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Category: Title Pages & Book Design

A Conspiracy Theory To Explain A Racy Title Page

A Conspiracy Theory To Explain A Racy Title Page

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We have discussed on multiple occasions the use of illustration of nudes to adorn the title pages of Hebrew books. It appears, again as we have seen before, that even though the appearance of such illustrations are really unremarkable, some will go to great lengths to either expunge or, in this case, explain away the appearance of such illustrations. In the April, 2008, Jerusalem Judaica auction catalog (provided below) they have a rather rare work of R. Yitzhak Hiyut (c….

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Stolen Title Pages: The Case of An Unknown Contemporary Plagiarist

Stolen Title Pages: The Case of An Unknown Contemporary Plagiarist

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The title of this post – “Stolen Title Pages” – is not mine, instead, I have borrowed it from Chaim Lieberman. I have used this title because there are many forms of plagiarism – some, totally innocent – others involving lack of citation, borrowing a sentence here or there, but the plagiarism under discussion in this post is much worse than all of the above. The plagiarism discussed in this post is limited to just changing the title page –…

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To Adolf, from Cecil

To Adolf, from Cecil

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During a Sunday afternoon trip to Biegeleisen in Boro Park, I came across 650-page collection of rare letters from the personal collection of R. David Solomon Sassoon (of Jerusalem, Israel) that has just been published in Israel, I hope to discuss this new publication in some detail in the following weeks, however, I did want to first make mention of the 1941 biography of the Sassoon family, written by British scholar and Oxford-trained historian Prof. Cecil Roth. In the short…

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Names of Seforim I

Names of Seforim I

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The names utilized for Seforim are rather unique. As opposed to most cultures who title their books based upon their content (think Da Vinci Code about a code Da Vinci did), Jewish book titles, for the most part, have no relationship to their content. Additionally, for many, the title of the books supersedes that of the actual author to such an extent that many authors are only known by their book titles. So while many are aware of the Shach…

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Racy Title Pages Update II

Racy Title Pages Update II

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While I do not intend to focus solely on racy title pages, I do have a futher update to my previous posts I, II. It appears that the title page used in the Levush (Prauge, 1590) was actually a recycled page. It was first used in the Prague 1526 Haggada. Now aside from this page, which we have seen is objectionable to some today, there were other objectionable illustrations in this edition. Yerushalmi in his Haggadah and History, notes that…

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Racy Title Pages Updated

Racy Title Pages Updated

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As I had previously noted, many older seforim include what may be deemed objectionable by today’s standards. I had mentioned how one book had attempted to rectify this, the new edition of the Levush. In this edition the title pages from some early editions of the Levush are included in the introdoction, however the title pages has been “touched up.” Now that I have learned how to include images, I present both the original and the touched up version. Although,…

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Racy Title Pages

Racy Title Pages

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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…

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