IN RECENT YEARS there has been increasing interest in the culture of reading and in the reading habits of various populations. However, even what is perhaps the major work on the history of reading in the West has only one chapter, by Robert Bonfil at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which discusses the reading of books among the Jews in the Middle Ages. The period with which we are concerned, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, receives no attention at all.

Scholars of non-Jewish European culture are fortunate in having access to catalogues of book fairs for the eighteenth century, and to the inventories of booksellers, although these alone are not enough to determine reading habits and the way in which reading influenced people's lives.To supplement information gleaned from the catalogues, historians make use of the memoirs of those who wrote about their reading experience. But what of the Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Our main sources are the contents of large libraries and private collections as recorded by bibliographers. These provide information on the numbers of titles and new editions, and permit classification by genre.They do not, however, tell us anything about the number of books printed. It is well known that books required for traditional religious and educational purposes in a formal setting were printed in large quantities—for example, the tractates of the Talmud, the Pentateuch, and the daily and festival prayer books—but little is known about other books.There is somewhat greater knowledge of books in the nineteenth century thanks to the spread of the Haskalah movement, which promoted books in its periodicals through announcements and book reviews, and the printers, publishers, and booksellers associated with the movement put out catalogues of their wares.

In the eighteenth century books were purveyed to the Jewish community by itinerant salesmen, some of whom were penniless writers, some virtually beggars, and others pedlars who sold their books alongside haberdashery and the like. These people played a key role in the distribution of popular literature, and continued to do so into the nineteenth century. This explains why one of the greatest Jewish writers, Shalom Jacob Abramowitsch (1835–1917) took the pen-name of Mendele Mokher Seforim (‘Mendele the book salesman’).

OVER THE PAST THIRUY OR SO YEARS I have written extensively on various aspects of the history of books in the Jewish world but have long felt the need for a more comprehensive account of that history. In 2002 I published a slim volume on the subject in Hebrew, entitled The Book as an Agent of Culture, 1700–1900, in an attempt to provide an introduction to the subject for the general reader. It incorporated revised versions of material previously published in a number of articles as well as new material deriving from my continuing research. The volume was published by Hakibbutz Hameuchad in its Heillal Ben-Hayyim Judaica Library at the suggestion of the founding editor of that series, Meir Ayali, who had long encouraged me in my research and writing. The present volume draws heavily on that work but is not a direct translation, though I must straight away thank Jeffrey Green of Jerusalem for diligently translating the Hebrew text as the basis for this present book.

The questions I raised in the Hebrew edition concerning the role of books in shaping and defining Jewish national identity have still not been conclusively answered; new questions have arisen in my mind, and new thoughts have taken shape. I have incorporated much of this new material in this volume, but would like to draw attention here to a matter I consider of particular relevance.

In the second, revised edition of his book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson noted the development of printing, especially in vernacular languages, as the key stimulus for the creation of a sense of national identities among European peoples. But the Jewish case is rather unusual; with the Jewish diaspora extending over all continents, there were several vernacular Jewish languages—for example, Judeo-German (Yiddish), Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), and Judeo-Arabic. The linguistic factor uniting the Jewish people was not their vernacular language, as Anderson would have it, but rather their ancient sacred language, Hebrew, which lay at the heart of Jewish religious life and education wherever Jews lived and throughout the centuries, till today. Thus, a discussion of the history of Hebrew books forms the core of my work here.

HALAKHIC AND TALMUDIC LITERATURE

This book is concerned primarily with literature other than the key works of halakhic and talmudic literature that form the main corpus of study in traditional Jewish education. I cannot, however, completely neglect the great changes that took place from the end of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth century in the methods of study and in the approach to the talmudic and halakhic texts that had moulded earlier generations.

Until the nineteenth century the Talmud was not sold as a single unit containing a complete set of tractates; the standard practice was to print it tractate by tractate, as required for study. The condition of the tractates that have come down to us from the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, particularly from eastern Europe, is poor; this suggests that they were in short supply, with each copy being used by many students. This was because the Jewish printing houses in eastern Europe could not compete with those elsewhere during this period, and as books had to be imported they were in relatively short supply. Even so, this did not prevent the study of the traditional texts, and the development of new techniques for studying them. Since the sixteenth century the influence of the technique of meticulous examination of the text inspired by the writings of Solomon Luria (the Maharshal) had been spreading. As it spread, it developed into the logical method of disputation known as pilpul or ḥilukim—a degeneration, in the opinion of some rabbis.

However, pilpul did not prevent the development of textual correction and emendation, editing, and close reading which are the basis of all critical study dating from the time of the yeshiva of the Maharshal.

Examination of data published by Yeshayahu Vinograd confirms, despite the inevitable errors and omissions, that the spread of printing made it possible for many writers to make their work known. Books by the most important authors were reprinted frequently, enabling their expert knowledge on such subjects as the laws of ritual slaughter to be disseminated to a whole new generation.

THE IMAGE of the nascent intelligentsia as a kind of Sleeping Beauty, awakened by the magical kiss of the literature made available by enterprising printers and booksellers, has been a recurrent theme in this book. Despite the great importance of those genres of Hebrew literature—mainly ethical and kabbalistic works—that flourished during the eighteenth century and were read avidly in the great Jewish centres in Poland, it appears that the most powerful stimulus, culturally speaking, came not from Hebrew literature but fromYiddish literature.

The absence of Jewish printing from Poland for some hundred years from the mid-seventeenth century did not lessen the demand for books among the Jewish population there. As we have seen, this demand was met by printers in Amsterdam and elsewhere in the German-speaking lands. But the silencing of the Polish presses nevertheless had important consequences. First, the extensive changes in eastern Yiddish in this period, in consequence of the introduction of Slavic words and for unrelated reasons, were never recorded. Second, as Chone Shmeruk has correctly noted, the continued printing of Yiddish books in Germany preserved in print the language and style of western Yiddish literature, and it was these works that circulated in eastern Europe.

The books most frequently published in Yiddish were ethical works with stirring titles such such as Isaac ben Eliakim of Posen's Lev tov (A Good Heart) and Elhanan Kirchen's Simh. at hanefesh (Joy of the Soul), and books of popular exegesis and homily such as Tsena urena.Because they were published in Yiddish, which was the vernacular language, they were read by a much wider circle of readers than books in Hebrew;most certainly they were accessible to women in a way that Hebrew texts were not. As such they gave an eager public of women as well as men a taste of rabbinical legends and the teachings of medieval rabbis that stimulated their thirst for knowledge.Then, in the midseventeenth century, as Chava Turniansky has shown, this awakening took a more serious and critical turn. Even before that time, cultural entrepreneurs and translators had published books that combined commentaries on the Bible and popular midrashim (legends) in Yiddish; now, however, they started to translate the Bible itself into Yiddish. The publication of books in the old style, such as Tsena urena,did not cease, but there was a move towards translating the texts themselves.

KABBALAH is the form of mysticism that developed among the Jews at the end of the twelfth century.While long consigned to the margins of scholarship as a strange phenomenon originating in hallucinations and culminating in illusions, as a result of the pioneering scholarship of Gershom Scholem it has come to be recognized as an integral part of Judaism which requires thorough study if we are to understand its place in Jewish culture.

So far, however, little scholarly attention has been given to the history of kabbalistic works in manuscript and print, their diffusion, and their public reception. The study of such factors could be highly significant in determining the role played by kabbalah in formulating the Jewish world-view and encouraging the longing for messianic redemption, as well as helping us understand the rituals and customs known to have been an important factor in stimulating the spiritual dimension of Judaism, which is essentially a religion of law. It would likewise help determine the role that kabbalah has played in shaping Jewish history, both through the spiritual leaders who adopted its tenets and through its influence on the general public. An examination of the diffusion and reception of different types of kabbalistic books and of the testimonies of those who read them, for example, could help us to evaluate the status and motive power of kabbalah in Shabateanism (the mass messianic movement of the seventeenth century), or in the hasidic movement established by Israel Ba'al Shem Tov in the eighteenth century. It may enable us, too, to flesh out the figure of the charismatic leader, who with one hand clung to halakhah, studying and observing it just like his ancestors and teachers, while in the other he clasped kabbalah, with, for the most part, no obvious tension between the two. Finally, such a study could provide a definitive answer as to whether kabbalistic works, by offering alternative approaches to Judaism, paved the way to the changes in Jewish consciousness that allowed the Haskalah and the spirit of modern times to take root, or whether they impeded the move towards modernity by enveloping Jewish consciousness in myths and superstitions, the forces of evil, demons, magical charms, and amulets.

AS I HAVE REPEATEDLY ACKNOWLEDGED in this book, Jewish bibliographers and librarians have played an immensely important role in the creation of a solid basis for the study of Jewish culture in an era of national rebirth.The significance of their work in collecting data on the history of the books published for the Jewish reading public in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and for an understanding of what that history implies is exemplified in the labours of Abraham Ya'ari, to whom this chapter is devoted.

I did not know Abraham Ya'ari. He died in 1967, shortly before I entered the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1968. I began my studies of Jewish philosophy, kabbalah, and Hebrew literature while still a member of a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley—a small partner in one of the great enterprises of Zionism that today's journalists and scholars often see, from the vantage point of fashionable cafés, as no more than a real estate development project. At that time, I met Abraham Shapira (otherwise known as Patchi), who was then, as today, a member of Kibbutz Yizra'el; and like Abraham Ya'ari, he was an important promoter of Hebrew culture.

One evening Shapira persuaded me to join him in a visit to the home of Yehudah Ya'ari, Abraham's brother. Like Abraham, Yehudah had studied library science, but devoted most of his life to creative writing. He sat us down in his large and impressive library. I am, of course, an insatiable bookworm, and he noticed that while Patchi was exchanging pleasantries with him, I was eyeing his books with curiosity. He asked if I was a student. I told him that I was. ‘In which department?’ ‘Jewish philosophy and kabbalah.’ Judah smiled and said: ‘Ha! Gershom Scholem's department! Well, I have a story for you about him and a book of mine. One day he came here, and like you, he was running his eyes over my books.His eyes lit up when he saw a particular book, which he removed from the shelf, saying to me: “From the six days of Creation, that book was meant to be in my library. How did it get to you? It seems that the First Cause has brought me here so that I can take it from you on permanent loan.”

JEWISH ETHICAL LITERATURE, which includes a number of different genres, began to appear in the tenth century under the influence of similar literature from Islam. Like Judaism, Islam is a religion of law, making it easy for the rabbis to adopt Islamic literary models and to fill them with content from Jewish sources and traditions. From this basis, Jewish ethical literature developed to include a broad spectrum of genres: wills, handbooks of recommended behaviour, hagiographies, epistles, anthologies of ethical ideas, proverbs, sermons, and polemics, as well as commentaries on books of the Bible deemed to offer moral lessons, such as Job, Proverbs, Psalms, and Ecclesiastes. Within this spectrum, rabbinic, philosophical, and kabbalistic approaches were all represented.This marvellous literature, which has been in existence now for more than a thousand years, is a source of encouragement and solace for many Jews. It is also a source for many folk religious customs that have their origin in tales, legends, and parables.

It is worth emphasizing that Jews did not have any collections of purely secular stories until the second half of the seventeenth century. These early publications were mainly in Yiddish; it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that such works began to be published in Hebrew. Prior to the midseventeenth century, then, the only books available for those who wanted to read material that was literary rather than strictly religious were works of an ethical nature. True, some works of a more religious nature also contained parables and stories, beginning with kabbalistic commentaries on the Bible (of which the Zohar is a prime example); and similarly, in the sixteenth century, Jacob ibn Habib compiled a collection of stories from the Talmud called Ein ya'akov (The Spring of Jacob).However, these works were written for the most part in high rabbinic Hebrew or Aramaic, and were thus inaccessible to the majority of the reading public because their Jewish education and literary skills were insufficient to allow them to read such works.

As the changes that occurred in the eighteenth century meant that literacy was no longer restricted only to a privileged elite, people began writing books that would appeal to this wider readership; it is no coincidence that at the end of the century popular homiletic books became more numerous.

THE INCREASED AVAILABILITY of printed books brought with it an increase in the number of libraries, both private and institutional.

The growth of private Jewish libraries consequent on the spread of printed books is, unfortunately, an area in which little information is available. However, the published will of the eighteenth-century rabbi Pinhas Katzenellenbogen, who served in communities in east Galicia, southern Germany, and Moravia, which appeared at the beginning of his autobiographical work Yesh manḥilin (There Are Bequeathers), shows that he purchased books, that he gave them to his son, and that he bequeathed them to his wife. This suggests that he saw them as valuable belongings and not only as a vehicle for study. One can assume that it was because he saw books in this way that he owned several editions of important works as well as manuscripts.

The catalogue of books in Katzenellenbogen's library gives us information both about the extent to which ethical literature in Hebrew had penetrated Jewish communities and about how far Yiddish literature and kabbalistic works had expanded their readership. Most were talmudic and halakhic works, but a considerable number were neither required reading in the established system of Torah study nor the halakhic works favoured by scholars: there were also kabbalistic works, ethical works, and books in Yiddish. His holdings in these latter categories are summarized below.The list of works in Yiddish shows that literature generally regarded as being aimed at women and children was nevertheless important enough for an eighteenth-century rabbi to list in his library.However, while these books may indeed have been read by other members of Rabbi Katzenellenbogen's household, it would be wrong to think that the contents of a collector's library would accurately reflect the type of books that were read by the Jewish masses. Even so, the relatively large number of more popular pamphlets and books in Katzenellenbogen's library—ninety-three, to be precise—does tell us that the interest in such publications was not necessarily limited to the lower strata of Jewish society. Likewise, the availability of books in Yiddish describing and explaining various rituals and other customs of kabbalistic origins would have undoubtedly influenced the spirituality of the members of the household as they related to actions that were part and parcel of everyday life.

REVIEWS OF JEWISH BOOKS in general and of Hebrew books in particular represent a stage in the development of Jewish journalism. Book reviews are an important element of any study of books in the Jewish world since they are a key way of drawing attention to works that potential readers might otherwise not know about.

In this sense, as in many others, Hebrew periodicals shaped public consciousness and opinion, and were a key agent of culture, and some background to put the subject in context is surely in order here. The significance of the topic cannot be overestimated: Henri Jean Martin, a disciple of Lucien Fèbvre, following other scholars, says that, while the eighteenth century was the age of the book, the nineteenth century was the age of the newspaper. As an ex-ample of what the study of journalism could contribute one might cite Richard Popkin's studies of the role of journalism as a voice for the French Revolution and its opponents, or Elizabeth Eisenstein's work showing that journalism replaced the preacher's pulpit as a source of influence on society, agitating vigorously for the advancement of secularization and as a focus of opposition to Western Christianity. Siegfried Henry Steinberg wrote a detailed survey of the development of journalism in Europe in various languages in which he notes that some English newspapers of the mideighteenth century saw the criticism of books as their main mission, even to the detriment of their continued existence. Elizabeth Eisenstein has also devoted a small book to the French cosmopolitan press from the days of Louis IV to the French Revolution in which she laments the fact that journalism, as an educator and as the first printed forum for book reviews, has been ignored by historians of the book and of culture. The period she covers goes beyond that of Steinberg by more than eighty years, and she rescues from oblivion two French intellectuals, Jean Cusson and Denis de Sallo, pioneer book-reviewers, who started a newspaper, Le Journal de Sçavans, on 5 January 1665 with the avowed purpose of ‘serving the Republic of Letters’.

But let us return to the subject of Jewish periodicals.The first forerunners of Jewish periodicals began to appear in the second half of the seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth century they positively flourished.

IN OCTOBER 1960 David Ben-Gurion made the following entry in his journal:

Yigael [Yadin] told me that he had received a letter from an Englishman (or an American), saying that he could obtain all the hidden scrolls that have been discovered and are in the hands of Bedouin, so long as the matter remained secret and he was paid one million dollars for each scroll.There are ten such scrolls. I told him the story about the rich Chinese man who drowned in a river.A poor fisherman recovered the body. The drowned man's sons came and demanded the body, and the fisherman asked for a large sum of money. The sons went to a lawyer and asked his advice. The lawyer said: the fisherman doesn't need the body, and no one else will come to take it from him.Therefore it is better for you to wait.They accepted his advice and did not go to the fisherman. The fisherman saw that days were passing, and the corpse was still in his house. He went to the same lawyer and asked his advice. What should he do? The lawyer told the fisherman: the sons can only recover the body from you, and not from anywhere else—therefore, wait. The story does not tell us how the matter ended, but you, Yigael, can wait, because in the end the scrolls will be published, and we will know their contents, and that is the main point.Wait.

Yadin waited.

Those of us who are involved in cultural history, or, if you prefer, intellectual history, are apt to forget that books, the mirrors that reflect life for us, are not life itself.Ordinary life requires the investment of many resources for routine maintenance, and in the above case, the requirements of daily life prevented Israel's first prime minister from agreeing to the request of one of the leading spokesmen for scholars of Jewish history and culture. Furthermore, it is only in recent years that scholars have begun to pay any attention to the history of books in the Jewish world and their public reception over the generations, or to examine their influence on people's daily lives. From this anecdote, and from what I have said so far, it may be concluded that, in parallel with efforts to collect and preserve Jewish writings over the generations, we also need to consider how they have been received.