Shass pollak

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According to an article published in 1917 in the journal Psychological Review , the Shass pollak was a group of Polish Talmud scholars who had committed not just the words, but the physical layout of all 5,422 pages to memory, so that:

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.