Can I Borrow the Sefer for One Night

Rav Dovid HaLevi Segal was poor. His salary as Rav left him nothing beyond bare necessities. He never complained of his lot, and the only thing that caused him real pain was that he could not buy new seforim to learn from.

One day a seforim salesman came to town with a wagon of new seforim, and as was the custom he laid them out on tables in the beis medrash so that people could look through them before buying. Rav Dovid was delighted. He opened them one after another, but he already knew them all. The salesman noticed that the Rav was searching for something and offered to show him a new volume of great importance that he had not yet placed on the table because of its high price.

“What is its name?” asked Rav Dovid. It was the Sefer HaAgudah, the salesman said, whose author, Rav Alexander Zuslin Katz, had sanctified Hashem's name and died as a martyr long ago. Until then the sefer had existed only in manuscript, and it had just been printed. Rav Dovid had heard of it but never seen it. He studied the volume and saw that it was full of fresh and original Torah thoughts. He asked the price, and when he heard it, nearly as much as his entire monthly salary, he set the sefer down in defeat. The salesman offered a large discount, but it was still more than the Rav could pay.

Then Rav Dovid learned that the salesman planned to spend the night in town, and he had an idea. “Would you let me borrow this sefer just for tonight, and tomorrow I will return it?” The salesman gladly agreed.

Rav Dovid took the Sefer HaAgudah home, shut himself in his room, and learned it all night without a break, finishing the whole sefer by dawn. He reviewed its main points and returned to the beis medrash to give it back. “I know you rely on selling your seforim for your livelihood,” he told the salesman, “and I do not want to have benefited from your sefer for free. Please let me pay you a small fee for having read it.”

The salesman was so moved that he wanted to give the Taz the sefer as a gift, but the Taz refused. He never saw the Sefer HaAgudah again in his life. Yet he quotes it several times in his commentary, all from memory, from that one night.