Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society » The Talmudic Mnemonists

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April 24th, 2006

The Talmudic Mnemonists

The Talmud, the transcribed collection of Jewish oral law and its commentaries, constitutes 5,422 pages like those at right. In 1917, an article appeared in the journal Psychological Review about an incredible group of Polish Talmud scholars known as the Shass Pollak:

a pin would be placed on a word, let us say, the fourth word in line eight; the memory sharp would then be asked what word is in the same spot on page thirty-eight or fifty or any other page; the pin would be pressed through the volume until it reached page thirty eight or page fifty or any other page designated; the memory sharp would then mention the word and it was found invariably correct. He had visualized in his brain the whole Talmud; in other words, the pages of the Talmud were photographed on his brain. It was one of the most stupendous feats of memory I have ever witnessed and there was no fake about it.

We are curious: Do any equivalents of the Shass Pollak exist today? Are there living Talmud scholars with this kind of prodigious memory?

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