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28 — Approbation Apulia

On the first day the Talmud belonging to Jews. of the New-Year festival 5314, in order that the sorrow for their holy booKS might be made the keener, these autos da fe of the books began (Perles, p. 221, note 1; Steinschneider, in Ersch and Gruber, "Allg. Encykl. p. 30; Zunz, " S. P.," p. 336; Gratz, "Gesch. der Juden," ix. 336). On June 21, 1554 (Tammuz 21, 5314, as may be calculated from the Hebrew chronogram D'Ofll D3? {D' HC ?H), a convention of Italian rabbis was held at Ferrara, presided over by R. Mei'r Katzenellenbogen of Padua. They

among

other matters, that thereafter no Hebrew book, not then printed, should be published without the written approval of three rabbis and the president of the congregation, and that all Jewish purchasers of books printed without such Approbation should be liable to a fine of 25 gold scudi ($24.25), which was to be turned into the Jewish poor-box. (These resolutions, accompanied by notes by Levi and Halberstamm, were published in Brody in 1879 as a rePubprint from the journal " Ibri Anokhi." lication They were also published in " Pahad Without Yitzhak," p. 158, Berlin, 1888, edited Approba- by the Mekize Nirdamim Society.) tion From this period the congregational Forbidden, authorities and rabbis were invested with the power to grant and to refuse permission to print in the chief cities where publishing-houses existed (Steinschneider, I.e. p. 30; Popper "Censorship of Hebrew Books," pp. 94 et seq.). Paragraph 12 of the resolutions of the Frankfort Rabbinical Synod of 1603 prohibited the publication of any book in Basel or anywhere in Germany without permission of three rabbis (Horowitz, "Die Frankfurter Rabbinerversammlung vom Jahre 1603," Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1897; appended to the invitation issued by the Israel. Religionssclmle). Paragraph 37 of the regulations of the Portuguese Talmud Torah community in Amsterdam reads: " No Jew shall print books in Amsterdam in a foreign or in the Hebrew language without permission Mahamad, under penalty of the confiscaof the tion of the books " (Castro, " De Synagoge der Port. Israel. Gemeente te Amsterdam," appendix B, p. 40, The Hague, 1875). The manuscript, in Spanish, of these regulations is in the Rosenthal Library, Amsterdam. In the same way, several governments for instance, in the case of books printed in Prague decreed that the rabbinate of the country should be responsible through its Approbation for every Hebrew book published (Kaufmann, in " Jew. Quart. resolved,

'

'

—

Rev." x. 384). That the enemies of the Jews did not approve of the right to give or withhold haskamot thus conferred

upon the

28

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

rabbis

and presidents of the congre-

appears from the following passage in Sehudt (" Jiid. Merkwurdigkeiten," iv. 206): "More harmful yet and more evil is it that the Jewish rabbis and presidents of their communities not only censor and approve the books printed or published for or by them, but also grant prohibitions preventing others from printing them, and place their haskamah or consent in front of the book which certainly is a grievous and illegal encroachment upon gations



the rights of the magistrates and the privileges of

the sovereign." Wagenseil in his book " Prolegom. ad Tela Ignea Satani," p. 26, styles it sheer impudence on their part, and says, " It is an intolerable and shameful crime," attempting to show its unreasonableness, and the injury it works to the authorities, in most emphatic words.

In spite of all these regulations, the custom of asking for approbations from rabbis and congregational authorities did not at first secure much foothold among Jews, esNot

Welcomed pecially among Regarded as a by the

the Jews of Italy. Christian custom, it

Thus, in spite solemn Ferrara resolutions, Shem-Tob b. Shem-Tob's "Sefer ha-Emunot" appeared in Ferrara itself in 1557 without any Approbation, and the editio princeps of Menahem Zion ben Me'fr's commentary on the Pentateuch was published in 1559 by Vicenti Conti in Cremona, also without the requisite haskamah. But in the second

Jews.

was never welcomed.

of

the

half of the seventeenth century, owing to the excitement and tension induced by the appearance of the false Messiah, Shabbethai Zebi, there began to be quite a lively demand for approbations; and in the eighteenth century, with the exception of a few prayer-books and Judaeo-German productions, there was scarcely a work published without a rabbin-

haskamah. Faithful Jews would not read a book which lacked one. The fact that Moses Mendels-

ical

sohn dared to publish his translation of the Penta'teuch without a rabbinical Approbation appears to have been one of the reasons for its proscription by the rabbis in many places, and for its being pubburned, as at Posen (Mendelssohn, " Schriften,"

licly

vi. 447).

The examination of books submitted for Approbawas often a very superficial one. The bitter results of such carelessness are shown by the histion

tory of that sly rascal, Hayyun (see Gratz, " Gesch. der Juden," x. 315, and Kaufmann, in "Rev. Et. Juives," xxxvi. 256). Cautious rabbis, who looked with disfavor upon the popular mania for writing, avoided, as far as possible, issuing these licenses for new works. Thus in Poland the rabbis of "The Four Lands" agreed to grant them formally and only in exceptional cases, instead of giving them, as had hitherto been the case, at their casual meetings at fairs and annual markets, where large numbers of Jews came together (compare Steinschneider, in Ersch and Gruber, I.e. p. 31 and Dembitzer, "Abhandlung liber die Synode der Vier Lander in Polen und Lithauen," Cracow, 1891 London, " Abne Zikkaron," in "Ha-Modia' la-Hodashim "). Since approbations were frequently sought by traveling scholars, who depended for their livelihood upon the publication of their works, many a book is found to contain ten, twelve, and even more approbations by the various rabbis whom the author visited upon his travels. These haskaOf mot, therefore, afford valuable contriHistorical butions to the history of Jewish conValue, gregations and of particular rabbis. Many names of rabbis and presidents of the seventeenth century may be said to emerge from obscurity mainly through these printed approbations. Moritz Pinner was the first (Berlin, 1861)