.)
https://www.nli.org.il/he/manuscripts/NNL_ALEPH990001261230205171/NLI#$FL76092881
