It began with the work of bringing Torah from the shiur and from handwritten notes into print.
Pinkas Torah is an initiative of Yampolsky Press and MePihem.
A publisher of Torah seforim, and the publisher of Pinkas Torah.
Works with rabbanim to turn recorded shiurim and personal notes into written maamarim and seforim.
Together we work with rabbanim to bring their Torah into print: shiurim that were recorded, notes kept over the years, notebooks written in their own hand. Turning that material into something a reader can learn from means going back over every line: what was said, where it comes from, and who said it.
Again and again, the same problems came up. None of them had to do with the Torah itself. They had to do with how it had been written down.
A sevara written down without the Gemara or Rishon it rests on. Tracing it back took time, and sometimes could not be done.
In the Pinkas: Note what a sevara rests on; if you don’t know yet, write צ״ע.
Notes where it was no longer clear what the rav had heard from his rebbe and what was his own.
In the Pinkas: Every entry opens with its source: your own, or שמעתי מ־ and a name.
One thought, written in different notebooks over time, with no way to tell which was the latest or the fullest.
In the Pinkas: One book, in order; thread continuations with → p. and ← p.; date what you add later.
In handwritten notebooks, the additions crowded into the margins were often the most valuable part, and the hardest to place.
In the Pinkas: A wide margin for hagahos, each one dated.
Collecting what a rav had said on one sugya meant reading through every notebook he had.
In the Pinkas: An index by makom at the back, filled in as you go.
Over years of retelling, quotations move away from the printed text, a word at a time.
In the Pinkas: Write the source; check it against the sefer. Every quotation in Pinkas Torah is checked that way.
When we turned to what Chazal and the poskim say about keeping Torah, and to how talmidei chachamim actually kept their notebooks, we found the same answers already there: a bound book, the source in the name of the one who said it, simanim, markers, and review. The Pinkas puts those answers on the page. See where each rule comes from.
A Pinkas keeps your Torah complete and findable: for your own chazara, for a shiur you will give, for a chavrusa, or for anything else you may do with it one day. What you do with it is yours.
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