The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book covers the gamut of Hebrew literature in that century. Each entry has a descriptive text page and an accompaning reproduction. There is an extensive introduction with an overview of Hebrew printing in the sixteenth century.

The rise of printing had major effects on culture and society in the early modern period, and the presence of this new technology—and the relatively rapid embrace of it among early modern Jews—certainly had an effect on many aspects of Jewish culture. One major change that print seems to have brought to the Jewish communities of Christian Europe, particularly in Italy, was greater interaction between Jews and Christians in the production and dissemination of books. Starting in the early sixteenth century, the locus of production for Jewish books in many places in Italy was in Christian-owned print shops, with Jews and Christians collaborating on the editorial and technical processes of book production. As this Jewish-Christian collaboration often took place under conditions of control by Christians (for example, the involvement of Christian typesetters and printers, expurgation and censorship of Hebrew texts, and state control of Hebrew printing), its study opens up an important set of questions about the role that Christians played in shaping Jewish culture. Presenting new research by an international group of scholars, this book represents a step toward a fuller understanding of Jewish book history. Individual essays focus on a range of issues related to the production and dissemination of Hebrew books as well as their audiences. Topics include the activities of scribes and printers, the creation of new types of literature and the transformation of canonical works in the era of print, the external and internal censorship of Hebrew books, and the reading interests of Jews. An introduction summarizes the state of scholarship in the field and offers an overview of the transition from manuscript to print in this period.

The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book is a bibliographic work describing books printed with Hebrew letters in that century, covering the gamut of Hebrew literature, encompassing liturgical works, Bibles, commentaries, Talmud, Mishnah, halakhic codes, kabbalistic works, fables, and belles-lettres. Each of the 455 entries has a descriptive text page comprised of background on the author, a description of the book’s contents and physical makeup, and is accompanied by a reproduction of the title or a sample page. There is an extensive introduction with an overview of Hebrew printing and a discussion of aspects of the Hebrew book in the sixteenth century, as well as detailed back matter. It is a necessary work for bibliographers, historians, and students of Jewish literature. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004129764).

Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book addresses a variety of aspects of the early Hebrew book often treated in a cursory manner. The essays encompass book arts, printing-places and printers, and unusual book varia.

The history of a single book sheds light on the beginnings of modern Jewish thought In 1797, in what is now the Czech Republic, Pinḥas Hurwitz published Book of the Covenant. Nominally an extended commentary on a sixteenth-century kabbalist text, Pinḥas’s publication was in fact a compendium of scientific knowledge and a manual of moral behavior. Its popularity stemmed from its ability to present the scientific advances and moral cosmopolitanism of its day in the context of Jewish legal and mystical tradition. Describing the latest developments in science and philosophy in the sacred language of Hebrew, Hurwitz argued that an intellectual understanding of the cosmos was not at odds with but actually key to achieving spiritual attainment. In A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era, David Ruderman offers a literary and intellectual history of Hurwitz’s book and its legacy. Hurwitz not only wrote the book, but also was instrumental in selling it, and his success ultimately led to the publication of more than forty editions in Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish. Ruderman provides a multidimensional picture of the book and the intellectual tradition it helped to inaugurate. Complicating accounts that consider modern Jewish thought to be the product of a radical break from a religious, mystical past, Ruderman shows how, instead, a complex continuity shaped Jewish society’s confrontation with modernity.

Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book is a collection of twenty-four essays on various aspects of Hebrew book production in the 16th through 18th centuries. The subject matter encompasses little known printing-presses, makers of Hebrew books, and book arts. The print-shops were in such locations as Padua, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Verona, and the first presses in Livorno. Among the makers of Hebrew books are a peripatetic printer, a chief rabbi accused of plagiarism, a convert to Judaism, and a court Jew. Book arts address the titling of Hebrew books, dating by means of chronograms, printers’ pressmarks, mirror-image monograms, and the development of the Talmudic page. The book is completed with miscellaneous but related articles on early Hebrew book sale catalogues, worker to book production ratio in an eighteenth century press, and an attempt to circumvent the Inquisition’s ban on the printing of the Talmud in sixteenth Century Italy.

The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book covers the gamut of Hebrew literature in that century. Each entry has a descriptive text page and an accompaning reproduction. There is an extensive introduction with an overview of Hebrew printing in the seventeenth century.

A distinguished group of authors here illuminate a broad spectrum of themes in the history of biblical interpretation. Originally published in 1990, these essays take as their common ground the thesis that the intellectual and religious life of the sixteenth century cannot be understood without attention to the preoccupation of sixteenth-century humanists and theologians with the interpretation of the Bible. Topics explored include Jewish exegesis and problems of Old Testament interpretation and the relationship between the Bible and social, political, and institutional history. Contributors. Irena Backus, Guy Bedouelle, Kalman P. Bland, Kenneth G. Hagen, Scott H. Hagen, Scott H. Hendrix, R. Gerald Hobbs, Jean-Claude Margolin, H. C. Erik Midelfort, Richard A. Muller, John B. Payne, David C. Steinmetz