Hebrew printing הדפוס העברי

Printing came to the Jews almost immediately after Gutenberg. The first book with a firm date is Rashi's commentary on the Torah, printed by Abraham ben Garton at Reggio di Calabria in 1475. It is notable that it is not the Torah: they printed what was lacking—what one studies from—while a scroll was written by hand in any case.

Thereafter the Italian workshops, above all the Soncino family, then Venice. There, in 1520–23, Daniel Bomberg, a Christian, printed the whole Babylonian Talmud—and set the page layout and the foliation by which it is studied to this day. There is a separate event on this here.

What printing changed. Before it every man had his own manuscript, with its own slips and its own order; to argue about what a source says one had to collate copies. After it everyone had the same page, and the reference 'Bava Batra eight, verso' meant the same thing from Salonika to Krakow. That is what made the Shulchan Aruch and the later codes possible: they rest on the reader opening exactly the same line.

And the other side. The press made visible what had formerly circulated hand to hand: censorship and burnings began at the same time. The Talmud was burned in Italy in 1553, and Christian censorship edited Jewish books for centuries—striking out what it held dangerous. Many editions have reached us mutilated, and part of what was struck out was later restored from manuscripts.

Not only learned books were printed. With the press began what manuscript had hardly known: books for women in Yiddish, prayer books by community, cheap codes for the house.