שבתי בס

Rav Shabetai ben Yosef Bass (5401/1641–22 Tammuz 5478/1718), of the family Strom and known in English sources as Shabbethai Bass, was born in Kalisz and became the first Hebrew bibliographer and the author of the Siftei Chachamim, the popular supercommentary on Rashi’s commentary on the Torah. While he was still a youth both his parents were killed in the upheavals that struck Kalisz, and he made his way to Prague. There he learned Torah and served as a bass singer in the Altneuschul — from which he took the name “Bass” and the byname “Meshorer.”

He gave himself to the printing of sefarim, and after his effort to establish a press in Amsterdam did not succeed he turned to Silesia, setting up in 5449/1689 a Hebrew press at Dyhernfurth near Breslau, where he also founded a Jewish kehillah. His books — works of Polish chachamim and collections for Polish Jews — were sold at the Breslau fairs. Jesuit clergy denounced him for supposed anti-Christian content in the sefarim he printed, and he was imprisoned for some months before being cleared and released.

His Siftei Chachamim gathers and clarifies the work of the earlier supercommentators on Rashi, above all the Re’em; its method is to lay bare the difficulty that made each comment of Rashi necessary. It is printed in most Chumashim to this day, and its abridgement, the Ikar Siftei Chachamim, is set on the page of countless editions. His Siftei Yeshenim is a bibliographic manual recording the Hebrew sefarim known to him — their authors, place and year of printing, and a brief account of their contents; and his Derech Eretz, in Yiddish, holds tefillot for travelers together with tables of coins, weights, and the roads to the great cities. He was niftar in Krotoschin.