[CENSORED]

Title: [CENSORED]

Location: Czarist Russia

Document: Various newspaper ads

Time: Late 19th and early 20th Century

Long live the great Czar Alexander III, his wife the Czarina, the crown prince, and the entire royal family. May Hashem bestow kindness to his anointed one, our sovereign and master the great Czar, and may he merit many years at the helm of his empire, amen!

These words, appearing in the introduction to a sefer published in 1884, ended a long and strange paean to the one of the worst czars the Jewish People had ever known — the one responsible for the 1881 pogroms, the May Laws, and other restrictive measures. Why was the author so effusive in praising the evil czar? And why did he emphasize that the Jewish subjects of the Russian Empire paid their taxes, and were particularly diligent in the Talmudic dictum of dina d’malchusa dina?

When Rav Yechiel Michel HaLevi Epstein, rav of Novardok, went about publishing his magnum opus, Aruch Hashulchan, he had to contend with a challenge that plagued all authors of Hebrew works in the Czarist empire — the heavy hand of the Russian censor. Such draconian measures were especially apparent in the halachic realm of Choshen Mishpat, as rabbinic monetary law could potentially conflict with Czarist law.

Rav Yechiel Michel hoped his introduction, entitled “Kavod Melech,” would expedite the process, but was disappointed to find that the censor’s redactions were nevertheless lengthy and tedious. When his daughter Braina Volbrinski republished this volume after his passing, the atmosphere had calmed down sufficiently that she felt comfortable omitting the introductory page.