Menachem Romm

The Romm publishing house was a famous publisher of Jewish religious literature, especially known for its 1886 Vilna Talmud, which still serves as a definitive edition.

Romm was founded in 1789 in Grodno, by Barukh ben Yosef Romm. It moved to Vilnius in 1799, where it expanded greatly under the ownership of Barukh's son, Menahem Mann Romm (d.1841). Initially publishing halakhic and homiletic works, in 1835 it caused a stir by publishing an edition of the Talmud, whose publication had previously been undertaken by the Shapira family of Slavuta. After fierce controversy over whether this new edition was permitted by rabbinical law, with rabbis on each side unable to reach agreement, the death of a worker in the Slavuta factory during the controversy led to the Russian government intervening (Vilnius was at the time in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire). The Slavuta publishing house was shut down, and to instill order amongst the Jewish publishers, the Russian authorities instituted a formal publishing monopoly, which Romm successfully bid for.

The Romm factory burned down in 1840, but was soon rebuilt, and prospered through both its monopoly privileges and the rapidly increasing Jewish population of the region. Upon the death of owner David Romm in 1862, the company was, unusually, taken over by his widow Deborah, and renamed to "The Widow and Brothers Romm". It was under this name that it produced a highly regarded new edition of the Talmud, completed in 1886, which is still widely used. The firm's last Talmud edition was printed in 1897, after which the rise of Zionism shifted Jewish publishing. When Deborah Romm died in December 1903, the firm also started to print secular periodicals and newspapers in Yiddish and Hebrew. This was not to the liking of the person who was the manager until then, Samuel Shraga Fiignzon (שפן סופר). Descendants of the widow Deborah Rom lost interest in managing the press, and several of her sons emigrated to the United States. The printing press got into financial difficulty. Baron David Günzburg from St. Petersburg, himself a scholar of Jewish affairs came to the rescue, and bought the firm in 1910. But the Baron died soon after, and his widow could not continue to hold on to the printing house, which did not carry profits. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 caused almost the closure of this old printing press.

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