The first to print Hebrew texts in Venice was\u00a0a Christian from Antwerp, Daniel Bomberg, who published the Hebrew\u00a0Bible and the Talmud. He was not\u00a0welcomed with open arms and had\u00a0to struggle to obtain government permission to print in Hebrew. Only on his fifth attempt, and after shelling out some 500 ducats, is he granted a ten-year privilege.<\/p>\n
Clearly, there was\u00a0a golden barrier beyond which the religious scruples of the patricians were\u00a0unable to go and, just as obviously, if Bomberg could\u00a0afford to spend such a large amount, it\u00a0means that he expected a considerable return on his investment.<\/p>\n
In 1515 he set up a print shop, availing himself of the collaboration of a Jew-turned-friar, Felice da Prato, who made a request to the Venetian government \u201cto take on as assistants \u2018four well-instructed Jewish men\u2019.\u00a0The first works printed by Bomberg have been lost; they probably did not survive the book burnings of the Inquisition. In 1517 he released the first edition of the Hebrew\u00a0Bible, which also contains the Aramaic tradition and commentary by celebrated Medieval Hebrew exegetes.<\/p>\n
Bomberg\u2019s edition of the Talmud was memorable \u201cnot only for its philological accuracy and the beauty of its characters, but for the layout of its pages\u201d; it was destined to serve as a model for all subsequent editions.<\/p>\n
In this brief span of years, the Flemish printer in Venice put out the first editions of some of Judaism\u2019s most fundamental works. His business was much broader\u2014as he worked on commission for \u201cnumerous communities of the Diaspora: Rome, Spain, Germany, and Greece, and as far away as Aleppo in Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his thirty-two years of activity, between 1516 and 1548,\u201cthe Aldus of Hebrew Books\u201d\u2014as Bomberg came to be called with a reference to Also Manutius, was recognized as “the greatest of the great” and printed more than 180 works.<\/p>\n
He used excellent-quality paper, with a filigree of an anchor inscribed in a circle crowned by a star. Paper yellowed by time but is still robust and substantial. He also worked in\u00a0the international market\u00a0printing\u00a0pocket-size prayer books for the Sephardic communities.<\/p>\n\n[\/aesop_content]\n\n[aesop_parallax img=”http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/EliaLevita2.jpg” parallaxbg=”fixed” captionposition=”bottom-left” lightbox=”off” floater=”on” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”none”]\n\n\n\n[aesop_content color=”#314e68″ background=”#FFFFFF” columns=”1″ position=”none” imgrepeat=”no-repeat” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”up” revealfx=”off”]An\u00a0important figure in Bomberg\u2019s shop was Eliyyah ben Asher ha-Levi Askenazi, better known\u00a0as Elia Levita, who, having fled Rome, from 1528 to 1549, worked in the printing shop as \u201cadvisor, editor, and proofreader.\u201d<\/p>\n
Levita was\u00a0the first to establish that the dots used to indicate vowels are not as ancient as the Hebrew alphabet, as was then commonly believed, but an innovation introduced only in the fifth century of the Christian era.<\/p>\n
For this reason, he had Bomberg print on the inside of the grammar a little hand with a pointing index finger which, as explained in the introduction, is a way of saying, \u201cLook, this is something new.\u201d<\/p>\n[\/aesop_content]\n\n[aesop_parallax img=”http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/giustinian-marcantonio-doge107_0.jpg” parallaxbg=”fixed” captionposition=”bottom-left” lightbox=”off” floater=”on” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”none”]\n\n\n\n[aesop_content color=”#314e68″ background=”#ffffff” columns=”1″ position=”none” imgrepeat=”no-repeat” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”up” revealfx=”off”]The story of\u00a0Venetian Hebrew printers continues with\u00a0Marco Antonio Giustiniani, a Venetian patrician who established a printing house at the Rialto, in Calle dei Cinque. He remained in business for seven years, from 1545 to 1552, and, using the Temple of Jerusalem as his emblem published eighty-six editions.<\/p>\n
The quality of Giustiniani’s books was\u00a0first rate, also thanks to his hiring of some of Bomberg\u2019s collaborators\u00a0and his use of characters engraved for him by the most celebrated punch-maker of the time, the Frenchman Guillaume Le B\u00e9, who arrived in Venice in 1545.<\/p>\n[\/aesop_content]\n\n[aesop_parallax img=”http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/HaggadaBragadin.jpg” parallaxbg=”fixed” captionposition=”bottom-left” lightbox=”off” floater=”on” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”none”]\n\n\n\n[aesop_content color=”#314e68″ background=”#ffffff” columns=”1″ position=”none” imgrepeat=”no-repeat” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”up” revealfx=”off”]The Bragadin printing house made its debut with an edition of the Mishne Tor\u00e0, by Mos\u00e9 Maimonide, with commentary by Meir Katzenellenbogen, a German Rabbi who had studied in Prague, and a representative of the Paduan anti-cabalists.<\/p>\n
At almost the same time and in competition with Bragadin, Giustiniani printed the same codex without Rabbi Katzenellenbogen\u2019s commentary.<\/p>\n
The two entered a battle. The former accused the latter of unfair trade practices in the printing of the Talmud. A\u00a0rabbi from Prague became involved in the dispute and called for help from the highest authorities of the time. Rabbi Moses Isserles from Krakow, after a careful investigation, threatened to excommunicate all those who had purchased the edition printed by Giustiniani who appealed to the papal authorities to condemn Bragadin\u2019s edition.<\/p>\n
If he\u2019d had any idea of the consequences that this move would provoke\u2014shutting down the presses, suspending Hebrew publishing in Venice for the next ten years, and the end of Venice\u2019s hegemony in this sector\u2014he almost certainly would have thought better of it.<\/p>\n[\/aesop_content]\n\n\n[aesop_content color=”#333333″ background=”#ffffff” columns=”1″ position=”none” imgrepeat=”no-repeat” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”up” revealfx=”off”]Marvin J. Heller, Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book<\/em>, 2013, Giuliano Tamani, Di alcuni stampatori in ebraico a Venezia nei secoli XVI-XVII-XVIII<\/em>, 2015, Joseph R. Hacker (Editor), Adam Shear (Editor), The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy<\/em>, 2011<\/p>\n[\/aesop_content]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":70,"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334,"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions\/2334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.primolevicenter.org\/cplexhibitions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}