Articles on early Hebrew printing encompassing title-page motifs and entitling books; authors and places of publication including books opposed to gambling, on philology, and the massacres of tah-ve-tat (1648-48); small diverse places of printing; and on Christian-Hebraism.

Further Essays addresses aspects of early Hebrew book publication, among them book arts, little known authors, places of publication, and miscellaneous subjects. Book arts addresses pressmarks representing publishers motifs, several unusual, and the varied usage of biblical verses to entitle books. The second section focusses on the works of rabbis and scholars, once prominent but not well remembered today, noting their achievements and their varied books, encompassing such topics as biblical commentaries, Talmudic novellae, philosophy, and poetry. Several locations once important, also not well remembered today are addressed; Further Essays concludes with articles on other unrelated book topics.

This book examines how Johannes Buxtorf's works helped to transform seventeenth-century Hebrew studies from the hobby of a few experts into a recognized academic discipline. The first two chapters examine Buxtorf's career as a professor of Hebrew and as an editor and censor of Jewish books in Basel. Successive chapters analyze his anti-Jewish polemical books, grammars and lexicons, and manuals for Hebrew composition and literature, including the first bibliography devoted to Jewish books. The final chapters treat his work in biblical studies, examining his contribution to Targum and Massorah studies, and his position on the age and doctrinal authority of the Hebrew vowel points. The chapters on anti-Jewish polemics and the vowel points will interest Jewish historians and Church historians.

Academic rivalries, medical ethics, child brides, the social etiquette of gift-giving-these and many other familiar issues have a long and fascinating history among the diverse communities and personalities that have made their contributions to the Jewish tradition. Unfortunately, this enthralling lore is often known only to scholarly specialists or readers of esoteric academic journals and monographs, much of it unavailable in English. In the present collection of short studies, Eliezer Segal introduces the public to the fruits of Judaic scholarship, while employing a charming style that combines erudition and wit. On the Trails of Tradition is a worthy successor to the author's acclaimed collections: Why Didn't I Learn That in Hebrew School? (1999), Ask Now of the Days that Are Past (2005) and A Meeting-Place for the Wise (2008).

Jewish Books and their Readers discusses the transformative effect of the circulation and readership of sacred and secular texts written by Jews on Christian as well as Jewish readers in early modern Europe. Its twelve essays challenge traditional paradigms of Christian Hebraism and undermine simplistic visions of the unchanging nature of Jewish cultural life.They ask what constituted a ‘Jewish’ book: how it was presented, disseminated, and understood within both Jewish and Christian environments (and how its meanings were contested), and what effect such understanding had on contemporary views of Jews and their intellectual heritage. They demonstrate how the involvement of Christians in the production and dissemination of Jewish books played a role in the shaping of the intellectual life of Jews and Christians. Contributors are: Michela Andreatta, Andrew Berns, Theodor Dunkelgrün, Federica Francesconi, Anthony Grafton Alessandro Guetta, William Horbury, Yosef Kaplan, Scott Mandelbrote, Piet van Boxel, Joanna Weinberg Benjamin Williams.

This book is the first scholarly English translation of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah, a Jewish classic originally published in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was the first significant anthological commentary on the Torah, Haftorot and five Megillot. The Ze’enah U-Re’enah is a major text that was talked about but has not adequately studied, although it has been published in two hundred and seventy-four editions, including the Yiddish text and partial translation into several languages. Many generations of Jewish men and women have studied the Torah through the Rabbinic and medieval commentaries that the author of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah collected and translated in his work. It shaped their understanding of Jewish traditions and the lives of Biblical heroes and heroines. The Ze’enah U-Re’enah can teach us much about the influence of biblical commentaries, popular Jewish theology, folkways, and religious practices. This translation is based on the earliest editions of the Ze’enah U-Re’enah, and the notes annotate the primary sources utilized by the author.

Christian Hebraism in early modern Europe has traditionally been interpreted as the pursuit of a few exceptional scholars, but in the sixteenth century it became an intellectual movement involving hundreds of authors and printers and thousands of readers. The Reformation transformed Christian Hebrew scholarship into an academic discipline, supported by both Catholics and Protestants. This book places Christian Hebraism in a larger context by discussing authors and their books as mediators of Jewish learning, printers and booksellers as its transmitters, and the impact of press controls in shaping the public discussion of Hebrew and Jewish texts. Both Jews and Jewish converts played an important role in creating this new and unprecedented form of Jewish learning.