The Hebrew Book and Printing

Before print, the transmission of Jewish texts relied on the work of scribes (soferim) and copyists. The copying of the Torah for synagogal use followed strict rules inherited from Masoretic tradition, which aimed to preserve the consonantal text, vocalization, and cantillation marks [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Alongside these liturgical scrolls, the Middle Ages produced abundant literature in codices: vocalized bibles accompanied by the Masorah, commentaries, Talmudic treatises, liturgical collections, and philosophical works.

Copy workshops in Spain, Provence, Italy, the Germanic lands, and the Near East developed distinct calligraphic traditions — scripts known as Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Italian, Oriental, and Yemenite [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. The Hebrew manuscript bequeathed to print several of its enduring characteristics: the colophon, where the copyist recorded his name, place, and completion date; the layout of sacred text surrounded by its commentaries; as well as a repertoire of abbreviations and ligatures. It is widely accepted that the first printers sought to reproduce the appearance of manuscripts, even down to the design of characters and page layout [A. M. Habermann]. The value of the manuscript did not disappear with print: in learned and Kabbalistic circles, certain authors continued for a long time to entrust their works to copyists rather than to presses, reserving the manuscript text for teaching intended only for initiates — a practice well attested in Safed in the sixteenth century, where masters such as Moses Cordovero concealed their manuscripts to protect access to them [zakhor-online.com, "The Holy Land in the Time of the Kabbalists"].

Hebrew printing was born in Italy shortly after the introduction of the movable-type press to the peninsula. The earliest dated Hebrew books were printed in the early 1470s, notably Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch, considered one of the oldest Hebrew works bearing a printed date, completed in Reggio di Calabria in 1475 [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Other workshops were established in Rome, Mantua, Ferrara, and elsewhere.

In Mantua, the printer Abraham Conat was one of the first figures in this movement [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Another milestone deserves attention: in 1484, the city of Soncino saw the Mibhar ha-Peninim of Salomon Ibn Gabirol come from Hebrew presses, attesting to the early vitality of this Lombard workshop even before its most celebrated work [zakhor-online.com, "Salomon Ibn Gabirol"]. It was indeed the Soncino family, originally from the Lombard town of the same name, that most durably marked Hebrew incunabula. They are credited with printing the first complete and vocalized Hebrew Bible, completed in Soncino in 1488 [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. The Soncino also printed treatises of the Talmud accompanied by commentaries, setting decisive typographic milestones. The period of Hebrew incunabula — that is, books printed before 1501 — is today catalogued by bibliographers; approximately one hundred seventy-five editions are known, the product of workshops distributed mainly in Italy and the Iberian peninsula before the expulsions [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. According to several historians, these earliest books preserve the solemnity of the manuscript while initiating mass distribution.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Venice became the capital of Hebrew printing, despite the fact that the Republic generally prohibited Jews from practicing the profession of printer themselves. It was a Christian from Antwerp, Daniel Bomberg, who established in the city of the Doges the most influential workshop, employing Jewish correctors and scholars [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Between 1519 and 1523 approximately, Bomberg printed the first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud; in 1524, he also published the first edition of the Jerusalem Talmud, a work then very little commented upon by the great masters but whose printed survival Bomberg thus ensured [zakhor-online.com, "Le Talmud, quelques notes"].

This double edition had considerable consequences: the page layout adopted by Bomberg — the text of the Mishna and Gemara at the center, framed by the commentary of Rachi and the Tossafot — as well as pagination by folios (recto a, verso b) became the universal standard, still in use in contemporary editions [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Bomberg also published a Rabbinic Bible (Miqraot Gedolot) bringing together the biblical text, Aramaic targumic versions and the principal commentaries, whose 1524–1525 edition prepared by Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah became a reference for the Masoretic text [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Other Venetian printers, such as Marco Antonio Giustiniani and Alvise Bragadini, succeeded him, but their rivalry was, indirectly, to precipitate a major crisis.

The vitality of Venetian Hebrew printing extended well beyond Bomberg. In the second half of the sixteenth century, workshops continued to produce Hebrew books of the first rank, in a city that remained for dispersed Jewish authors and scholars a destination of dreams: the bookstores of Jerusalem and Safed imported Venetian copies and drew considerable benefits from them, a sign that the city of the Doges was perceived as the center of quality Hebrew publishing [zakhor-online.com, "La Terre sainte au temps des Kabbalistes"]. It was in this context of late vitality that the workshop of Giovanni di Gara is inscribed, whose material history of a copy was to traverse the centuries until our days.

Among the non-Jewish printers who perpetuated the Venetian Hebrew tradition in the second half of the 16th century, Giovanni di Gara holds a particular place. Operating in Venice from around 1564 until the early years of the 17th century, he was one of the most active Christian printers in the field of Hebrew books, in the direct line of the tradition inaugurated by Bomberg. Among his productions is an edition of the Five Books of Moses and the Haftarot — the Pentateuch accompanied by the prophetic readings associated with it in the synagogal liturgical cycle — a work of great typographic quality [Restitution of the "Di Gara," discovered on the eve of 16/08/2026].

This copy, intended for learned and communal use, passed through several centuries of cultivated circulation before entering, around 1877, the library of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, acquired after having belonged to the Italian rabbi and scholar Lelio Della Torre, who died in 1871 [Restitution of the "Di Gara"]. The trajectory of this volume perfectly illustrates the role played by Venetian Hebrew printing as a center of itinerant book culture: produced in the workshops of a Christian printer for Jewish readers, it passed from hand to hand across Italy and Mitteleuropa, before finding an institutional home in one of the great institutions of modern European Judaism.

The case of Di Gara testifies more broadly to a structural phenomenon of Hebrew publishing in Venice: the production of the Hebrew book there was very often the work of non-Jewish printers — Bomberg, Giustiniani, Bragadini, Di Gara — who relied on Jewish scholars for the correction of texts and the mastery of typefaces, in a singular economic and intellectual balance that censorship decisions would periodically weaken.

The success of the Hebrew book aroused the suspicion of ecclesiastical authorities. A commercial conflict between Venetian printers degenerated into denunciation of Talmud's content to Rome. In 1553, by papal order, copies of the Talmud were burned in Rome, at the Campo dei Fiori piazza, then in other Italian cities [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. The inscription of the Talmud in the Index, then the censorship measures arising from the Council of Trent, thereafter subjected Hebrew books to the control of censors.

This censorship left characteristic material traces: crossed-out passages, replaced words, and above all signatures of censors—often converts—affixed at the end of the volume to attest to the expurgation [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Many surviving copies still bear these interventions. In parallel, repression forced printers to relocate. Centers developed or strengthened in the Ottoman Empire, more tolerant: in Constantinople and Salonica, Hebrew printing houses operated from the early sixteenth century, notably welcoming Iberian exiles [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. In Safed, in Galilee, the Hebrew printing house experienced a tumultuous fate: the workshop of Éliézer ben Isaac Ashkenazi there produced significant works before a revolt of local populations against the pasha of Damascus in 1579 plunged the city to the brink of ruin. The presses resumed only in 1587, testifying to the fragility of peripheral publishing centers in the face of political contingencies [zakhor-online.com, "La Terre sainte au temps des Kabbalistes"]. According to historians, this displacement illustrates the resilience of a book culture capable of being reborn in the wake of persecutions.

Censorship continued to affect copies in circulation long after their printing. Books produced by workshops such as Di Gara's in Venice could be expurgated after the fact, their margins and pages annotated by ecclesiastical censors, in a gesture that transformed each volume into a material palimpsest of repression.

In the seventeenth century, Amsterdam established itself as a major new center, thanks to the relative freedom enjoyed by Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities in the United Provinces. The printer Menasseh ben Israël founded a renowned Hebrew press there in 1626 [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. Later, the typefaces designed in this city acquired such a reputation that the expression "Amsterdam letters" (otiyot Amsterdam) long designated a typographic ideal sought by printers in Central and Eastern Europe.

The following centuries witnessed the flourishing of major publishing houses, particularly in Eastern Europe. The Romm family, in Vilna, published between 1880 and 1886 a monumental edition of the Babylonian Talmud, known as the Talmud of Vilna (Shas Vilna), which established a page layout and apparatus of commentaries that themselves became normative [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. The siddur, prayer book, and the mahzor of festivals underwent countless editions, adapted to different rites — Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Italian — contributing both to standardizing the liturgy and to preserving its local variants [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. The printing press thus became an agent of unification as much as of preservation of diversity.

It was in this same Central European space, at the crossroads of Ashkenazi influences and Jewish Enlightenment, that the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest was founded in 1877 — one of the major institutions of European Liberal Judaism. Its library was enriched from its earliest years with precious volumes, including the Di Gara copy from the library of Rabbi Lelio Della Torre [Restitution of the "Di Gara"]. That one of the great Venetian presses of the sixteenth century thus found its place in the collections of a Hungarian rabbinical seminary founded three centuries later says something about the profound continuity that ran through the institutions of European Judaism: a single chain of transmission, from scribe to copyist, from printer to librarian.

The Shoah destroyed countless Jewish collections and libraries across Europe, making the surviving Hebrew book a precious witness to an annihilated world. Nazi occupiers conducted systematic plundering of Jewish institutions, confiscating manuscripts, printed books, archival items and religious objects throughout the occupied territories. In Budapest, during the German occupation of 1944, the library of the Rabbinical Seminary was partially looted: the Di Gara copy of the Five Books of Moses and the Haftarot disappeared, falling into obscurity for nearly eighty years [Restitution of the "Di Gara"].

Its reappearance in March 2023 on the online sales platform AbeBooks, offered at $19,000, strikingly illustrates the underground circulation of plundered cultural goods and the persistence of market networks that move them decades after the facts. Hungarian authorities, alerted to the matter, reported it to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, whose Cultural Property and Antiquities unit seized the book in New York in April 2023. A federal judge signed the confiscation order in October 2024, and a restitution ceremony was held at the Hungarian consulate in New York, the book returning to the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, which plans its conservation and an exhibition on its journey [Restitution of the "Di Gara"; U.S. Department of Homeland Security, press release of October 10, 2024].

This case is not isolated. It is part of a broader movement for the restitution of Jewish cultural goods undertaken since the 1990s, concerning both medieval manuscripts and modern printed works. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were also the age of scholarly study of the Hebrew book: the establishment of great bibliographies — foremost among them the work of Moritz Steinschneider, who catalogued the Hebrew printed books of the Bodleian Library in Oxford — gave rise to a rigorous discipline, founded on the examination of title pages, colophons, printer's marks and privileges [Encyclopaedia Judaica]. These marks — such as the Soncino tower or the emblems of Venetian workshops — often make it possible to identify and date editions, and today constitute valuable tools for the provenance investigations required by restitution procedures.

Post-war recovery efforts, followed by the contemporary digitization of collections, have made it possible to reconstitute part of the dispersed heritage. Today, institutions such as the National Library of Israel continue the inventory and online publication of Hebrew manuscripts and printed books, prolonging in digital form the long chain of transmission inaugurated by the scribes [Encyclopaedia Judaica].

Abraham Conat (dates unknown, active c. 1470–1480) — Printer established in Mantua, Abraham Conat is one of the earliest documented figures in Hebrew printing in Italy. His workshop produced Hebrew works in the earliest years of the 1470s, making Mantua one of the very first centers of Hebrew incunabula. He represents that generation of pioneers who transposed into the printed book the techniques and aesthetics of the manuscript, laying the foundations of an industry destined to unfold across the peninsula and beyond.

The Soncino Family (active c. 1483–1557) — Originating from the Lombard town of Soncino, this dynasty of printers — including Israel Nathan Soncino, then Gershom Soncino and his heirs — printed from 1483 some of the most remarkable Hebrew incunabula. In Soncino, then in Naples, Brescia, Pesaro, Fano, Ortona, Constantinople and Salonika, members of the family constituted a mobile editorial network covering Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Their edition of the complete and vocalized Hebrew Bible (1488) as well as their Talmudic treatises established enduring typographic standards. Their emblem — a tower — figures among the earliest Hebrew printer's marks recorded.

Daniel Bomberg (c. 1483–1549) — A native of Antwerp, Daniel Bomberg established himself in Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century and founded there the most influential Hebrew printing workshop of the era. Christian in faith but deeply invested in Hebrew book culture, he surrounded himself with learned Jewish correctors and produced between 1516 and 1549 hundreds of editions. The page layout of the Babylonian Talmud he published between 1519 and 1523 — central text framed by the commentary of Rashi and the Tosafot, pagination in recto-verso folios — remained normative to this day. He also printed in 1524 the first edition of the Jerusalem Talmud and the Miqraot Gedolot of 1524–1525.

Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah (c. 1470 – c. 1527) — Sephardic scholar established in Venice, Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah worked as corrector and scientific editor for Daniel Bomberg. He is principally known for having prepared the edition of the Miqraot Gedolot of 1524–1525, in which he established a Masoretic text founded on the systematic comparison of manuscripts. This edition constituted for several centuries the canonical reference for the Hebrew biblical text. His later conversion to Christianity, occurring toward the end of his life, earned him a controversial place in rabbinical memory.

Giovanni di Gara (active in Venice c. 1564–1610) — Christian printer established in Venice in the second half of the sixteenth century, Giovanni di Gara continued the tradition of Hebrew publishing inaugurated by Bomberg. His workshop notably produced an edition of the Five Books of Moses and the Haftarot of remarkable typographic quality, a copy whose documented provenance — from the library of Rabbi Lelio Della Torre to the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, then Nazi spoliation in 1944 and restitution in 2024 — makes it today an object both bibliographic and memorial of singular value.

Lelio Della Torre (1805–1871) — Rabbi and Italian scholar, Lelio Della Torre taught at the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano and was one of the figures of trans-Alpine liberal Judaism of the nineteenth century. An accomplished Hebraist, philologist and translator, he enriched his personal library with numerous ancient Hebrew prints, including the Di Gara edition of the Five Books of Moses and the Haftarot. After his death in 1871, his books were dispersed or acquired by institutions; the Di Gara copy entered around 1877 into the collections of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest. He remains a reference figure of Italian reformed Judaism.

Menasseh ben Israël (1604–1657) — Born in Madeira in a family of crypto-Jews, Menasseh ben Israël grew up in Amsterdam where he became rabbi, theologian and printer. In 1626, he founded the first Hebrew press in Amsterdam, which quickly became a center of first-rank publishing. A prolific author, he wrote in Hebrew, Spanish, Latin and English, and was one of the interlocutors of the learned Christian world of his time. He is chiefly known for his efforts with Cromwell in favor of the readmission of Jews to England (1655). His presses contributed to establishing the typographic reputation of the "Amsterdam letters."

Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) — Bibliographer and Orientalist born in Moravia, Moritz Steinschneider was the founder of modern scientific Hebrew bibliography. His catalogue of Hebrew prints in the Bodleian Library of Oxford (1852–1860) and his Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters constitute monuments of nineteenth-century philological erudition. By establishing rigorous methods of identification and dating of editions — founded on title pages, colophons and printer's marks — he laid the intellectual foundations of Hebrew bibliography as it is still practiced, including in modern restitution procedures.

From the Soncino workshop to the presses of Bomberg, from the Roman auto-da-fé of 1553 to the printing houses of Constantinople, Salonika, Amsterdam and Vilna, the Hebrew book tells a story made of continuity and rupture. Continuity is that of a sacred text transmitted with extreme care, from scroll to folio to digital file; rupture, that of expulsions, censorship and destructions that constantly forced the presses into exile. The Hebrew printed page — with its colophon, its workshop mark, its concentric commentaries and sometimes its censor's strikethrough — constitutes in this regard a total historical document, where one can read at once the faith, commerce, science and survival of a dispersed people.

The history of the Di Gara — exemplary produced by Giovanni di Gara in Venice at the end of the sixteenth century, passed into the hands of Lelio Della Torre, entered into the library of the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest, despoiled by the Nazis in 1944, reappeared on an online sales site in 2023, seized in New York and restituted in 2024 — sums up on its own the major lines of force of this book: the trans-European circulation of Hebrew books, their role in the constitution of Jewish scholarly institutions, their vulnerability in the face of persecutions, and the persistence of a will to recovery and memory. Printing was not merely a means of reproducing texts: it was one of the great instruments of diaspora unity — and the books it produced continue, century after century, to testify for those who made them, preserved them, lost them and found them again.