New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Edited and translated by Michael L. Rodkinson.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

New York

1896-1903

First Edition with translation into English. Photographic frontispiece portraits of Rodkinson and fellow editor Dr. Isaac Wise . Twenty volumes, complete here bound in 16 (including Rodkinson’s History of the Talmud). An uncut and largely unopened set.

Singerman 5097.

The First Edition of the first translation of the Talmud into English. Although a pioneering effort, this abridged translation was not particularly well received by many of the editor’s scholarly peers. For more, see Marvin J. Heller, Deciphering the Talmud: The First English Edition of the Talmud Revisited. Michael Levi Rodkinson: His Translation of the Talmud, and the Ensuing Controversy in: Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden, 2013) Chap. 13. Rodkinson (original surname Frumkin), was born into a Russian Chabad-oriented family in 1845 and migrated to America in 1888.