Printing was started by non-Jews, however, Jews quickly entered the printing business. However, at times, Jews “borrowed” from non-Jews sources with some interesting repercussions.

Early on many of the Jewish books borrowed title pages from non-Jewish works. This was so, as early title pages utilized woodcuts, which were rather expensive to make. In an effort to cut costs, printers would reuse these woodcuts from other books. Soncino in his early Talmuds as well as in other books used the title page that was used for Aesop’s Fables. (See Marvin J. Heller, The Printing of the Talmud, p. 68-70)

In 1697 the Teshuvot haBakh were published for the first time. This first edition actually has two variant editions. The first one was published with a rather elaborate title page that included unclothed women. It appears this edition was immediately pulled and a second title page was substituted. This second page was much simpler with just two cherubs above the text of the title no more nudes. (For more on this topic of altering title pages, see Isaac Rivkind, Sefer Ashir B’Sha’arim, in Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, vol. 1 1953 p. 96-100; A. Freimann, “Ueber Schicksale hebraischer Bucher,” in Zeitschrift fur Hebrasche Bibliographie, X (1906) esp. p. 175)
More recently, R. Mordechai Yaffo’s Levush was republished. This reprint, aside from resetting the type, adding the Eliyaha Rabba and Zuta, and adding additional notes also includes an extensive introduction. This introduction traces the history of the various editions of the Levush as well as explaining its overall value. When it traces the printing history, it includes reproduces the title page of the first edition (Lublin 1589). However, this title pages has strategic white outs. In the first edition on the title page it includes female nudes, these are now whited out.

The inclusion of nudes was not that uncommon. I have seen other seforim that include such depictions either on the title page or at times even in the text. One notable example is a Mahzor published in Venice in 1710. This edition includes a depiction of semi-nude women right before the start of Barukh She’amar. From an artistic perspective this arguably adds to the book, however, from a religious perspective one must assume that it may offend some. However, there is no explanation for this picture so we are left to wonder what was the motive of the publishers.

On the Main Line asks how many seforim are actually out there. Although, it is probably impossible to give an exact count there are ways to give a fairly good estimate. In Y. Vinograd’s Thesaurus of the Hebrew Book, he lists by year the amount of seforim that were published. Vinograd’s work, however, only covers from the beginning of printing until 1863. According to that count I came up with approxiamatly 32,503 seforim published. The CD Rom, The Bibliography of the Hebrew Book which spans until 1960, estimates that they have approximately 85,000 titles. Now both of these lists include printed books and not individual books, thus, if a book was published multiple times it is counted as such. Consequently, we can’t tell how many seforim were actually written only that the number must be significantly less than those totals as many are probably reprints, siddurim, humashim and other works of no one single author.

Furthermore, this counting issue is compounded in that it is unclear what exactly would be considered a “sefer.” Should we include all books printed only in Hebrew or do other languages count? In both the above counts, they include books published in other languages. Also do the seforim have to be about “Jewish” topics or is it sufficent that they were written or published by a Jew. Some seforim are about what can be considered secular topics, natural sciences, math, history etc. Again the above lists include all of these. However, what the above lists don’t reflect is when multiple works are included in a single work. Should each of these works be considered a seperate work or not? Therefore, there really is no one single method to arrive at a number and all the figures have what to quibble with.

What is perhaps relevant to this discussion is R. Jacob Emden’s comments on the proliferation of seforim in his time. He says “How great is the hole in this orphaned generation. Any idiot or fool who’s spirit takes him can write a book, this is so even if he doesn’t know mikra, mishna u’derek eretz. He doesn’t have to know Hebrew nor is he congent of suta d’rabonon. He takes his stuff and displays it in the marketplace . . . and he wastes Jewish money.” R. Jacob Emden, Amudi Shamyim [Siddur], Ma’amodot l’yom rishon [p. 563 Eshkol ed.].

R. Emden continued and advocated for some board or committee to oversee what should and should not be considered worthy of printing.