541) Romancing the Manuscript: The politics of knowledge in Chatam Sofer’s rejection of print.

Manuscript fragment of Toledot Yeshu

Introduction

This article—drawing extensively on the research of Professor Maoz Kahana[1]—examines R. Moshe Schreiber (known as Chatam Sofer, 1762-1839) and his ambivalent stance toward the well-established print culture of Jewish books, which had flourished since its beginnings three centuries earlier in 1475. In place of embracing print as the dominant medium, he issued a striking call for a return to manuscripts. Chatam Sofer is a major rabbinic figure who “carries the aura of a founding figure in the sociological fabric of modern Judaism” (Kahana 2025:300). 

By privileging manuscripts, Chatam Sofer reinforced rabbinic control over textual transmission, resisting the democratisation of knowledge that print enabled. As opposed to mechanical printing, manuscripts circulated in smaller, more controlled circles, limiting exposure to the unorthodox ideas that sometimes sprouted from the Enlightenment movement (Haskalah), which—significantly—used print aggressively to promote its agenda. 

540) Theo-politics of early rabbinic printing and the race for first publication

Levush haOrah by R. Mordechai Jaffe first published in 1603

Introduction

This article—drawing extensively on the research of Professor Eric Lawee—examines the publication of rabbinic texts during the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods,^[1] in the aftermath of the invention of the printing press around 1450. It focuses on the printing struggles of R. Mordechai Jaffe (c.1530–1612)—also known as the Levush, or Baal haLevushim—and especially on the personal reflections contained in the epilogue to his Levush haOra. 

The first Hebrew books were printed in Rome around 1470. Rabbinic books (sefarim) were not always selfless, intellectual and spiritual contributions for the edification of the People of Israel. The reality of rabbinic publishing was far more complicated. Publishing was not just about scholarship, but also about authority, the tension between tradition and innovation, and the practical challenges of getting a manuscript into print. It was about survival in a crowded marketplace of ideas, where every published gloss and commentary bore the promise of Chashivut—legitimacy, influence, power and authority—for its author. But behind the finished published product sometimes lay a hidden world of rivalry, negotiation, polemics and politics.