Jewish Publishing

Jewish Literature is replete with references to the nobility of books and, by tradition, books are treated as special treasured objects. When they grew old or frayed, it was deemed irreverant to throw them out. Old books were either carefully placed in a genizah (synagogue storeroom) or were respectfully interred. Rabbinic literature enjoins Jews to lend books to others, obligates Jewish communities to build libraries, and gives meticulous instructions on the binding, airing, care and preservation of books and manuscripts. Medieval Jewish literature encourages the Jew to make books his companion, to let bookshelves be his gardens: to bask in their beauty, gather their fruit, pluck their roses and take their spices and myrrh.

Yet, these very books, upon which Jews lavished so much love and reverence, became the objects of wanton hatred throughout the centuries. As far back as Maccabean times (175-163 B.C.E.), the Scrolls of the Torah were ripped to pieces and burned by the Syrian Greeks. Except for the attitudes of Christian Hebraists, Jewish books were the object of Christian attack throughout the Middle Ages. They were subjected to frequent censorship and periodic burnings. From 1242, when twenty four cartloads of Rabbinic manuscripts were burned in Paris, down to our own days, when the Nazi Holocaust decimated European Jewry together with its vast libraries, countless Hebrew books were destroyed and many important works were lost. Only a few precious manuscripts and incunabula (books printed before the year 1501) have survived.

This sense of irretrievable loss gives special meaning to the assiduous efforts of institutions to collect and preserve the rare Judaica and Hebraica which have survived over the millennia, as the torch of Jewish learning was passed from one center to another, during the long wanderings of the Jewish people.

In the first centuries of movable type, Hebrew printing spread from Rome to every corner of Europe, and around the Mediterranean. Following the wanderings of the Jewish people, Hebrew type was eventually introduced in both the Orient and America. Books in Hebrew characters were published in Calcutta in the 19th century, and in the 20th century worldwide. Habent sua fata libelli. But beyond that: as one historian of Hebrew printing has remarked, "the fate of Hebrew books was like the fate of their owners." Jewish books were subject to inquisitions and censorship, destruction or confiscation. Treasured by Jews and non-Jews alike, by Hebraists and even by anti-Semites, many Hebrew books have survived only by virtue of their bibliophilic collectors. And these which remain, and some of those which do not, have been recorded for posterity by the bibliographers who have catalogued them.

Christian Hebraism was an offshoot of Renaissance humanism whose devotees -- biblical scholars, theologians, lawyers, physicians, scientists, philosophers, and teachers in Latin schools -- borrowed and adapted texts, literary forms, and ideas from Jewish scholarship and tradition to meet Christian cultural and religious needs. Intellectual and cultural exchange did occur between Jew and Christian during the Middle Ages, but paled by comparison with what occurred between 1450 and 1750. Encounters between cultures can be fruitful, but also very painful. Certainly Christian Hebraism had such effects both upon European Jewry, and upon western tradition.

Hebrew, the holy tongue, has been the main intellectual and liturgical language of the Jewish people throughout their history. However, it is only one of many languages employed by the Jews of the Diaspora over the millennia. Since ancient times, beginning with Aramaic, various Jewish vernacular languages have come into existence. All of these reflect the functions and exigencies of Jewish life and tradition, always including some Hebrew-Aramaic vocabulary and usually written in Hebrew characters.

Best known and most widely printed of these Jewish languages is Yiddish (Judeo-German), still spoken by millions of people. ( Montreal, for example, is a Yiddish literary centre.) Judezmo (Judeo-Spanish) is one of the major languages of Sephardic Jews, used in all Balkan lands and parts of North Africa; forms of Judeo-Arabic are still spoken across North Africa and the Orient. Many of the Jewish languages, which developed in medieval times, are now extinct or nearly extinct, among them Judeo-French, Judeo-Provençal, Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Greek, and the Judeo-Slavic, Judeo-Turkic, and Judeo-Indic languages. Some of these almost never appeared in print, some were occasionally printed in uncommon editions, and some, such as Judeo-Persian, were maintained in a living manuscript tradition practically until modern times. In addition to those shown here, examples of these languages, part and parcel of Jewish life prior to assimilation, are scattered throughout this exhibition.

This Judeo-Persian recension of the Book of Lots ascribed to Ahitophel the Gilonite, adviser of King David, is part of a whole genre of fortune-telling books. The manuscript was written for (or by?) Mordecai b. Elazar b. Ya'uda.

Sepharad is the medieval Hebrew term for the Iberian peninsula. The culture of Sephardic Jewry, whose "Golden Age" during the Muslim era produced such luminaries as Maimonides and Ibn Ezra, did not cease to exist with the expulsion of Jews from Spain, under the Christian Inquisition, in 1492. Sephardic culture and traditions, intellectual, liturgical, and linguistic, have been maintained by descendants of exiles from Spain and Portugal in many parts of the globe to this very day.

Although Hebrew presses operated in Spain and Portugal during the 15th century, due to persecutions and expulsions many incunables printed there did not survive in more than one copy or in complete copies; of those that did, fragments are extremely rare or unique (and it is assumed that some Iberian Hebrew incunables have been lost altogether). Printing was introduced to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa by Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal, and in the subsequent centuries books in Hebrew and other languages were printed throughout the "Sephardic diaspora," in Turkey, Greece, North Africa, the Orient, Western Europe (Italy, Holland, Germany), and elsewhere. The geographic range of the Sephardic world is manifest in that a third of the surviving books in any exhibited collection of early Jewish printing are Sephardic works by Sephardic Jewish authors.

The town of Híjar (Ixar) in Aragon was, after Guadalajara , the second center of Hebrew printing in Spain. This single parchment leaf is a fragment of the first Spanish edition of the Targum Onkelos and Rashi's commentary, which accompany the unpointed biblical text (vowels were later added by hand in this copy). The last dated book from the Híjar press, published less than two years before the expulsion, it is also the last dated Hebrew book known to be printed in Spain .

Jewish mysticism, or Kabbalah ("tradition"), flowered in Provence (southern France ) and Spain during the 13th century, and was rejuvenated with the birth of the Hasidic movement in Poland and the Ukraine in the 18th century. Much of the Jewish mystical tradition consists of theosophy and esoteric religious teachings at first transmitted orally to select initiates; in its medieval expression, Jewish mysticism was closely intertwined with philosophy, particularly neoplatonism. (The vaguer nexus between mysticism and science is evident in kabbalistic works of various periods, in which astronomy or astrology, the mysticism of numbers, folk-medicine and alchemy all play roles.) The diversity of this "tradition" is portrayed in the selection here of some of its earlier and later manifestations.

The Bible is the oldest historical book of the Jewish people; the narration of the Exodus from Egypt, the main focal point of Jewish historical consciousness, is incorporated in the text of the Passover Haggadah. The first significant work of medieval Jewish historiography is the 10th century Josippon, a paraphrase and updating of Josephus which remained popular for nearly a millennium. The rather sparse historical literature in Hebrew is supplemented by the travelogues of medieval Jewish voyagers, the most famous being Benjamin of Tudela, providing a first-hand account of Jewish life around the globe. Of geographic interest are maps of the Holy Land and of Jerusalem and plans of the Temple which appear in both Jewish and non-Jewish sources. A curious phenomenon of Jewish historiography in Hebrew is the tendentious historical writing of the Karaites in 19th century Russia, often a conglomeration of fact, travelogue, and myth.

Lastly, a major source of Jewish historical documentation, from the Middle Ages through this century, is the vast literature of responsa, still largely untapped, offering an abundance of data for social, economic, and cultural history. All of these genres of historical material are represented in the selection here.

This is the second of many editions of the famed Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, the greatest of medieval Jewish travelers. The author describes life in Spain, Provence, Italy , Greece, Palestine, the Slavic lands, Persia, India, and Egypt, in an account whose scope is unparalleled in medieval literature.

Prior to the invention of printing, all books were "published" in manuscript form, that is, in hand-written copies. Nevertheless, the printing press did not altogether supplant the Jewish manuscript tradition. Since scrolls of the Pentateuch and of the Book of Esther must, according to Jewish law, be written by hand on parchment, the Hebrew scribal art was always maintained, occasionally together with the art of manuscript illumination. In certain parts of the Jewish world, all or many books were written by hand until the 20th century, mostly in places where printing was either non-existent or limited, such as Persia, the Yemen, and North Africa. Even in places where printing was fully developed,some books were still circulated in manuscript copies -- usually mystical, esoteric, or non-orthodox literature. (Also part of the manuscript tradition are the marginal annotations, sometimes very ample commentaries, added by hand in copies of printed books.) Here are several centuries of Hebraic manuscripts from the entire Jewish world, reminders of the days of scribes and the ancient craft of bookmaking.

The Jerusalem Talmud, a much shorter compendium than the Babylonian, was compiled in Palestine in the early centuries C.E. This editio princeps, issued by Bomberg after his completion of the larger Talmud, was based on a sole extant manuscript written in 1289. A commentary in cursive script appears in the margins of the first page of this copy, written by the hand of Isaiah Bassani, an 18th-century Italian rabbi.

"The Seven Brothers," written in the Judeo-Persian (-Tajiki) dialect of the Bukharan Jews, is a narrative in rhyming couplets based on the apocryphal story of Hannah and her seven sons. This manuscript of the poem, whose paper is green and stained, is incomplete, missing leaves at both ends.

The printing art was at the time of its inception as revolutionary an achievement in human history as computer technology in our own day: it is referred to in Hebrew sources as a "heavenly craft." Books published in the earliest period of printing, from the time Gutenberg introduced printing to Europe (ca. 1455) until the year 1500, are known as incunabula, or cradle-books. Hebrew printing probably began in Rome around 1470, and before 1500 spread throughout Italy to the Iberian Peninsula and very possibly to Constantinople. Althogther only about 175 separate titles of books in Hebrew characters are known to exist from those years. Displayed in this exhibition are over 30 volumes of incunabula, in Hebrew and in Latin, including nearly one quarter of all Hebrew incunables extant in more than one copy in North America. Of these, four were published over five centuries ago, during or before the year 1481.

This editio princeps of the most important medieval code of Jewish law by Maimonides was one of the first Hebrew books ever printed, although the place and date of its publication are not entirely certain. The colophon concluding the first half of this work reads: "Blessed be the Merciful One who has helped us from the start until now ... May God grant us the privilege of beginning and completing the latter half and other books in life and in peace."

Medieval and post-medieval authors made substantial contributions to Western science in the fields of medicine, astronomy, mathematics and logic. It was through Hebrew translations from Arabic versions that ancient Greek learning was transmitted to the West, in Latin translations from the Hebrew and then in vernacular translations from the Latin, during the Middle Ages. Eastern and Hellenistic medical lore, in particular, was preserved and introduced to Europe by Jewish physician-translators who rendered classical non-Jewish works into Hebrew and developed at the same time a scientific vocabulary in this language.

Aside from translations of Arabic works, a central concern of medieval Jewish astronomy was the calculation of the calendar, and Maimonides, who also wrote major medical works and a very popular tract on logic, demonstrated himself fully au courant with contemporary Ptolemaic mathematical astronomy of the 12th century. Physicians continued to play a leading role in the development of Hebrew scientific writings during the Renaissance: Abraham Portaleone of Mantua in the 16th century and Delmedigo of Candia ( Crete ) during the next century are curious examples. Displayed here are some of these works, together with some others of peripheral scientific interest, properly within the domains of Jewish philosophy and Jewish law.

Maimonides' Code contains laws for fixing the date of the New Moon and calculating the lunar calendar. Accompanying diagrams were introduced for the first time in this edition, which also includes for the first time the commentaries of Joseph Caro and of Rabad of Posquières.

These first published tracts of Delmedigo, a pupil of Galileo and a Copernican, treat of plane and spherical geometry, symbolic algebra, astronomy and astronomical instruments, chemistry, and the aphorism of Hippocrates. This volume is the most sumptuously illustrated of early scientific works in Hebrew, and unique in printed Hebrew literature before the modern period.

Medieval Hebrew literature encompassed both religious and secular writing. Besides grammatical and linguistic treatises, Hebrew letters were cultivated in liturgical and secular poetry (especially in Spain and Italy), in collections of fables, and even in romances. In addition to Hebrew, much literature was written, translated, and eventually printed in other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, before the 19th century. Oriental and occidental literature, in Arabic and the European languages, often influenced Jewish writing, and was in turn influenced by it. The literary exchange between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, which characterizes more than a millennium of writing, is evident in the selection here, extending from India to Halifax.

Sahula's "Fable of the Ancient," the first work to quote the Zohar, is filled with parables and tales, popular scientific information, and puns. The Venetian edition contains 80 woodcuts, mostly portraying the disputing animals, all of whom are learned in traditional rabbinic literature as well as in logic, biology, and grammar.

"The Prince and the Hermit" relates the story of a prince who, on the counsel of a Christian monk, becomes an ascetic. Incorporating extracts from an unknown neoplatonic work, it is an original prose-and-verse Hebrew version of a lost Arabic text of Barlaam and Josaphat, based on a Hindu romance about the youth of Buddha.

After the Mishnah and the Talmud, numerous attempts were made over the centuries at the systematic codification of the increasingly complex body of Jewish law. These codes reflected the broader dispersion of the Jewish people and the emergence of new centres of Jewish life and learning outside Babylonia, particularly in North Africa and continental Europe. Along with the codes, there developed a rich literature of rabbinic responsa -- queries and answers regarding law and ritual -- reflecting the living interpretation and actual application of Jewish law in daily life. The codes and responsa provide a wealth of historical and linguistic documentation beyond their purely legal significance. A number of the early editions of the codes and more interesting editions of responsa, of the hundreds held in the Lowy collection, are displayed here and throughout the exhibition.

Written in North Africa at the end of the geonic period, the compendium of Alfasi was the most important code prior to that of Maimonides. This edition, which incorporates Ottolenghi's novellae, the first of many Hebrew books printed in Riva, was published with the approval of Christoforo Madruzzi, Cardinal of Trent.

Shapiro brothers, 1862. According to the legendary account by the editor Akiba Lehren of Amsterdam , the manuscript on which this edition was based, while en route from London to Berlin, was swept ashore in Friesland following a shipwreck at sea and preserved in a wooden cask. Written over six centuries before this first part of this first edition was published, the legal compilation of Isaac b. Moses, a native of Bohemia, contains some of the oldest texts in the (Judeo-) Czech language.

Eruvin, on aspects of the Sabbath laws, is considered one of the most difficult talmudic tractates, especially because of its mathematical discussions. Edited by Israel Ashkenazi, this edition is the first to incorporate explanatory diagrams, among the earliest illustrations in Hebrew books.

The Jewish legal tradition rests upon two foundations: the written law, i.e. Scripture, as set forth in the Pentateuch, and the oral law, the extra biblical legal tradition transmitted orally until codified in writing in the mishnaic-talmudic corpus. The Mishnah, the basic text of oral law, was redacted in Palestine at the beginning of the third century by R. Judah ha-Nasi; it is divided into six "orders," or categorical subdivisions. The Talmud, an elaborate commentary on the Mishnah, was produced in the academies of Babylon between the third and sixth centuries. In its over 70 tractates, covering nearly 6000 folio pages, the "sea of the Talmud" is filled not only with legal discussion and biblical exegesis, but also with social and economic history, science, and folklore -- ancient culture, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

Written in Aramaic, the Talmud became the central text of traditional Jewish learning throughout the Diaspora. The running medieval commentary of Rashi of Troyes became the talmudic commentary par excellence, followed by that of the Tosafists, disciples and descendants of Rashi in the Franco-German school, whose selective commentary almost always accompanies that of Rashi in the editions. A number of individual tractates of the Talmud were published in Italy, Spain and Portugal before the end of the 15th century and early in the 16th century. The first complete Talmud was published in Venice between 1519 and 1523 by Daniel Bomberg, the Christian printer of Hebrew books. A nearly complete first edition is held in the Lowy Collection. Included in this exhibition are some tractates from these early editions, as well as from later 16th century editions published elsewhere in Europe.

This first edition of any of the works of Josephus consists of the fourth-century Latin translation of The Jewish War ascribed to Rufinus, and the sixth-century translation of the Jewish Antiquities made at the behest of Cassiodorus. Printed only 14 years after Gutenberg's Bible, it is the first dated book of the printer J. Schüssler in Augsburg . In conformity with the still-living manuscript tradition, hand-illuminated initials in red, green, blue, and gold leaf were added in this copy after the printing of the Gothic-character book was completed.

The Hebrew paraphrase of the Hegesippus, composed in southern Italy in the tenth century and generally known as Josippon, is sometimes referred to as the Pseudo-Josephus. Of the various editions and abstracts of the work published before modern times, this edition by Sebastian Münster, to which he added an incomplete Latin translation and notes, is the only one based on the original text of the incunabular editio princeps .

Josephus Flavius, the ancient Jewish writer of first century Palestine, wrote a number of historical, apologetical and autobiographical works which together comprise a major part of Hellenistic Jewish literature. The original Aramaic version of his first work, known as Bellum Judaicum, or The Jewish War, has been lost. However, the Greek version of this work, and the rest of his works written in Greek during his Roman exile after the destruction of Jerusalem, were preserved by the Church, particularly because of their general importance for the history of Palestine in the early Christian period and for the curious Testimonium Flavianum to the founder of Christianity contained in the Jewish Antiquities.

Latin translations of Josephus' oeuvre made between the fourth and sixth centuries were studied in Christian Europe for an entire millennium. The editio princeps of Josephus displayed here was in fact an edition of his works in Latin, still the intellectual language of Europe in 1470; the first edition of the Greek text did not appear in print until nearly 75 years later, after the Renaissance revival of Greek learning. Subsequently, hundreds of editions of Josephus' works appeared in all corners of the Western world, not only in Greek and Latin but in every modern vernacular as well. Among the most popular authors during the history of Christian printing, Josephus suffered a different fate among Jews: except for a pseudepigraphic medieval Hebrew paraphrase of The Jewish War, the works of Josephus were virtually forgotten by the Jewish people until modern times.

Like all other books, Jewish prayerbooks were distributed for centuries in manuscript form, until printed editions in the incunable period gradually replaced manuscript copies. Intellectual interest in Jewish liturgy was such that a commentary on the prayerbook was one of the first books published in Portugal in the 15th century. Prayerbooks according to different rites, e.g. Ashkenazic or Sephardic, and for special rituals, such as the "Grace after Meals", often reflected the heterogeneous character of Jewish communities in various lands. (The Karaites, a heterodox Jewish sect, published their own liturgies, largely based on biblical texts.) Although most prayerbooks were issued in Hebrew, the traditional language of Jewish prayer, some were issued in or with translations into other Jewish languages, such as Yiddish. As of the 19th century, translations into modern European languages made their appearance in Western Europe and North America , often together with newly revised Hebrew texts.

Written in 1340, Abudarham's commentary on the complete synagogue liturgy, including the rules of intercalation, was the second ever printed in Lisbon .

The Pesaro Mahzor (festival liturgy) was the first edition according to the German rite. Many passages -- such as one describing the death of Jewish martyrs -- were "revised" (i.e. blackened) by the ecclesiastical censor, whose ink is now fading after 450 years.

The above selected works were extracted from the Michael Davidson Early Hebrew Printing Homepage for scholarly and free inquiry. No infringement of copyright or misuse was intended, but only the free sharing of information in regards to the Jewish peoples' ancient and enduring legacy of written knowledge.

Originally the goal of this page was to collect together the WWW sites illustrating early Hebrew printing and especially those sites with attractive images from these books. As I developed this page I included links to other sites peripheral to early printing such as maps, drawings, manuscripts, illuminations, charters, even postcards and historical photos such as might interest a student of early printing.

1."The transmission of Judaism has always been heavily dependent on written texts as well as the oral traditions surrounding them. One way to examine this process is by analyzing the various formats of Jewish texts in order to try to understand how they may have been read. At two points in history the Jewish book has undergone fundamental transformations from scroll to codex in the eighth and ninth centuries, and from manuscript to print in the early modern period. It is this latter transformation that this exhibit will examine by focusing on the impact of printing on the format of the Jewish book and, by extension, on the Jewish cultural and religious experience.

2. Historians of general European culture have noted the importance of the printed book for the dissemination of knowledge to a wider audience and for shaping the ways in which texts were read and ideas were digested.

3. In the study of Jewish culture, several scholars have noted the broad impact of printing, but this recognition has not stimulated an extensive analysis of this phenomenon. The study of the book has been primarily focused on subjects such as manuscript illumination and paleography, bio-biblio-graphical studies of Hebrew printers, and the censorship of Hebrew books.

4. However, the question of the impact of printing on the transmission of Jewish culture is a major lacuna in the scholarly literature.

5. We cannot hope to fill this gap in the scholarship concerning the history of the Jewish book in this exhibit. We do wish, however, to pose some basic questions: what effects did the printing press have on the transmission of Jewish culture and on a Jew's understanding of his (or her) tradition? How, in other words, did printing change Jewish texts and the use of these texts?

The Printer's mark found on the cover, title, and current pages belongs to Henricus Jacobus Van Bashuysen, printer of Hebrew books in Hanau, Germany in the years 1708-1712. An example of this printer's mark can be found on the title page of: Isaac Abravanel, Perush ha-Torah. Hanau , 1710.

In thinking and writing about these issues, we have been aided by the helpful advice of many people. We are especially grateful to Rachel Anisfeld, Aviva Astrinsky , Israel Bartal, Sol Cohen, Robert Kraft, Elhanan Reiner, David Ruderman, and Michael Ryan. We would also like to publicly recognize the assistance of the staffs of the Center for Judaic Studies and the Department of Special Collections in the Van Pelt Library, especially Sheila Allen, Pnina Bar-Kana, Gregory Bear, Howell E. Dell, Judith Leifer, and Ruth Ronen.

There is now a vast literature on the impact of the printed press, beginning with the well-known work of Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge, 1979), and Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800 (London, 1976). Two recent collections of new studies on the impact of printing are The Culture of Print: Power and Uses of Print in Modern Europe, Roger Chartier, ed. ( Princeton, 1989) and Print and Culture in the Renaissance, Gerald Tyson and Sylvia Wagonheim, eds. (Newark, DE, 1986).

A relatively complete list of the kinds of studies mentioned can be found in Sharon Liberman Mintz, "A Selected Bibliography of the Hebrew Book," in A Sign and a Witness: Two Thousand Years of Hebrew Books and Illuminated Manuscripts, Leonard Gold, ed. (New York, 1988), pp. 177-197.

There are some exceptions. See now the works of Shifra Baruchson, Malachi Beit-Arie, Zeev Gries, Stefan Reif, and Elhanan Reiner. Also useful for the transition from manuscript to print culture are the papers from the conference "Artefact and Text: The Re-Creation of Classical Jewish Literature in Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts," collected in the Bulletin Library of Manchester 75 (1993).

Within forty years of the invention of printing in the mid-fifteenth century, Hebrew books were produced using this new technology. Through the second half of the fifteenth century, Hebrew printing was restricted mainly to the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, where some 180 Hebrew titles were issued. While Hebrew printing ceased in Spain and Portugal after the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, it quickly spread to the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe. By the end of the sixteenth century, Hebrew printed books were being produced throughout most of the Jewish world.

In many ways, the history of Hebrew printing is the history of the printers themselves, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Many of these early printers distinguished their work by using special devices or emblems which served as their individual marks. The first Hebrew book with a printer's mark dates from 1487. These trademarks were an adaptation of a practice used by medieval artisans and building owners to identify their handiwork or mark their property. In Hebrew books, as in others, printers continued to use these devices or emblems as their trademarks down to the nineteenth century.

The Soncinos, named for a town in Italy in which they were active, founded one of the most dynamic printing houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, establishing presses from Italy to Egypt and Turkey. In Italy in 1484, Joshua Solomon Soncino (d.1493) issued the first work from the press, Tractate Berakhot of the Babylonian Talmud.

Soncino placed commentaries on the page alongside the text of the Talmud, creating what would become the standard format for all Talmud editions. Joshua Solomon's nephew, Gershom ben Moses (d.1534), emerged as one of the most skillful and prolific printers of his period. Between 1489 and 1534, Gershom Soncino printed over one hundred volumes which appeared not only in Hebrew, but also in Greek, Latin, and Italian. As a result of the constantly-shifting political situation, Soncino and his press wandered throughout Italy and eventually left for the Ottoman Empire, where he established a printing press in Salonika in 1527 and another in Istanbul in 1530. After his death, his son continued his printing endeavors in Turkey, and his grandson, Gershom (d.1562), established the last Soncino press in Egypt in 1557.

Bomberg was one of the first Christian printers of Hebrew books and one of the most influential of all Hebrew printers. Born and raised in Antwerp , Bomberg settled in Venice where he established his printing press. Bomberg was the first to publish Mikraot Gedolot, the Bible with the rabbinic commentaries that served as a model for many future editions. As a result of the success of this publication, he printed two complete editions of the Talmud. Bomberg's pagination of the Talmud has become standard. His placement of commentaries surrounding the text, following the work of Joshua Solomon Soncino, has also become canonical. This format has influenced the appearance of many other types of Jewish literature as well. Although Bomberg's fortunes appear to have declined as a result of competition, his successors, nevertheless, lauded him for his distinctive style.

In 1514, Kohen joined a consortium of four craftsmen and two backers in Prague to form the first Hebrew printing press in Eastern or Central Europe . Kohen appears to have played a particularly important role in this group: on the cover page of the Prague printing of the Pentateuch there was an ornamental representation of hands held in the position for the priestly blessing, a symbol of membership in the priestly class (of which Kohen was a member). After this consortium split up in 1522, Kohen and his brother established their own press, at which they produced the earliest printed Haggadah with illustrations in 1526. That same year, Kohen secured monopoly rights for Hebrew printing in Bohemia. Producing more prayer books, Talmudic works and Pentateuchs than the Prague community could absorb, the Kohen family distributed their publications throughout Eastern Europe.

Fagius is one of the prime examples of the important role played by Christians interested in Hebrew and Judaica for the spread of Hebrew printing. Born in the Palatinate, Fagius was a professor of Hebrew at Strasbourg and later at Cambridge. More importantly, he established a Hebrew press in Isny, Bavaria, where he appointed his former Hebrew teacher, Elijah Levita, as supervisor. The inscription on Fagius's printer's mark declares, "Every good tree gives forth good fruit." The Fagius printing press spread Hebrew books throughout the Rhineland. In addition to the publication of various Hebrew books, the major contribution of Fagius's press was the publication of numerous Hebrew texts with a Latin translation and commentary. Fagius began the republication of Me'ir Nativ, a Biblical concordance, which was completed after his departure for England by the well-known Christian Hebraist, Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522).

Samuel Proops (active 1704-1734) and his sons Joseph, Jacob, and Abraham were the most important Ashkenazi printers in Amsterdam in the eighteenth century, and their family business survived until 1849, specializing in liturgical works. Under Samuel Proops in 1730, the press issued the first sales catalog of a Hebrew publisher. Their printer's mark also indicates priestly origin.

This family dominated Sulzbach printing from the end of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. Beginning with Moses Bloch, his son-in-law Aaron Frankl, and Aaron's son Meshullam Zalman (active 1721-1764), the press specialized in relatively inexpensive popular works, especially liturgy. The Bloch-Frankls engaged in a bitter competition with the Proops family during the eighteenth century which culminated in an unsuccessful legal attempt by the Proops to shut down the Sulzbach press.

Posner, Raphael and Israel Ta-Shema, eds. The Hebrew Book: An Historical Survey . Jerusalem: Keter, 1975.

Yaari, Abraham. Hebrew Printers' Marks: From the Beginnings of Hebrew University Press Association, 1943.

In addition to being shaped by the various personalities involved in early printing, the format of the Hebrew printed page was also informed by the fact that the printing press allowed sacred texts to appear for the first time on the same page with their commentaries. Throughout the centuries, Jews have commented on their sacred texts and these interpretations have played a critical role in the transmission of Jewish tradition. Despite their central role in transmitting Jewish culture, commentaries were never considered as canonical text. Con-sequently, they were often produced as separate reference works to be used when studying sacred texts. With the advent of printing, it became more common for commentaries to be printed alongside the sacred texts instead of separately. To differentiate between the central text, most commonly the Bible, Mishnah or Talmud, and their commentaries, printers used different typefaces. The two typefaces used most often by the printers to differentiate between the text and its commentary were derived from the Hebrew manuscript tradition: the square typeface, based on the Assyrian ( ashuri ) typeface used for Hebrew letters in the Torah scroll, and the more rounded typeface based on the Spanish cursive style for writing Hebrew. At one point, both these typefaces were used for both the central text and the commentary. Over time, however, printers developed a convention for the utilization of these typefaces so that the reader would be able to distinguish the central text from the commentary in any work: the square typeface became exclusively associated with the sacred text while the rounded typeface was used for commentaries.

Typefaces were not only used to differentiate between texts and commentaries but also became the common way for printers to distinguish among different languages. It was not uncommon for Jews to speak two languages, such as Yiddish and Hebrew, and their "internal bilingualism" was reflected in their printed texts. The production of bilingual Yiddish and Hebrew books offers a fascinating study of how printers adapted the typefaces they had traditionally used to differentiate between text and commentary to also differentiate between two languages. In the manuscript tradition, the letters for both Hebrew and Yiddish were shaped in a rounded style which contrasted with the square Assyrian script of the Torah scroll. With the advent of printing, however, Hebrew passages were conveyed exclusively through square type, while portions in other languages, such as Yiddish, were printed using special letters similar to the old style of rounded written ones

The many uses of these typefaces are reflected in the terms used to describe these typefaces throughout the centuries. In the fifteenth century, the typeface which bore striking resemblance to written letters was termed masheyt; after printers started using it for commentaries, it became known as "Rashi script." Then, when the "Rashi" typeface was adapted to convey Yiddish quotes in the production of Yiddish texts for women, it became known as vabertaytsh, literally meaning "women's Yiddish translation."

1. Minature in the Gothic style from the Reuben Machsor mechol haschana (Jewish Holy Day Prayer Book for the Whole Year) Germany, ca. 1290

Written between 1329 and 1338 by the Provençal exegete, philosopher and mathematician, Levi ben Gershom (d. 1344), this commentary was printed by Abraham Konat in 1474. Konat used the more rounded cursive letters, common in the Hebrew written manuscript tradition, for the printing of this biblical interpretation. This typeface would later emerge as the characteristic typeface for all commentaries.

This commentary on the Pentateuch was composed in 1291 by the exegete and kabbalist, Bahya ben Asher (d. 1340). This work uses the square Assyrian type, commonly found in the Torah scroll and later used exclusively for sacred texts. In addition to the printer's use of the square type, this work is also distinctive in its elaboration and illustrations on the first

This Bible, published by the famed Amsterdam Athias family, was one of the first verse by verse translations of the Bible into Yiddish. While it contains no commentaries, it is set in a typeface similar to the "Rashi script." The reason for this is that the work is composed in Yiddish, and not in the "holy" language of Hebrew. Adapting the distinct typefaces used to differentiate between sacred text and commentary, printers also differentiated between Hebrew and Yiddish.

In addition to including the standard corpus of Ashkenazic prayers, this German eighteenth-century prayer book also dedicates its final section to various Yiddish devotional prayers, commonly known as tkhines, from the Hebrew word (tekhinot) meaning supplications. While the Yiddish tkhines were considered semi-sacred, the freer style and use of the Yiddish language distinguished the tkhine from the traditional Hebrew prayer. In this edition, each tkhine is first presented in Hebrew, the "Holy Tongue," and then is translated below into Yiddish. The differentiation between the Hebrew and Yiddish prayer is conveyed through the use of the square typeface for Hebrew and the rounded typeface for Yiddish. On this page, we have various prayers a mother would recite on behalf of her children. It is interesting to note that the prayer in the middle of the left side, which requests that it should be God's will that each son and daughter be able to find a suitable match, is not followed by a literal Yiddish translation of the Hebrew verse. Rather, the Yiddish translation incorporates the Jewish legend that God ordains for each child a match while they are still residing in their mother's womb and urges each mother to pray that her child's match be revealed.

Posner, Raphael and Israel Ta-Shema, eds. The Hebrew Book: An Historical Survey. Jerusalem: Keter, 1975.

Weinreich, Max. History of the Yiddish Language. S. Noble, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

The prayer book is among the most widely-circulated and best-known of Jewish books. While the roots of Jewish prayer can be found in the Hebrew Bible, the fundamentals of the synagogue service as we know it today were initially described in the rabbinic literature of the first centuries of the common era. The Siddur (containing the daily and Shabbat prayers) and the Mahzor (containing holiday prayers), did not emerge as separate texts and as compendia of Jewish liturgy until the period of the Geonim, the heads of rabbinic academies in Babylonia in the early Middle Ages. In the ninth through twelfth centuries, localized rites also emerged among Jewish communities in Germany (Ashkenaz), Northern France, Italy, the Byzantine empire, Provence, Muslim Spain (Sepharad), and Yemen

At the end of the Middle Ages, two important developments, migration and printing, had a major impact on the history of the Siddur. Demographic shifts resulting from expulsions and from other migrations led to the formation of new Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. Immigrant Jews brought their local liturgies with them, but many of these rites did not survive as it became impossible for each group to maintain a separate synagogue in each community. Some communities, however, such as Frankfurt-am-Main, continued to use a local rite until the twentieth century.

This section explores the impact of the second major developmentthe invention of printingon the experience of Jewish prayer. The implications of the wider dissemination of printed prayer books remain to be explored. Some questions to be examined here include that of the effect of printing on the decline and fall of localized rites as well as the relationship of print to another trend in the development of the modern prayer bookthe increasing number of translated prayer books from the eighteenth century on.

Here is an example of the Western Ashkenazic (Franco-German) rite for Rosh Ha-Shannah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot written in a square script with vowels. A number of pages have decorated headings such as the one shown. On many of the other pages, there are a large number of marginal notes indicating variant liturgical readings. These notes appear to have been made by a hazzan (prayer leader) or another scholar in order to adapt the manuscript to the local liturgy.

This "Mahzor for the Whole Year according to the Roman Rite" is one of the first printed prayer books from the publishing houses of the Soncino family. In this example of early printing, we can see the continuity with the manuscript tradition. No commentary is included and the pages are unnumbered. Numerous censor's marks from the sixteenth century are present in the work. In the example shown, the weekday Amidah (central prayer in synagogue service) has been censored with the inking out of the words, "may all the heretics perish instantly" and "may the evil kingdom be cast down and humbled," taken in the sixteenth century to refer to Christians and Christendom. This section of the Amidah has been censored often, and the version recited by Jews in the twentieth century reflects much of this censorship. Note, however, that the words here are still readable suggesting that the censor of this book was not as thorough as he might have been, whether intentionally or not.

Roma `im Perush Kimha de Avshuna .
Bologna: Menahem ben Avraham mi-Modena, 1539-1540.

In the five decades from the publication of the Soncino Mahzor to this one, one can see a new development in the printing of the liturgy. This Mahzorwhich is also "according to the Roman rite"contains an extensive commentary surrounding the liturgical text. In addition, one can see from the pages shown here that the margin was wide enough for a later owner of the book to make his own extensive notes. The owner of the book has indicated liturgical variants and directions for proper behavior, noting that he learned this material from his teacher.

4. Siddur. Prayer Book of the Italian Rite.
Manuscript on parchment.
Italy . Fourteenth century.

This small book appears to have been primarily for non-synagogue use,containing a number of home rituals including prayers for before and after meals, zemirot (songs for the Shabbath), the Havdalah service for the end of the Sabbath, liturgy for weddings and houses of mourning. On the page shown here is the beginning of the section entitled "These are Nice and Pleasant Songs to Say for the Honor of the Sabbath."

5. Seder Zemirot u-Virkat ha-Mazon. Prague, 1514.
[Facsimile edition: London: Valmadonna Trust Library, 1984.]

Like the previous work, this book was intended mostly for home use and was one of the first of its kind to be printed. At some point after printing, color was added to the woodcuts to simulate the appearance of an illuminated manuscript. In addition to serving as decoration, pictures also served as mnemonic devices. For example, a fox-hunting scene, "Jagd der Haas," in German, reminds the reader of the Hebrew acronym YaKNeHaZ which indicates the order of blessings said when the first night of a festival falls at the end of a Sabbath.

These two Ashkenazic Mahzorim, both produced by the same publisher, appear to have been directed toward different audiences. The 1735 version contains instructions and commentary in Yiddish, printed in the same type as other Yiddish works. The second, from 1758, was probably intended for a more educated reader. The commentary is in Hebrew and is more extensive, surrounding the text in the same manner as in the 1540 Mahzor from Bologna. The pages shown here, part of the additional service for Shemini Atzeret (the eighth day of the holiday of Sukkot), also contain the only illustrations in the two worksidentical woodcuts representing each of the months of the year and the signs of the zodiac. It is also interesting to consider here another effect of both migration and printingthe standardization of many Franco-German liturgies of the Middle Ages into a standard "Ashkenazic liturgy" that was used throughout most of central Europe in the early modern period.

The prayers for the holiday of Passover in this volume are part of a set of books, each containing the liturgy of a different holiday. Suggesting the growing importance of the German language to the Jews of Central Europe, the publisher included a German translation of the prayers, printed in the margins in Hebrew characters.

Elbogen, Ismar. Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History. Trans. Raymond P. Scheindlin. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993.

Hoffman, Lawrence. The Canonization of the Synagogue Service. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979.

The Passover Seder is one of the most widely celebrated and best known of all Jewish rituals. The telling and remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt has filled the eve of the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Nisan around the world for the past two millennia. The guiding text for this tradition, the Haggadah, has had a particularly long and illustrious career in the history of written texts. The same text has been directing Jews through the Passover ritual from the tenth century until the present day. With more than four thousand known printed editions in existence today, the Haggadah has been reprinted more often, in more languages and in more places than any other classical Jewish work.

While scholars have begun to examine the impact of printing on this text, few have tried to assess how printing may have changed the general experience of the Passover Seder. In the era before the printed Haggadah, few at the Seder table would have had a Haggadah to guide them through the ritual. With the advent of print, however, it became more common for every participant in the Seder to have his or her own Haggadah. How might have the dissemination of Haggadahs throughout the world changed the experience of the Seder? How may have the proliferation of illustrated and translated Haggadahs impacted on the experience of the Passover ritual?

1. Seder Haggadah shel Pesah .
Venice: Giovanni da Gara, 1609.
[Facsimile edition: Jerusalem , 1974.]

In Venice in 1609, the press of the Christian Giovanni da Gara, with the help of the Italian Jewish printer Israel Zifroni, produced a Haggadah which also played an important role in the development of the illustrated Haggadah. Encasing every page is a classical architectural border in which there appears a Judeo-Italian translation of the Haggadah text. Other editions produced by this printer contained either Yiddish or Ladino translations. The marvelous illustrations include a depiction of the ten plagues, the first time this was ever illustrated in a printed Haggadah. The Judeo-Italian translation not only provides literal translations of each plague but further describes each in a rhymed couplet.

The goal of this Haggadah, which was issued by the Austrian publisher Georg Holtzinger, was to create a text which everyone could read correctly and understand. Therefore, it not only presents the entire text of the Haggadah vocalized but also contains a Judeo-German translation of the text on the inside section of each page. The translator, Moses Dessoy, included some commentary on the bottom of the page so that all who were reading this text could participate in the different rituals of the seder meal.

As printed books became less expensive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became more common for everyone at the Seder table to have their own copy of the Haggadah. With many people unable to fully comprehend the text of the Haggadah, translations of the Haggadah became quite common usually consisting of a translation of the Haggadah text and directions as to how to perform the various rituals of the Seder. Translation was not the only innovation incorporated into the Haggadah in America to make it more enjoyable for Jews. Besides abridging the service substantially, the Union Haggadah, the first Haggadah printed by the Reform movement in the United States, also included such things as musical notation for instrument accompaniment, numerous pictures, appropriate poetry readings and an appendix explaining the various rites and symbols of the Seder for those unfamiliar with this ritual.

Yaari, Abraham. Bibliography of the Passover Haggadah: From the Earliest Printed Edition to 1960. Jerusalem: Bamberger and Wahrman, 1960.

Yerushalmi, Yosef. Haggadah and History: A Panorama in Facsimile of Five Centuries of Printed Haggadah from the Collections of Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1975

As the central text for both Judaism and Christianity, the Hebrew Bible was the Jewish book best-known to Christians. Although the Talmud and its commentaries were primary texts for Jewish higher education, the Bible was studied and learned by Jews in a wide variety of contexts: elementary and adult education, the weekly reading of a portion of the Pentateuch and of the Prophets in the synagogue, and sermons preached in the synagogue.

The first physical manifestation of the text of the Hebrew Bible was on scrolls, and the Torah scroll containing the first five books remains in use for the weekly synagogue reading. Although the codex did not come into general use by Jews until the ninth century, well after the rest of the western world had adopted it, the use of the codex for non-ritual purposes soon became standard. The oldest biblical manuscripts now extant date from the end of the ninth century, and the first complete text that we have dates from the beginning of the eleventh. The copying of Bibles continued by Jews throughout the Middle Ages, and illuminated versions began to appear in the mid-thirteenth century in Northern Europe, Spain, and Italy. The iconography in these works often incorporated motifs from rabbinic commentaries.

In studying the Bible, Jews followed Christians in adding their comments to the text in margins. At first, these marginalia were added in a haphazard manner and were difficult to read for those who came later. By the thirteenth century, the format of these marginal commentsthe "gloss"had been standardized and an aesthetically pleasing layout had been developed among Christians. Likewise, Jewish scribes in the Middle Ages began to produce Bible manuscripts with marginal commentaries. Printing was immediately recognized as a way to disseminate scripture and commentaries and the format of a central text and marginal glosses was adapted to the new technology. The first printed Hebrew biblical text was an edition of the Psalms, printed in Bologna in 1477. In 1482, the first complete Pentateuch was printed in the same city along with the Aramaic translation (Targum Onkelos) and the commentary of Rashi, the eleventh-century French exegete (See below, Figure 1).

If the Bible is the foundation for Judaism, it can be argued that the rabbinic literature included in the Talmud and related works is the edifice constructed on this foundation. A major focus of scribal activity in the Middle Ages was the copying of the Mishnah and the Gemara, which together form the Talmud. At the same time that scribes continued to copy the text of the Mishnah and the Gemara, the learned discussions of medieval rabbis produced new commentaries. While most medieval Talmud manuscripts do not include these commentaries, some manuscripts of the later Middle Ages did begin to surround the text with the commentary of Rashi. These manuscripts anticipated what would later become standard with the introduction of the printing.

As the printing of the Talmud became standardized, the study of the Mishnah itself continued and was also affected by the new possibilities of printing. The surrounding of the Mishnah text with the Gemara in some medieval manuscripts was paralleled by a surrounding of the Mishnah text with commentaries such as those of Moses Maimonides (d. 1204) and later, Obadiah Bertinoro (d. 1516). Likewise, the printing press was used for the dissemination of works of halakha (Jewish law) and became crucial in the process of legal codification.

• Talmud Bavli `im Perush Rashi, Tosafot u-Piske Tosafot. Tractate Avodah Zarah. Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1520.

1. Although Joshua Solomon Soncino was the first Italian to print tractates of the Talmud in the 1480s, Bomberg's press was the first to produce a complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Taking over the format developed by Soncino (in imitation of some medieval manuscripts), Bomberg set the standard format of the Talmud as well as the standard pagination still in use, with minor variations, today. Virtually every edition of the Babylonian Talmud up to the present has been influenced by Bomberg's format. The Mishnah and Gemara text appear together in the center of the page. The commentary of Rashi appears on the inner margin. Printed in the outer margin is the commentary of the Tosafot, thedisciples and successors to Rashi in twelfth-century France. The Talmud text appears in square letters and the commentaries appear in what rapidly became the standard font for commentaries in Hebrew. This volume also includes Maimonides's commentary on the Mishnah and the legal commentary of Asher ben Yehiel (d. 1327).

2. Jacob ben Asher.
Arba'ah Turim. Yoreh De'ah .
Venice: Yoani Gripio, 1564.

One of the most influential medieval codifications of the law was that of Jacob ben Asher (d. 1340), the son of Asher ben Yehiel (the Rosh), who composed his Arba'ah Turim (Four Columns) in Toledo at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The edition printed by Solomon Soncino in 1490 appears as a manuscript might have, with two columns, square type and no commentary. In contrast, the 1564 edition that includes the important commentary of Joseph Karo, Beit Yosef, is laid out like a Talmud page (although here only one commentary surrounds the text). This copy also contains another layer of commentary -- the handwritten notes of Bezalel Ashkenazi (d. 1591), a Rabbi in Egypt and Palestine, who was the editor of Shitah Mekubetzet, an anthology of commentaries on the Talmud

Finally, no discussion of the impact of printing on the transmission of Jewish culture would be complete without addressing how printing affected the process central to Jewish continuity: education. Over the centuries, Jewish education has been conducted in many locations and in a variety of forums. It would be impossible to assess the impact of print on all aspects of Jewish education. Thus, this case is devoted to one locus of Jewish education, the synagogue, where Jewish texts were transmitted orally through the sermon. With the advent of print, many preachers published their oral explanations concerning various Jewish texts

The extent to which the printed sermon reflects what people actually heard or learned in the synagogue continues to be debated. While one cannot say for sure that the sermons presented in sermon compendiums were actually performed in a particular community, it appears as though collections of sermons may have been used by young preachers as sermon manuals. Whether a standardized format of the sermon resulted from the fact that many young preachers may have been basing their sermons on the same or similar texts has heretofore been unexamined, yet this is a key question scholars must consider if they hope to appreciate fully the complex and ever-changing relationship between Jewish oral and written tradition."

.From the Sumerian Dub of 5500 years ago, considered to be the first book, to modern Hebrew and Israeli literature, we see an unbroken transmission of Law and Lore, Stories and Inquiry that provides from the Middle East an unbroken chain of the development of printing and publishing. Now, the next era in that chain of development has arrived: Electronic transmission of the printed word, promising to raise the transmission and communication of knowledge to universal levels. See the links below which are a gateway to this new era of Sumero-Jewish Culture.

1. Shem Tov Shem Tov.
Derashot ha-Torah.
Venice: Marco Antonio Justinian, 1547.
Figure 1.

1. This work organizes the numerous sermons of Rabbi Shem Tov, a fifteenth-century Spanish philosopher, according to the content of each weekly reading. Rabbi Shem Tov also composed one of the earliest tracts on Jewish preaching, titled `Ein ha-Kore, where he argued that mastering the skill of preaching is dependent on the mastery of the art of rhetoric. The notes on the side of this page, which insert colloquial transitions and some easier terminology into the text, suggest that a student may have used this work in constructing his own sermons and indicates how the dissemination of printed sermons possibly effected preaching content and styles.

2. Leone Modena .
Helek Rishon mi-Sefer Midbar Yehudah .
Venice: Daniel Zanetti, 1601.

2. This collection of sermons was written by Leone Modena (1571-1648), a rabbi of the Venetian ghetto, whose preaching won him the praise of both Jews and Christians. Structuring his sermons in a manner similar to contemporary Christian preachers, the impact of Modena 's style on other Jewish preachers has not yet been fully assessed. The left page on display contains the introduction to a sermon which Modena delivered in honor of a friend's wedding. Here he reveals the essential ingredient for a successful sermon: the choice of an appropriate subject for both the event and the place. On the right page is a poem which was a eulogy for Moses Basola, his teacher, written in both Hebrew and Judeo-Italian. Both of these poems, like many written by Modena , make sense when read in either Italian or Hebrew. Modena became famous for producing such poetry for various occasions which others tried to emulate.

Samuel ben Moses Avila.
Ozen Shemuel: ... Derashot... ve... Hespedim .
Amsterdam: [s.n.], 1715.

3. .This collection of Samuel ben Moses Avila's sermons was one of several compendiums found in the library of Rabbi Isaac Leeser, the famed nineteenth-century orator of the Philadelphia Jewish community. Avila (d. 1688), a seventeenth-century Talmudist and preacher in Morocco, was known for composing a guide for scholars on how to conduct communal affairs properly. This collection of eulogies and homilies reflects Avila's desire to produce guiding manuals for rabbinical figures. While it may be impossible to be certain whether Leeser referred to this work when composing his own orations, the fact that Leeser possessed such a manual in his library is suggestive of how printed sermon compendiums may have influenced the oral culture being transmitted in the synagogue. This page includes an example of a sermon which could be given on the Saturday before Passover, a traditional day for rabbinic preaching.

The content of this article is based on: An Exhibition of Books and Manuscripts
from the Library of the Center for Judaic Studies and commentary of

This exhibition was at the Center for Judaic Studies April 21 - June 26, 1996 and drew on the following resources:

Rosenwald Gallery
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
University of Pennsylvania

© 1996 by the Trustees of the
University of Pennsylvania
Rosenwald Gallery
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
University of Pennsylvania

The following preface on the Center for Judaic Studies website explains the exhibition from which the above material was extracted:

It is a pleasure to introduce this catalogue presenting an exhibit of Hebrew manuscripts and printed books located in the marvelous library collection of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Judaic Studies. The exhibit, which opens in the spring of 1996 at the University's Van Pelt Library, focuses on the transmission of knowledge from medieval to modern times in Jewish culture, especially the remarkable changes in the process engendered by the technology of the printing press. The exhibit visually highlights some of the critical themes studied by a remarkable group of scholars in Bible, rabbinics, medieval and modern Jewish history, Hebrew paleography, Jewish and Islamic philosophy, Islamic history, ancient Christianity and more, assembled in this year's fellowship at the Center for Judaic Studies. The exhibit coincides as well with the year-ending colloquium of the Center on the theme: "Learning and Literacy in the Judaic Tradition: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Inquiry."

The editors wish to thank the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for this information. In the spirit of education, it is used herein solely for non-profit educational purposes, with this credo: That the free transmission of knowledge is integral to the spirit of of Jewish learning.