Many know Reb Chaim Liberman, more have heard about him, but only very few know of his real greatness in the world of Jewish scholarship.
Though he is eighty-eight—until one hundred and twenty—he still visits New York’s large Jewish libraries, which have been his second home.
The tall, slender man, whose wrinkled face is graced by a white beard, is one of the greatest living Jewish bibliographers. His knowledge of Hebrew books and the history of their printing is phenomenal.
His erudition is not his only yichus. Reb Chaim was for many years the confidant and secretary of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn. He served the Rebbe in the underground struggle for the preservation of Yiddishkeit in the Soviet Union. Like the Rebbe, he was arrested. After the Rebbe left Russia, Reb Chaim was again at his side, in Riga, in Warsaw and in New York.
Reb Chaim conducted the Rebbe’s secret correspondence with the rabbis who continued the struggle in the Soviet Union. His code name was Rachel, which is the acronym of Reb Chaim Liberman. The Bolshevik secret police thought the Rachel was a woman…
He was also the late Rebbe’s librarian and had a great share in the assembling of the Rebbe’s library.
Reb Cham is a very modest man. He has much to tell about himself, but he seldom talks. For almost half a century he has contributed essays, articles and notes about Hasidism and bibliography, to a variety of Hebrew periodicals. He has also written erudite and delightful studies for Yiddish publications, notably about Yiddish words and Jewish customs. Recently he published a collection of his Hebrew writings under the title “Ohel Rachel.”
The volume which comprises nearly six hundred pages is divided into various sections. The first which is called, “Around Hasidism”, includes a series of sharp and satiric polemic articles directed against some modern scholars who wrote on Hasidism. The series made a great impression when it was first published many years ago.
The second section deals primarily with Hebrew printing in various cities. Reb Chaim offers additions and corrections to works by other scholars who wrote on that subject; particularly extensive are his addenda relating to Hebrew printing in Jerusalem, Shklov, Korets, Munkacz and Ungvar Pasc.
Bibliography is generally a dry subject, but Liberman’s studies are never tedious nor monotonous. They are alive with interesting facts brought to light by his painstaking and persistent research.
Reb Chaim is a great book detective. His sharp eye catches bibliographical peculiarities, which others are apt to overlook. He has solved many bibliographical problems, such as identifying the writer of an anonymous volume or ascertaining the correct date and place of the printing.
One of the essays included in the third section relates to the printing of the Talmud in Amsterdam in 1725-1765. For several years (1758-1763) no volume appeared. What was the reason for the interruption? Rabbi N. N. Rabinovitz held that in these years there was no market for the Talmud in Eastern Europe. Because of conditions of war no books could be exported to Lithuania, while in Poland the Talmud was defamed and persecuted. Liberman shows that the real reason was shortage of funds and the publishers had to wait until new monies were raised.
One section discusses books in Judeo-German. Very interesting is the article about the Techinot for women composed by Rebbetzin Sara Rivka Rachel Leah, a daughter of the 18th century Rabbi Yaakov Yokel Horowitz, who was rabbi of Bolechow, Brody and Glogau. The Rebbetzin who bore the names of all the four mothers of our people, was widely known as an outstanding melumedet in Talmud.
Finally let us mention Reb Chaim’s discovery of Rabbi Abraham Danzig’s apology for having criticized the Gaon of Vilna. In several places in his Chayye Adam, Rabbi Abraham Danzig disagrees with the Gaon of Vilan. Lithuania’s rabbis were furious. Rabbi Abraham Danzig offered an apology in his introduction to Chokhmath Adam. But it seems that the apology was not good enough. The printed page was removed from the book and in its place was inserted a new page which carried the introduction without the apology. Rabbi Abraham Danzig printed a new apology on the title page of Binath Adam. (It is found in the early printings of the book.)
The existence of the first apology was not known until Reb Chaim discovered one of the excised pages. He found it bound together with a new page in a copy of Chokhmath Adam which had been in the possession of Rabbi Shmuel Strashun of Vilna and is now in the YIVO Library in New York.
These are only a few samples from Reb Chaim’s great book. Students and lovers of the Jewish book will delight in it.
By Tovia Preschel
The Jewish Press
September 19, 1980