566) From Manuscript to Print: Redefining the Borders of Rabbinic Authority

 

2024 marks the five hundredth anniversary of the Second Rabbinic Bible printed by Daniel Bomberg and edited by Yaakov ben Chaim Adoniyah.

Abstract

The shift from manuscript to print around 1450 was not simply a technological innovation, but a transformative theological encounter that reshaped the borders of rabbinic reach and authority. This paper examines how the introduction of print during the Renaissance period impacted and changed traditional rabbinic authority. Print indeed stabilised textual transmission through standardisation, yet it also created new tensions. Print inadvertently exposed the hidden disputes among the multiple and variant manuscript traditions, since only one version could be published. More importantly, printers with their editorial interventions and often-arbitrary selection of manuscripts began to displace rabbis as the prime mediators of tradition. Some rabbis, therefore, rejected the new technology, while others embraced the innovation as the printed book signalled the promise of authority and legitimacy. Historically, the material form of the printed book indeed became the decisive factor in shaping the future trajectory of the Mesora (rabbinic line of tradition) since it immediately identified who held authority in the rabbinic world. This paper argues, however, that the printing press also introduced a new and arbitrary rule—unknown before to the ancient line of transmission—He who prints first wins. 

New tensions as printing becomes the locus of rabbinic authority

The first Hebrew books (sefarim) were printed in Rome around 1470. Rabbinic books were not always selfless spiritual contributions for the edification of the People of Israel. The reality of rabbinic publishing was far more complicated. Firstly, publishing was not just about scholarship, but also about authority. Perceptions of authority must not be underestimated in rabbinic Judaism as it acts—and always has acted—as the determinant of the ‘correct’ tradition over variant, conflicting and ‘lesser’ traditions. Secondly, there were real, practical and financial challenges to get a manuscript into print. It was about survival in a crowded marketplace of ideas, where every published gloss and commentary held the promise of Chashivut—legitimacy, influence, power and authority—for its author. Behind the sleek published theological product sometimes lay a hidden world of rivalry, strategy, politics, and polemics.  

Printed rabbinic texts began to circulate far more widely and faster than the earlier manuscripts, reaching audiences unimaginable in earlier centuries. Where once multiple manuscript traditions coexisted, each with its own variations, the advent of print required the selection of a single manuscript to serve as the authoritative master version. This process of standardisation of texts often generated tensions, as cherished local manuscript traditions sometimes clashed with the newly established and ‘official’ printed editions. Thus, the printing press not only facilitated the unprecedented dissemination of rabbinic texts but also shifted “scholarly priorities” (Lawee 2025:103). 

The selection and elevation of certain manuscript works were often the random decisions of printers—both Jewish and non‑Jewish. Their choices profoundly shaped the trajectory of Jewish learning. In many cases, the specific texts that came to define future study curricula were not chosen for their intrinsic rabbinic authenticity, but rather because they were simply the first ones committed to print. As a test case, we shall examine an account of the personal printing struggles of R. Mordechai Jaffe, known as the Levush, as found in the epilogue to his Levush haOra.  

Mordechai Jaffe and the era of supercommentaries on Rashi

The Chief Rabbi of Posen, Mordechai Jaffe (c.1530-1612), offers a rare personal and candid glimpse into the Medieval world of rabbinic publishing. His writings demonstrate the battle for authority and the race to be the first to commit their manuscripts to print. The Early Modern period (c.1500-c.1800) was marked by the widespread popularity of supercommentaries (commentaries on commentaries) coalescing around the classical rabbinic biblical commentator, Rashi (1040-1105). This development of supercommentaries on Rashi was no accident. For centuries, the original authority of Rashi’s commentary on the Torah had already established a solid foundation upon which the later writers of these supercommentaries could vicariously build and assert their own legitimacy, control and authority. This leaning on Rashi for validity is in itself ironic because in Reggio di Calabria, Italy, 1475, the earliest printers—not the rabbis—selected the material that was to become the ‘official’ Rashi text. However, this material was not drawn from one source but from “extensive textual variants.” These numbered between dozens and hundreds of diverse ‘Rashi’ manuscripts! Additionally, the first dated Rashi manuscript was only copied 130 years after his death, and the first printed edition did not appear until over 350 years later (Abecassis 1999:i). Complicating matters further, numbers of previous anonymous writers frequently contributed to the original manuscripts of Rashi, “a practice already initiated during his lifetime,” making it “unlikely that we will ever know with precision what Rashi really wrote” (Leiman 2003:10-11). 

Consistent with the Early Modern supercommentary trend, Jaffe similarly compiled a supercommentary on Rashi. Fortunately, for our purposes, Jaffe’s writing was also a form of ‘egodocument,’ valuably disclosing his lived experience within the competitive world of nascent rabbinic publishing. 

Timing over content in the case of Judaism's most important legal work

Jaffe’s teacher, R. Moshe Iserless (known as Ramah), is renowned for his Ashkenazic glosses on one of the most important Jewish legal texts, the Code of Law (Shulchan Aruch), compiled by R. Yosef Karo specifically for Sefaradim.[1] Strikingly, Jaffe produced a work—his magnum opus, Levush Malchut—that mirrored and even rivalled his teacher’s glosses on the Code of Law.[2] Jaffe wrote in a clearer Hebrew style and offered a more readable alternative to the Code’s terse formulations. For a time, Jaffe’s work significantly challenged the dominance of the Code itself! But, ultimately, Jaffe was to be eclipsed by the Code because it beat him to the printing press. Jaffe was, therefore, “outpaced by the monumental achievements of Joseph Karo and his own teacher, Moses Isserles (Lawee 2025:106). The random reality of historical contingency left Jaffe’s important contribution as a fascinatingly ironic yet secondary voice in the story of the codification of Jewish law. The Code’s arrival in print—before Jaffe’s work made it to the press—became the “decisive factor” in the extraordinary success of the Code of Law that is universally consulted to this day (Lawee 2025:107). To put it simply, ‘He who prints first wins.’ 

Herein lies a further irony because within the evolution of the Code itself, there was also a subtle internal rivalry between its two co-authors—Yosef Karo and Moshe Isserles—as to who was going to finish first and reach the printing house first.[3] Karo won the race, and to this day—in the standard editions of the Code—Karo’s writing is presented in primary font, while Isserles appears in a secondary format, under the title “Hagah” (note).  Isserles writes: 

"While I was still along the path…a certain book [by Yosef Karo] was brought to me called Beit Yosef... When I saw it, my hands went weak, and my breath was taken away, for I said to myself: 'I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nothing...’” (Isserles, Introduction to Darkei Moshe, Orach Chaim). 

Thus, Jaffe was beaten by his teacher, Moshe Isserles, who in turn was beaten by Yosef Karo. While it is correct that the Code of Law was specifically “created with print in mind, and circulated faster and further, thanks to print” (Morsel-Eisenberg 2012:309), the “decisive factor” was still who physically got to the printing house first. This is because Jaffe also wrote his work with print in mind. It is well attested that Jaffe, similarly, had an “almost obsessive urge to write and publish books” (Sládek 2019:53-54), and indeed most of his works did eventually go to press (Lawee 2025:108). But still he was beaten to the press. 

Jaffe’s three instances of being beaten to the printing press

Jaffe’s other work, Levush haOra—the supercommentary on Rashi—was a labour of almost fifty years. In 1578, after about twenty-five years of writing and halfway through the process, his project was almost canned when his colleague, the Maharal of Prague, beat him to the press and published his own supercommentary on Rashi, titled Gur Aryeh. This was the second time Jaffe had been beaten to the press.

“Jaffe greeted the publication of [Maharal’s] Gur Aryeh with despair. In describing the event in his epilogue [to Levush haOra], he speaks of the new [Gur Aryeh] supercommentary having ‘spread throughout the world,’ using the exact phrase he had once used to describe the rapid dissemination of Shulhan Arukh [the Code of Law]” (Lawee 2025:108).

Besides the Code and Gur Aryeh, Jaffe experienced a third defeat in the race to the printing press. R. Eliyahu Mizrachi (1455-1525, known as Re’em)—a Romaniote Jew of Greek descent[4]—also preceded him with another Rashi supercommentary, titled Sefer haMizrachi. Thus Jaffe had been beaten to the press by the Code, Gur Aryeh, and Sefer haMizrachi. Jaffe soon recognised that without the sustained support of patrons and their perception of his work’s suitability, even writings of genuine scholarly merit would remain unpublished. In the competitive arena of early modern publishing, the principle was abundantly clear: whoever published first prevailed. The first text to reach print typically established the epistemological authority for future generations—that is, it came to be perceived and recognised as the authorised source of correct knowledge, irrespective of competing manuscripts or alternative traditions. 

The Talmudic texts

Going back several centuries, the Talmud, produced between the first and seventh centuries, is the most important and influential of all rabbinic writings. The Savoraim (500-650 C.E.), also known as the Stammaim,[5] who edited the Talmud during the one and a half centuries after the official Talmudic period, depicted a:

“competitive environment characterized more by struggle than by mutual collaboration” (Rubenstein 2003:64).

The huge corpus of important editorial work by the Stammaim remains anonymous:

“[T]here is the anonymous redactional layer, which constitutes just over half of the total text of the Babylonian Talmud and which frames the discussion of the rest. This framework, post-dating the [Talmudic] statements of identified figures, introduces questions, often provides solutions, and, in general, controls the interpretation of the earlier sources” (Elman 2005:19).

This was even when these anonymous editors were separated from the original contributors, sometimes by many centuries. The Babylonian Talmud comprises more than 1.8 million words overall, yet its anonymous redactional layer alone comprises almost one million words. This indicates that even a thousand years before print, at the height of rabbinic manuscript culture, texts were reworked and at the mercy of anonymous redactors, without whom those texts would not have survived. The Talmud occasionally even presents biblical verses that differ from our standard editions.

Daniel Bomberg and the printing of the Talmud and Hebrew Bible

Daniel Bomberg (1483-1549) was the father of religious Jewish printing and publishing. Yet he wasn’t just a printer—he became the main conduit for the preservation of Jewish texts as we know them. Bomberg published about two hundred Jewish books and, most significantly, the Talmud. The ‘traditional’ distinctly geometric layout of a typical printed page of the Talmud, known as Tzurat haDaf (format of the page), is said to be beneficial for students—almost as if it has some mystical significance. Bomberg adopted and perpetuated aspects of the earlier Joshua Soncino format of 1483, with what is known as ‘foliation.'[6] This became and remains the universal format of the Talmud page, with Rashi commentary on the ‘inside’ and Tosefot on the ‘outside’ of the spine.

As for mystical significance to this layout, firstly, Bomberg was a Christian. Secondly, the pragmatics of printing involving costs and limited page space resulted in chance and random format solutions. The 1523 edition of the Bomberg Talmud was published with the approval of Pope Leo X, who showed special favours to the Jews. He believed that the printing of the Talmud would help him in the ascension of the Church and exhibited an “open advocacy of the Talmud” (Amram 1909:160). One of Bomberg’s main consultants was Felix Pratensis, a Jew who had converted to Christianity and became an Augustinian Friar. It was Felix Pratensis who first encouraged Bomberg to publish Jewish books in the first instance. Jews were not permitted to own printing presses, but they were allowed to operate them, under the patronage of non-Jewish owners.

Bomberg’s earlier 1517 printing of the Pentateuch, titled Mikraot Gedolot, arranged the biblical text into chapters and verses. Although this reference system had been in use in Christian circles since the thirteenth century, this was the first time it was used in a printed text of the Torah. It has remained the standard printing procedure ever since.

In a further development, a second revised and corrected edition of Mikraot Gedolot was published a while later, this time with Tunisian-born Yaakov ben Chaim Adoniyah (1470-1538)—an expert in Nikud or vocalisation—as editor. Adoniyah had been hired by Bomberg and his text became the format for all future Hebrew Bibles. Adoniyah also converted to Christianity—yet his edition remains the Jewish standard in use today:

“The text of the 1524-25 Rabbinic Bible, that which was edited by Ibn Adoniyah, came to be recognised as the true Masoretic text” (Snaith 1968:XI in Ginsburg 1867).

Three centuries later, David Ginsburg (1831-1914), an ex-yeshiva student from the prestigious Polish rabbinic academies, seemed to perpetuate the anomaly of those involved in preserving sacred Jewish texts by also converting to Christianity. He considered Adoniyah as a type of ‘mentor. Ginsburg changed his name to Christian David Ginsburg and informs us it wasn’t only the ‘Rabbinic Bible’ or Mikraot Gedolot that Adoniyah edited, but additionally:

“we find that editio princeps of the entire Babylonian Talmud, published by Bomberg in 1520-1523, was partly edited by Jacob b. Chajim [Adoniyah]… Ibn Adonijah also worked on the editio princeps of the Jerusalem Talmud which he carried through the press in 1522-23… His assiduity was truly marvelous…within twelve months…he edited…the stupendous legal and ritual code of Maimonides, entitled, Mishne Thora…To this code, which appeared in 1524…Ibn Adoniyah wrote an Introduction” (Ginsburg 1867:5).

This way, Adoniyah’s hand had shaped the most important works that define what Judaism is today.

Is the first text to reach print always the most accurate?

During the nineteenth century, a handwritten text by R. Baruch Teomim Frankel—also known as Baruch Taam (1760-1828)—was discovered. The text comprises thousands of his commentaries on the Code (Shulchan Aruch). The interesting thing is that it differs, in dozens of instances, from the official printed version of the same text. This is not an isolated instance where somehow the ‘official’ original text gets distorted and interpolated in the process of printing. This may have to do with the differing perspective on ownership of texts where the scribes and editors also owned the texts, not just the writers:

“[A]uthorial texts may also reflect a medieval concept of intellectual ownership altogether different from the modern one, namely, a concept of collective ownership. This attitude may also explain the editorial freedom exercised by scribes in reproducing texts” (Beit-Arié 2000:229).

There is also an important difference in the way Hebrew texts were copied as opposed to Latin texts, which were produced in institutional copying centres and cathedral schools. In Islam, if a published book was available, scholars were advised not to copy a book unless a professional scribe could be hired (Rosenthal 1947:9-10). Hebrew medieval texts, however, were not subjected to the control of intellectual establishments. The result was that effectively:

“[N]o authoritative supervision was involved in the transmission of Hebrew texts… [and] it must also have affected the transmission of written texts and their versions (Beit-Arié 2000:229-10).

Additionally, due to the complications of Medieval Jewish publication:

“texts were disseminated at various stages of their creation and revision, and their authors were usually prevented from controlling what happened to them…in sharp contrast to ecclesiastical and political control over the development of scripts…in the Graeco-Latin world.” (Beit-Arié 2000:236).

Adding to the complexity, Hebrew scribes often functioned as editors—emending readings, making diagnostic conjectures, collating divergent exemplars, and occasionally adding external material or personal judgments—in pursuit of what Kantorowicz calls a richtige (correct) text rather than an echte (authentic) version of the original. This frequently resulted in a process of deconstructing then reconstructing the text (Beit-Arié 2000:236-7). Arguably, the Hebrew Prayer Books suffered even more than the traditional scholarly literature, as they “were virtually created by scribes” (Beit-Arié 2000:238).

Rabbinic resistance to print

This study has thus far focused on printed texts and the rabbinic race to print first. However, there were some rabbis who were not prepared to embrace the new printing technology and held on to the notion that manuscripts should prevail in handwritten form as the essential medium for Torah transmission. This opposition persisted up to the nineteenth century when R. Moshe Schreiber (known as Chatam Sofer, 1762-1839) issued a striking call for a return to manuscripts. Schreiber 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, Schreiber 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 inaccurate or unorthodox ideas that sometimes sprouted from the Enlightenment movement (Haskalah), which used print aggressively to promote its agenda. Shreiber is often promoted as a champion of source-critical Hebrew texts, but according to Kahana, it seems he was less concerned with textual nuance and accuracy than with idealising the past and reasserting rabbinic authority and control in a time of upheaval: 

“His nostalgic portrayal of the manuscript age—historically inaccurate yet rhetorically effective—served to imagine an idealized world of learning governed by rabbinic judgment, restraint, and ordered transmission” (Kahana 2025:299). 

In this interpretation, Shreiber’s idealisation of manuscript culture had less to do with love of handwritten manuscripts and aversion to printed books; instead, it was a strategic move to retain, assert and foster rabbinic authority over a new modern world that was resisting it. 

I have argued elsewhere,[7] based on Netanel (2007:839), that the famous Venetian printing feud between the Bragadini Press and Giustiniani Press during the sixteenth century (which had some bearing on future copyright law), can be seen as part of the ongoing Maimonides Controversies between the Jewish mystics and Maimonidean rationalists, with the mystics financing or at least encouraging the rival Giustiniani Press. This press had previously published Nachmanides’ Commentary on the Torah, described as “a mystical work against Maimonides”.[8] I contend that the same dynamics of print as a means to authority were used tendentiously—in that Venetian printing feud—by the mystics, to finance the Giustiniani Press to undercut the Bragadini Press, which had published the radically rationalist Maimonidean Guide for the Perplexed (Camarda 2017:31). This reinforces the argument that—not just printing first—but printing in general, carried the promise of authority—not just for individual rabbis—but also for theological movements within the same religion.

Does theology produce books or do books produce theology?

At this point, an interesting question emerges: What was more influential in shaping Jewish ideology—books or theology? Obviously, there is an overlap because you cannot have religious books without an underlying theology, but to what extent do published books inspire dominant and ontologically authoritative theologies?

In 1534, the three Helicz brothers—Shmuel, Asher and Elyakim—began a modest printing venture in the early days after the invention of the printing press. It was the first Jewish printing business in Poland.

Their strategy was to publish works that had not been published before to outsmart the competition. Although they were the only Hebrew publishing house in Poland, there was fierce competition from the major Hebrew presses in Prague and Italy. This is why their early publications were, intentionally, practical handbooks and not large canonical works. Also, their products were relatively cheap compared to the other larger printing houses (Teter and Fram 2006:37).

Notwithstanding all their market research and thorough preparation, their strategy failed, and their press closed down in 1535. In keeping with the strange anomaly of Christian engagement in Jewish printing, the three brothers soon converted to Christianity and changed their name to Paul, Andreas, and Johannes Helicz. Paul Helicz was personally responsible for arranging the baptism of thirteen or fourteen Jews to Catholicism, and on that same day King Sigismund I granted him the monopoly on the import and sale of all Hebrew books in Poland. They were also given money as well as a piece of ground on which to build a house. Additionally, the Helicz brothers were given access to new sources of paper, and their business grew. Around 1539, they produced—not handbooks—but prestigious works like the Arba’ah Turim with over 500 folios.

“All of the Helicz brothers’ books that had been published while they were Jews had been printed on generic paper stock that had very simple watermarks reflecting only the wires and chains used in the production of the paper. As Christians, however, they were able to purchase better-quality paper with distinguishable watermarks… The vast majority of the paper used by the brothers in the production of their postconversion books published for the Jewish community had a double-cross watermark, the stock of paper that had been used for some time by both the Cathedral Chapter in Cracow and the bishop’s office” (Teter and Fram 2006:41).

The problem was that now, although successful printers, the Jews refrained from supporting them:

“Struggling to sell their stock of books, the brothers resorted to deception” (Teter and Fram 2006:47).

They decided to backdate their printed work to 1532, which was before their apostasy. However, the good quality double-cross printing paper was a give-away to the perceptive eye. Then,

“On December 31, 1539, King Sigismund I responded to the brothers’ pleas and issued a decree forcing the Jewish communities of Cracow, Poznań, and ‘Russia’ (Lwów) to purchase all of the remaining inventory of Hebrew books held by Paul, Andreas, and Johannes Helicz…” (Teter and Fram 2006:53).

The Helicz brothers were again given another injection of funding, but unwilling to take any chances, they began to produce works for the Christian community and—not forgetting their original birth community—in 1540 they even printed a Yiddish translation of the New Testament. The work was dedicated to the Bishop of Cracow, Piotr Gamrat. According to Encyclopedia Judaica, Paul "became a Catholic missionary among Polish Jews".

But this is not the end of the story because in 1551, a printer in Constantinople published a vocalised version of the Hebrew Bible with Rashi’s commentary. On the title page, the following inscription is to be found:

“… Do not call me Shemu’el…but rather Shevu’al ([one] who has returned to God (she-shav le-’el) …After my return [to Judaism], I considered what to do. I said that this [printing the Bible] will bring me relief from my deeds and the toil of my hands” (cited in Teter and Fram 2006:62).

That printer, who had then moved to Constantinople, was none other than Paul (or Shevu’al) Helicz. The case of the Helicz brothers underscores the partisan nature of early printing and the irony that a range of interests, not merely the scramble to print first, determined which texts were produced.

Conclusion

Since the beginning of print to this day, many readers of published theological works assume that completed printed books reflect an almost Divine sanction. This study argues that a more critical engagement with the conjected authority of published theological literature is essential, because the corpus we inherit often reflects the contingencies of publication—who printed what, when, and why—rather than an unmediated record of doctrinal development.

The world of Medieval and Early Modern rabbinic printing was never merely about ink and paper. It represented a theo-political dynamic, somewhere between a holy endeavour and a political struggle. It was a battleground where authority, prestige, and survival were contested, revealing how precarious the transmission of religious values could be when entangled with human ambition. In a stark theological irony, religious authority—meant to rest on eternal truth—could in practice hinge on something as contingent as who got to the publishing house first.

 

Bibliography

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Lawee, E., 2025, ‘The Long Road to Rashi Supercommentary: R. Mordekhai Jaffe’s Epilogue to Levush ha-Ora’, Tradition, vol. 57, no. 3, 103-115.

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Sládek, P., 2019, ‘A Sixteenth-Century Rabbi as a Published Author: The Early Editions of Rabbi Mordecai Jaffe’s Levushim’, in Connecting Histories: Jews and Their Others in the Early Modern Period, Edited by David Ruderman and Francesca Bregoli, University of Pennsylvania Press.

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             Online source: http://www.ericlevy.com/Revel/BenChayim-Intro.pdf, Retrieved 21 July 2026.

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[1] Ashkenazim are western European Jews. Sefaradim are eastern or oriental Jews. Each group have their specific and unique religious laws and traditions.

[2] More specifically, it was the first five of the ten sections of his magnum opus, Levush Malchut (collectively known as the Levushim), that rivalled the Shulchan Aruch. The tenth section of the Levushim is his Levush haOra, the ‘egodocument’ which we shall examine.

[3] Technically, this episode relates to Yosef Karo’s earlier work Beit Yosef (a commentary on the Arba'ah Turim of Yaakov ben Asher, d. 1340), which he later condensed into the Shulchan Aruch. Moshe Isserles likewise first wrote his commentary on the Arba'ah Turim, titled Darkei Moshe haAroch (the long version). After Karo published his Beit Yosef, Isserles produced a shorter version, Darkei Moshe haKatzar, also on the Arba'ah Turim, so his material could be used alongside Karo’s work. Later, when Karo condensed the Beit Yosef into the Shulchan Aruch, Isserles supplied concise glosses to that work, titled haMapah (the ‘Tablecloth,’ to correspond to Karo’s Shulchan Aruch or ‘Set Table’) to record Ashkenazi practice alongside Karo’s Sefaradic rulings. 

[4] Romaniote Jews are a distinct, Greek-speaking Jewish community with a continuous presence in Greece and the Mediterranean for over 2,300 years. They are the oldest Jewish community in Europe, predating both Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions, and historically used Yevanic (Judeo-Greek) rather than Yiddish or Ladino.

[5] A term coined by David Weiss Halivni.

[6] According to the Dictionary of Book Conservation and Descriptive Bibliography, foliation refers strictly to 'the numbering of the leaves of a book or manuscript,' whereas pagination represents 'the numbering of pages... [which] began to replace foliation near the end of the 16th century'.

[7] Online source:

https://www.kotzkblog.com/2019/02/214-maharam-of-padua-and-disastrous.html. Retrieved 31 July 2026.

[8] On source: https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/maimonidean-controversy. Retrieved 31 July 2026.