Description
Book SynopsisThe 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
Trade Review
"This compact yet intellectually expansive book illuminates the many overlapping worlds of the production of-and, crucially, the reaction to-Hebrew books in early modern Italy. The period covered is expansive as well, some 300 years. . . . And Italy is the fons . . . of Jewish print culture, home to the first dated Hebrew book as well as the first book printed in the lifetime of its author. . . . This is a collection in which each essay is a labor of love, and in which one is struck by each scholar's deep interest and erudition. . . . It is worthy of the stunning books it discusses." * TLS *
"In early modern Italy Jewish books played a central role in the cultural wars that were roiling Christian society. . . . This rich collection of studies . . . delve[s] deeply into fascinating and generally unknown aspects of this subject. . . . An important contribution to the history of the Hebrew book and to early modern Jewish history." * Jewish Book World *
"A remarkably valuable contribution to the cultural history of the Jews in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. The essays offer deep insights into methodological issues broadly connected to the larger general context of continuity and change, focusing on the dialogical relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish identities, especially on the constitutive forces ushering in the modern age." * Robert Bonfil, Hebrew University of Jerusalem *
Table of Contents
Introduction: Book History and the Hebrew Book in Italy
—Adam Shear and Joseph R. Hacker
Chapter 1. Can Colophons Be Trusted? Insights from Decorated Hebrew Manuscripts Produced for Women in Renaissance Italy
—Evelyn M. Cohen
Chapter 2. Marchion in Hebrew Manuscripts: State Censorship in Florence, 1472
—Nurit Pasternak
Chapter 3. Daniel van Bombergen, a Bookman of Two Worlds
—Bruce Nielsen
Chapter 4. The Rabbinic Bible in Its Sixteenth-Century Context
—David Stern
Chapter 5. Sixteenth-Century Jewish Internal Censorship of Hebrew Books
—Joseph R. Hacker
Chapter 6. Robert Bellarmine Reads Rashi: Rabbinic Bible Commentaries and the Burning of the Talmud
—Piet van Boxel
Chapter 7. Dangerous Readings in Early Modern Modena: Negotiating Jewish Culture in an Italian Key
—Federica Francesconi
Chapter 8. The Printing of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Italy: Prayer Books Printed for the Shomrim la-Boker Confraternities
—Michela Andreatta
Chapter 9. Hebrew Printing in Eighteenth-Century Livorno: From Government Control to a Free Market
—Francesca Bregoli
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
