Uncovers the history of creative adaptation and transformation through a close analysis of the creation of the Sefer Hasidim book.
 
In 1538, a partnership of Jewish silk makers in the city of Bologna published a book entitled Sefer Hasidim, a compendium of rituals, stories, and religious instruction that primarily originated in medieval Franco-Germany. How these men, of Italian and Spanish descent, came to produce a book that would come to shape Ashkenazic culture, and Jewish culture more broadly, over the next four centuries is the basis of this kaleidoscopic study of the history of Hebrew printing in the sixteenth century.
 
During these early years of printing, the classic works of ancient and medieval Hebrew and Jewish literature became widely available to Jewish (and non-Jewish) readers for the first time. Printing, though, was not merely the duplication and distribution of pre-existing manuscripts, it was the creative adaptation and transformation of those manuscripts by printers. Ranging from Catholic Bologna to Protestant Basel to the Jewish heartland of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Joseph A. Skloot uncovers the history of that creativity by examining the first two print editions of Sefer Hasidim. Along the way, he demonstrates how volumes that were long thought to be eternal and unchanging were in fact artifacts of historical agency and contingency, created by and for human beings.
 

"“Skloot’s monograph brings an admirable counterbalance to this broad picture of early Jewish printing. His is a perspective wherein, indeed, the book as the canonical version of the text appears in print but it also accounts for the creativity and consciousness of the bookmakers who actively maneuvered between material, political, and commercial necessities implicit in textual labor.”" - European Journal of Jewish Studies

"“By employing the scholarly paradigm of microhistory, the author masterfully . . . sheds light on broader questions surrounding the early days of the printing press. . . . By zooming in on these particular editions, the author provides valuable insights into the interplay between Jewish literature, the printing press, and the complex sociocultural landscape of the time.”" - Jewish Link