The first printed book with a significant amount of Yiddish text, Mirkeves hamishne, appeared in Krakow circa 1534. From there, Yiddish publishing would spread to other parts of Europe, particularly Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In the mid-sixteenth century, Cornelio Adelkind, a printer in Venice, engaged the services of Elijah Levita (1468/1469-1549), the famous grammarian, lexicographer, and editor of Hebrew and Yiddish books, to translate the book of Psalms into Yiddish for the benefit of “the pious girls” and “those househol♏ders who did not have time to study in their youth” and therefore could not understand the text in the Hebrew original. Adelkind writes in the postscript of the book, which appeared in 1545, that he planned to have Levita translate Proverbs, Job, and Daniel, and perhaps even the rest of the Hebrew Bible, but it seems that the advanced age of both men and/or the dissolution of Adelkind’s partnership with Meir ben Jacob Parenzo prevented the fulfillment of his wishes.

Still, the Levita translation, the first Yiddish imprint on Italian soil, was, according to Israeli doyen of Yiddish studies Chone Shmeruk, “very well received and served many generations of Yiddish speakers throughout the Ashkenazic Diaspora in various later editions.” It was first reissued in Zurich in 1558 and then again in Mantua four years later. The latter edition, a copy of which comprises the present lot, included two new features: the original text of Psalms, as well as a Hebrew commentary, Kav ve-naki, culled from the works of Rashi and Rabbi David Kimhi by Rabbi Shalom ben Abraham. It was publiꩵshed in conjunction with a translation of the prayer book into Yiddish that appeared the same year at the same press. The Mantua edition of Psalms would go on to be reprinted in Krakow in 1598.

Provenance

David ben🐻 Solomon (Zalman) ben Raphael, [5]472 [1712] (?) (f. [1r])

Literature

Chone Shmeruk, “Defusei yidish be-italyah,” Italyah ꧙;3,1-2 (1982): 112-175, at pp. 113-115, 143-144 (no. 13).

Moshe N. Rosenfeld, “The Origins of Yiddish Printing,” in Dovid Katz (ed.), Origins of the Yiddish Language (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987), 111-126, at p. 1💞18.

Chava Turniansky, Erika Timm, and Claudia Rosenzweig (eds.), Yiddish in Italia (Milan: Associazione italiana Amici dell’Università di Gerusalemme, 2003), 😼111 (no. 54).

Chava Turniansky, “Special Traits of Yiddish Literature in Italy,” in Chava Turniansky, Erika Timm, and Claudia Rosenzweig (eds.), Yiddish in Italia (Milan: Associazione Italiana Amici dell’Università di Gerusal🐲emme, 2003), 🧸191-196, at pp. 194-195.

Vinograd, Mantua 91

Isaac Yudlov and G.J. Ormann, Sefer ginzei yisra’el: sefarim, hoverot, va-alonim me-osef dr. yisra’el mehlman, asher be-beit ha-sefarim ha-le’ummi ve-ha-universita’i (Jerusalem: JNUL, 1984), 32 (no. 72).