Rabbi Ganzfried's two million Kitzurs - Shlomo Ganzfried's book 'Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh

With additional support from his father-in-law, Ganzfried tried again to make his way as a merchant, with equally dismal results. That his heart was not in the marketplace is indicated by the notebooks he compiled of his continuing studies and the publication in 1839 of his second book, a commentary on the siddur based on an earlier treatise by Rabbi Yaakov of Lissa, a noted Talmudist whose halakhic rulings were to be significant in the formulation of the Kitzur.

Finally, in 1843, eight years after Kesset HaSofer, he abandoned commerce and accepted the position of rabbi of Brezevitz. He continued with his writing, issuing in 1846 Pnei Shlomo, an elucidation of portions of the Talmud. His grandson Yehezkel Banet recounts Ganzfried's pain when a portion of the manuscript was stolen before reaching the printer. Two years later he published Torat Zevach. In the mold of Kesset HaSofer, it was a halakhic handbook for practitioners of shechita, ritual slaughter.

Brezevitz was Ganzfried's lone foray into the pulpit. In 1849, he returned to his native Ungvar as a dayan, a judge in the religious court. In the hierarchy of religious officialdom, dayan was a lesser position than that of chief rabbi. Ganzfried may have hoped that the life of a dayan, with its more constricted scope of communal responsibility, would afford him greater leisure to study and write. In terms of his future composition of the Kitzur, the move was serendipitous. Ungvar's spiritual head, Rabbi Meir Ash, was a singular scholar and disciple of the Chattam Sofer who, among many other accomplishments, was in the vanguard of Orthodox opposition to the Neologs, a role he would bequeath to his son and successor, Rabbi Menachem Ash. As an observer, and a participant with them, in the skirmishes against the reformers, Ganzfried became acutely aware of what was at risk.

The prize, of course, was the faith of Hungary's Jewish masses. For the most part, until the end of the century, the majority of Hungarian Jews remained loyal to the traditions of Orthodoxy. Ganzfried undoubtedly recognized that the rabbis' jeremiads against the Neologs, necessary as they were, could not by themselves guarantee the commitment to Orthodoxy. Also required by the average Jew not steeped in learning was the underpinning of a knowledge of practical halakha to help him cope with the encyclopedic demands of observance. For the typical Jewish family, such knowledge was frequently sparse. To be sure, the information was to be found in the Talmud, the writings of Maimonides, Rabbi Joseph Caro's Shulkhan Arukh and the abundant rabbinic literature. But for many Jews, these sources, with their often divergent rulings, were an arcane world. Furthermore, at a time when costs of printing and paper were high, access to these works was limited, often available in the rabbi's study and the yeshiva, but only rarely in private hands.

This was the need that the Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh met. The title page of the first edition is instructive. The book "is written for G-d-fearing Jews who are not in a position to study and comprehend the Shulkhan Arukh and its commentaries, and is composed in a Hebrew that can be easily understood." At the same time, the reader is assured of the Kitzur's comprehensiveness, its contents drawing upon the entire corpus of religious law from all four sections of Rabbi Caro's Shulkhan Arukh. Shortly after publication Ganzfried again reached out to his prospective audience in a notice in the periodical Hamaggid (Iyar, 1864). In addition to busy working people, he added there, the Kitzur would be a valuable instructional text for schoolchildren. As a marketing spur, he offered a fifteen percent discount to booksellers ordering one hundred copies.