Handwritten Chiddushim and Shiurim by Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, Author of Even Haezel. Slutsk-Jerusalem
Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer’s chiddushim on sugyos in Shas and the Rambam based on shiurim that he delivered in the Eitz Chaim Yeshivah in Slutsk and Jerusalem. The inner side of the binding features his autograph:
“From
the books of Isser Zalman ben Harav R’ Baruch Peretz Meltzer, A[v] B[eis] D[in]
and R[osh] M[esivta] of Slutsk” with the stamp of Yeshivas Eitz Chaim in Slutsk. The manuscript is dated 5684 (1924)
and 5689 (1929).
Leaf 109 cites a kushya that Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner sent him in 1929.
A handwritten leaf with a summary of his first shiur entitled “Shiur of [Thursday], Behaaloscha” is attached to the manuscript.
Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer (1870-1954), Av Beis Din of Slutsk and author of ‘Even Haezel’, was one of the leading Lithuanian Roshei Yeshivos and Torah luminaries in the generation preceding and following the Holocaust. In his youth, he excelled as a student of the Volozhin Yeshivah and was a close talmid of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, Rosh Yeshivah of Brisk.
Rabbi Isser Zalman taught Torah in the Slabodka Yeshivah until 1897, when the Alter of Slabodka sent him to serve as Rosh Yeshivah in the city of Slutsk. In Slutsk, he was crowned Rav and Av Beis Din of the city, a position he filled until 1925 when he journeyed to the Holy Land and was appointed Rosh Yeshivah of Eitz Chaim in Jerusalem. His chiddushei Torah were eternalized in his series of sefarim ‘Even Haezel’, which is regarded as one of the fundamental works on the Rambam.
The most illustrious Torah sages of recent generations numbered among his talmidim, among them his son-in-law Rabbi Aharon Kotler, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky, Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach.
Some of the shiurim and chiddushim included in this manuscript serve as foundations to his magnum opus ‘Even Haezel’, although there a detailed comparison has not been done to verify which of the shiurim were printed.
Slutsk-Jerusalem, 1920s.
Page Count: [159] leaves, mostly double-sided.
Page Size: 11×16 cm. Several leaves
are worn or ripped. Original binding.
