Shabbethai ben Joseph Bass (1641–1718) (Hebrew: שבתי בן יוסף; also known by the family name Strom[1]), born at Kalisz, was the founder of Jewish bibliography[2] and author of the Siftei Chachamim supercommentary on Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch.
[2] Between 1674 and 1679 Bass traveled through Poland, Germany, and the Dutch Republic, stopping in such cities as Głogów, Kalisz, Krotoszyn, Leszno, Poznań, Worms, and Amsterdam, the centers of Jewish scholarship.
[2] Thereupon he settled at Dyhernfurth, a small town near Breslau founded shortly before 1663, whose owner, Herr von Glaubitz, glad to have a large establishment on his estate, was very well disposed toward Bass.
[2] The first book from Bass's press appeared in the middle of August, 1689, the first customer being, as he had anticipated, a Polish scholar, Rabbi Samuel ben Uri of Woydyslaw, whose commentary Beit Shmuel on Shulchen Aruch, Even Ha'ezer, was printed at Dyhernfurth.
Being issued in a correct, neat, and pleasing form, they easily found buyers, especially at the fairs of Breslau, where Bass himself sold his books.
His trials culminated in his sudden arrest, April 13, 1712, on the charge of having spread abroad incendiary speeches against all divine and civic government.
The Jesuits, who looked with an evil eye upon Bass's undertaking, had endeavored, in a letter to the magistrate of Breslau, as early as July 15, 1694, to have the sale of Hebrew books interdicted, on the ground that such works contained "blasphemous and irreligious words"; and they had succeeded.
[2] In 1712 the Jesuit father Franz Kolb, teacher of Hebrew at the University of Prague, succeeded in having Bass and his son Joseph arrested, and their books confiscated.
[2] Bass's chief work is his bibliographical manual Siftei Yeshenim ('Lips of the Sleepers'; compare Shir haShirim Rabbah to 7:10).
In addition to the list and classification of the books, Bass gives an alphabetical index of authors, including one of the Tannaim, Amoraim, Saboraim, and Geonim.
The greatest proof of Bass's merit lies in the fact that Johann Christoph Wolf's Bibliotheca Hebræa is based chiefly on the Siftei Yeshenim.