Jerusalem Talmud: Masecheth Bikurim. With commentary “Harel” by Abraham Eliezer Alperstein.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Rosenberg Bros.

Chicago

1890

Second edition, with a new introduction. Title with vignette depicting the Tree of Life amidst Houses of Learning. Includes endorsements by R. Joseph Dov Halevi Soloveitchik of Brisk and R. Jacob Joseph of New York.

Goldman 569; Singerman 3502.

First published in 1887, this was the first volume of the Talmud to be issued in America, the production of which “compares favorably with the finest European typography.” See A. J. Karp, From the Ends of the Earth, p. 318. Abraham Eliezer Alperstein (1853-1917) served the rabbinate in a number of Lithuanian communities, including Slabodka, before emigrating to the United States in 1881. He initially settled in Chicago before relocating to New York, where he was appointed the first Rosh Yeshiva of the newly founded Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary - the nascent Yeshiva University. In Alperstein’s introduction to the first edition of his Talmud, he extolled the virtues of the members of his congregation in Chicago, however in this second edition, he rewrote the introduction and referred to his congregants as “tumultous wild boars” - a reflection of America as a whole - an Ama Reika (“an empty nation.”) See M. A. Gutstein, A Priceless Heritage: The Epic Growth of 19th Century Chicago Jewry (1953) pp. 128-9; and Moshe Sherman, Orthodox Judaism in America, pp. 18-20.