שמואל שטראשון

Rav Shmuel Strashun (18 Cheshvan 5554/1793–11 Adar II 5632/1872), the Rashash, known in English sources as Samuel Strashun, was among the foremost talmidei chachamim of Vilna in his day, and his haggahot travel with nearly every printed Talmud Bavli. Born in Zaskevich to Rav Yosef, he learned under his father and under Rav Avraham Danzig, the Chayei Adam. He married Sarah, daughter of the gvir Rav David of the village Strashun, and took the village’s name as his own. When French soldiers broke into the family home in Napoleon’s invasion of 5572/1812, the household moved to Vilna, where his father-in-law founded a kloiz; Sarah built a successful spirits business from her inheritance, freeing her husband for Torah, and he served besides as chief magiah of the Romm printing house.

Every morning, after an early shacharit in the beit midrash his father-in-law left him, he gave a two-hour shiur in Gemara to a picked group of bachurim and avreichim; from those shiurim and their give-and-take grew his Haggahot VeChiddushei HaRashash, printed in the Vilna Shas — apparently the only work of its time covering every masechta of the Mishnah and the Bavli without exception — and carried in the editions ever since as a basic aid in understanding the daf. He turned down the rabbanut of Suwalk, preferring his independence, and gave himself to the klal: he ran a large gemach for the people of Vilna and was involved in the community’s affairs, including the needs of Eretz Yisrael.

He also wrote haggahot and chiddushim on Midrash Rabbah, first printed in the Vilna editions, on the Rambam‘s Mishneh Torah, on the Shulchan Aruch, the sefer Mekorei HaRambam, and notes on the Vilna Gaon‘s Maaseh Rav. His son Rav Matityahu Strashun built the famous Strashun Library in Vilna. When the Rashash was niftar at seventy-eight, the beit din of Vilna declared a general halt of work in the city for his levayah, and he was buried in the Vilna cemetery beside Rav Avraham Abele Poswoler, head of the city’s batei din.