Shas Pollak were Jewish mnemonist

Mnemonist

The title mnemonist refers to an individual with the ability to remember and recall unusually long lists of data, such as unfamiliar names, lists of numbers, entries in books, etc. Such individuals have also been described as possessing an eidetic memory, although whether such abilities are innate...

s who, according to the 1917 report of George Stratton in the Psychological Review

Psychological Review

Psychological Review is a scientific journal that publishes articles on psychological theory. It was founded by Princeton psychologist James Mark Baldwin and Columbia psychologist James McKeen Cattell in 1894 as a publication vehicle for psychologists not connected with the Clark laboratory of G....

, memorized the exact layout of words in more than 5,000 pages of the 12 books of the standard edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Stratton's report consists of accounts of and comments on testimonials of three eyewitnesses. Two of the eyewitnesses stated that the memorizing was related to the Talmud part, printed in the centers of the pages, and not the surrounding commentary.

"Shas" is a Hebrew word which is an abbreviation of shishah sedarim, ""six orders", or Mishnah

Mishnah

The Mishnah or Mishna is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah". It is also the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism. It was redacted c...

; "shas" is also a colloquial reference to the Talmud

Talmud

The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....

 and "Pollak" is "Pole

Poles

thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

" in Yiddish, referring to a Polish Jew, so the term literally means "The Talmud Pole" or the "Polish Talmudist."

G.M.Stratton quotes a letter from a Reverend Dr. David Phillipson of Cincinnati who described the so called "pin test":

...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.

Another reputable witness was Dr. Solomon Schechter

Solomon Schechter

Solomon Schechter was a Moldavian-born Romanian and English rabbi, academic scholar, and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and architect of the American Conservative Jewish...

, the then President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The Jewish Theological Seminary of America is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism, and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies.JTS operates five schools: Albert A...

.

This feat has since been quoted in many books on memory

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....

.

Stratton writes that all eyewitnesses noticed that none of the Shass Pollak known to them have attained any prominence in the scholarly world.

In a footnote, the article also mentions that memorizing the Talmud was a subject of the work by J. Brüll, "Die Mnemotechnik des Talmuds", Vienna, 1864, and that the Talmudic mnemonics is a subject of an article in the Jewish Encyclopedia

Jewish Encyclopedia

The Jewish Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia originally published in New York between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901...

.

See also here and here

Literary references

A 1993 novelette Ginger (Рыжик) by Mikhail Veller

Mikhail Veller

Mikhail Iosifovich Veller is a Russian writer.Mikhail Veller was born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukrainian SSR, USSR in 1948. In 1972 he graduated with a degree in linguistics from Leningrad University...

 about a fate of the Jewish boy who became a member of spetsnaz

Spetsnaz

Spetsnaz, Specnaz tr: Voyska specialnogo naznacheniya; ) is an umbrella term for any special forces in Russian, literally "force of special purpose"...

, has the following passage: "Torah was supposed to be known as follows. The Grandfather opened the book at random and punched a word with a pin. You were supposed to recite the text starting with the word pinned on the opposite page of the sheet"