Introduction: Book history and the hebrew book in Italy

At the end of the sixteenth century, looking back not only at Jewish history but also at the "history of the world," the Prague Jewish chronicler and scientist David Gans viewed the invention of printing in moveable type as the greatest of God's gifts. Because printing could rapidly spread knowledge of all sciences, arts, and crafts, it surpassed all these in utility. Print was thus a kind of meta-art that made possible greater wisdom in all other fields. Gans's praise may be hyperbolic, but his testimony echoes other praises of the new technology by Jews and non-Jews throughout the early modern period. The available evidence suggests that Jews adopted the new technology very quickly. According to surveys of fifteenth-century book production based on the holdings of major public libraries, at least twenty thousand- And perhaps as many as thirty thousand-editions (in all languages) were printed in the first sixty years of printing.3 Although Hebrew printed books were not a numerically significant factor in those numbers, they emerged early in the history of the new technology. The first Hebrew printed books appeared in the 1470s, and the latest research on Hebrew incunabula reveals approximately 140 certain editions of Hebrew works (and perhaps several more than that) printed between circa 1470 and 1501.4 The Hebrew printing industry expanded rapidly over the next fifty years, and between 1501 and 1550 more than 1,350 books were printed.5 Surveying a vast array of bibliographies and library catalogs, Anat Gueta counts some 5,630 editions of Hebrew books in the period from 1540 to 1639.6 This includes neither Yiddish works nor other works in vernaculars using Hebrew type nor the large number of Christian Hebraist works, mainly in Latin but containing some Hebrew type.7 The numbers increased even more dramatically in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so much so that Zeev Gries has argued that sixteenth-century Hebrew production should be viewed as a relatively minor activity.8 Regardless of absolute numbers, however, when we look at perceptions and behavior, it seems that during the second quarter of the sixteenth century Jews in Europe and the Ottoman Empire came to see print as the preferred method for publishing a book; at this time we can also identify the first major cultural effects of the print medium. However, the fact that print came to be seen as the major medium of publication did not mean-as has been pointed out repeatedly in the last several years-that manuscript production ceased or that manuscripts ceased to be an important part of Jewish cultural life. Manuscript production of certain texts used for liturgical purposes (especially the Torah scroll and the Five Scrolls) continued apace. And although printing opened up ownership of ritual and liturgical texts to a wider audience, Jews who came into possession of manuscript prayer books or Passover Haggadot tended to save them. Lavishly illustrated manuscripts of the Passover Haggadah became a new luxury item in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in Northern Europe. Intellectuals continued to produce manuscripts of other scholars' texts for their own use (this is done right up to the invention of the photocopier), and quite obviously committed their own thoughts to writing (right up toThe available evidence suggests that Jews adopted the new technology very quickly. According to surveys of fifteenth-century book production based on the holdings of major public libraries, at least twenty thousand- And perhaps as many as thirty thousand-editions (in all languages) were printed in the first sixty years of printing.3 Although Hebrew printed books were not a numerically significant factor in those numbers, they emerged early in the history of the new technology. The first Hebrew printed books appeared in the 1470s, and the latest research on Hebrew incunabula reveals approximately 140 certain editions of Hebrew works (and perhaps several more than that) printed between circa 1470 and 1501.4 The Hebrew printing industry expanded rapidly over the next fifty years, and between 1501 and 1550 more than 1,350 books were printed.5 Surveying a vast array of bibliographies and library catalogs, Anat Gueta counts some 5,630 editions of Hebrew books in the period from 1540 to 1639.6 This includes neither Yiddish works nor other works in vernaculars using Hebrew type nor the large number of Christian Hebraist works, mainly in Latin but containing some Hebrew type.7 The numbers increased even more dramatically in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so much so that Zeev Gries has argued that sixteenth-century Hebrew production should be viewed as a relatively minor activity.8 Regardless of absolute numbers, however, when we look at perceptions and behavior, it seems that during the second quarter of the sixteenth century Jews in Europe and the Ottoman Empire came to see print as the preferred method for publishing a book; at this time we can also identify the first major cultural effects of the print medium. However, the fact that print came to be seen as the major medium of publication did not mean-as has been pointed out repeatedly in the last several years-that manuscript production ceased or that manuscripts ceased to be an important part of Jewish cultural life. Manuscript production of certain texts used for liturgical purposes (especially the Torah scroll and the Five Scrolls) continued apace. And although printing opened up ownership of ritual and liturgical texts to a wider audience, Jews who came into possession of manuscript prayer books or Passover Haggadot tended to save them. Lavishly illustrated manuscripts of the Passover Haggadah became a new luxury item in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in Northern Europe. Intellectuals continued to produce manuscripts of other scholars' texts for their own use (this is done right up to the invention of the photocopier), and quite obviously committed their own thoughts to writing (right up tomajor shift from manuscript to printed-book ownership during the sixteenth century.14 We also find virtually no objection to the new technology among rabbinic authorities, although there was some debate at the margins about what kinds of ritual and legal instruments could be printed and about the ritual status of printed material.15 Indeed, some rabbis interpreted biblical verses as providing evidence for the existence of printing in Jewish antiquity- offering the ultimate legitimization in the mindset of a traditional society.16 While rabbis proscribed the use of printed books for certain liturgical functions (the reading of the weekly Pentateuchal pericope in the Sabbath service, for example), they readily accepted and even praised the new technology as a vehicle for the dissemination of knowledge. Moreover, the acceptance and use of print by Jews occurred in both the Christian and Muslim worlds, although the Muslim embrace of print was limited to the Ottoman Empire for most of the early modern period. In contrast to the Christian world, where the majority culture also embraced print, printing in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish was prohibited for Muslims until the eighteenth century and in some cases until the nineteenth. Jews in the Ottoman Empire, however, printed many Hebrew books and apparently even printed in Latin characters (and probably even in Greek).17 The first dated Hebrew book was Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch (Reggio di Calabria, 1475), and the first book printed in the lifetime of its author was Judah Messer Leon's handbook of rhetoric, Sefer nofet z. ufim (Mantua, ca. 1475-76).18 Despite the early appearance of Messer Leon's book, however, almost all the known Hebrew incunabula are of classical and medieval-not contemporary-works.19 This is consistent with practices of the preprint era: The texts that were copied and circulated in European Jewish society in the late Middle Ages were relatively few and focused on halakhic, exegetical, and philosophical literature. In the sixteenth century, however, print became the favored medium of publication by living authors, and from the second half of the sixteenth century, the variety of texts available in the Jewish world-contemporary and noncontemporary- was greatly expanded. Although historians have seen the rise of printing as one of the most significant events in early modern Europe, recent scholarship has raised questions about both the quantitative and qualitative impact of printing in the earliest period.20 Nonetheless, printing did have major effects on cultureand society in the early modern period, and the presence of this new technology- And its relatively rapid embrace among early modern Jews- certainly affected many aspects of Jewish culture. However, while the history of Hebrew-character printing and printers has been documented, relatively little scholarship exists on the broader impact of print on Jewish culture, particularly during the first century of printing.21 Indeed, despite the rapid development of the "history of the book" in the last three decades, the history of the book in Hebrew characters remains underdeveloped. The open questions are not only those of literary and intellectual history, but also of social, cultural, and religious history. The essays in this book present a composite portrait that allows us to think about the impact of print technologies on Jewish intellectual, cultural, and social life in the early modern period, and they represent a step toward a fuller understanding of "Jewish" book history.