Thread by @hchesner

I'm not *really* a follower-counter, but as it's now the century of Hebrew incunabula, I can't help it. First prints were Rome, 1469-72/3 (Shorashim, Ralbag on Daniel, Ramban + Rashi on the Torah, Sma"g, Arukh, and Shu"t Rashba). All practical books not in scrolls at shul.

Here are some images of @columbialib's She'elot u-teshuvot Shelomo ibn Aderet (Goff Heb-95), with lovely annotations!

Here's the 'Arukh, with an indicator of it being in Temple Emanu-el (R.J.H. Gottheil, "Librarian"), and Alexander Kohut borrowed it and returned it (late): footprints.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/footprint/2974/ (Goff Heb-90)

We also have a Ramban from this set, but it appears I don't have photos of it (yet).

(It appears that the only reason I have any images of the text part of this volume at all is for Hippolite of Ferrara’s signature, which I find mildly amusing, but also very on brand.)

Time for some more!

I missed the Mantua ones - like the Nofet Tsufim (c.1474-76), which is probably for the best because I only have images of the additional leaves that were added on to the book.

Disappointing, though, really, because the Mantua type is a unique type (based on the Italian hand), which wasn't retained in the print era, although it's very beautiful. We have the Mantua Yosippon, Nofet Tsufim, and Gersonides.

Alas, not the Behinat 'Olam, though - first book printed by a woman, Estellina Conat.

ACTUALLY printed in 1477 (well, -1480; date is uncertain), is a Tehilim with Birkat ha-Mazon, printed in Bologna. It's very rare, but @BDLSS has been kind enough to make a copy available online: digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/ad51…

@BDLSS I mean, just look at that gorgeous type. I do adore it.

@BDLSS Okay, the 1480s. Enter Iberia. The first printers in Lisbon were Jewish (printed Hebrew and non-Hebrew type). A lot of the undated Iberian incunabula are dated c.1480. They printed the first Talmuds - before Soncino, before Bomberg.

Some examples from Guadalajara (printer: Shelomo Alkabiz), c. 1480:
Mo'ed Katan
Ta'anit
Yoma

Conceivably, they were printing what was being studied - and thus in demand at the time.

Most of these only survive in fragments (and in the photocopies in S'ridei Bavli)

Also, they were printed with commentary of Rashi. Tosafot was a later, Ashkenazi/Italian addition.

Think about how the Talmudic landscape would have been different if the Iberian presses would have flourished...here's a little piece of one from the @NLIsrael collection

@NLIsrael Oo, also "probably Guadalajara," early 1480s - the first printed Haggadah (from the @NLIsrael copy again: rosetta.nli.org.il/delivery/Deliv…)

@NLIsrael 1483.
Along comes Joshua Solomon Soncino, the man who would build a printing empire spanning generations (at least until the 1530s..)

He begins ambitiously, with a volume of the Talmud: Berakhot. Commentaries include Rashi, Rambam, Mordekhai, and Tosafot/Piske Tosafot.

@NLIsrael (Famous image, used on countless book covers and lecture posters - this one, as is obvious from the watermark, from the @vaticanlibrary copy: digi.vatlib.it/view/Inc.II.772)

@NLIsrael @vaticanlibrary It's beautifully laid out - you gotta admit, those typesetters had style.

@NLIsrael @vaticanlibrary Wow, that was fast. So here are some random ones from the rest of the '80s (mostly from @columbialib):

Between 1485 and 1486, Soncino printed a Mahazor (@columbialib copy on vellum). Printing began in Soncino, but was completed in Casalmaggiore.

Note here the blank type that was used to fill in the rest of the page (they didn't have enough furniture for the whole thing...ררררר

@columbialib Typefaces were designed to imitate formal scripts. The Alantansi press at Hijar (Spain) based type on the Spanish semi-cursive (which Rashi himself never used, but in which his commentary is usually written). Alantansi also produced the first Hebrew printers' mark (Tur OH, 1485)

@columbialib Nearly 30 Hebrew books were printed in Naples between 1487 and 1492 (when the Jews were expelled), making it the most prolific city for Hebrew incunabula. Soncino was there, along with Joseph Gunzenhauser.

Both presses were run by German immigrants, and had Spanish- as well as Italian-born backers, proofreaders, and editors, thus including representatives from the three major Jewish lands in their productions.

Both printed a Sefer ha-Shorashim w/in 6 mo of each other, c.1490-1!

Columbia has the Soncino Shorashim (Feb 1491), with the distinctive Soncino frame.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.
While still in Soncino, JS printed a Pirke Avot (1486)

Joseph Gunzenhauser, in Naples, printed a beautiful Nevi'im (here, Iyov), with commentary, in 1487. I bring this one out all the time to show the complexity involved in Hebrew printing. Two typefaces, shifting columns, and nikud. Could you imagine setting those tiny metal dots?

Oh dear. I wasn’t fast enough. I’ll limit myself to just two more, from 1492 and 1493. The latter part of the decade was pretty quiet anyway; there isn’t anything dated past 1495.

First, Avicenna’s Canon, translated into Hebrew, printed in Naples by Gunzenhauser in 1492.

Grasp this: A Hebrew translation of an Arabic medical text, printed in Italy by a German Jew (ours has lovely annotations as well).

Does it get more global? Actually, yes.

So we end with my favorite book of all time - a story about refugees and resilience. All I have to say on this book is based on the important scholarship of Adri Offenberg and Moses Marx.

In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain. In December of 1493, a copy of the law codex Arba’ah Turim is printed in Constantinople by David and Samuel ibn Nahmias. For years, bibliographers claimed it was printed in 1503, because their next book wouldn’t be printed until 1508.

This was notwithstanding the fact that the year was WRITTEN OUT, not in a chronogram like many dates in Hebrew books.

Scholars identified the types as coming from the presses at Hijar and Guadalajara in Spain, and A.K. Offenberg identified the paper as from Naples & Venice.

And then it was printed in the Ottoman Empire, the year after the Jews were expelled from Spain. So these two brothers fled Spain around 1492, took the Hebrew types along. Somehow, they made it to Italy, where Jews were (somewhat) safe, and picked up some paper.

They THEN continued on to Constantinople, the safest haven for Jews at that point, where they could freely print Jewish texts and practice as Jews.

Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the history of the book as the story of the ones who wrote, made, sold, and owned them. /fin