by Juliana Ochs Dweck
What makes a book a Hebrew book?
The first thing that might come to mind is a holy book, something written in Hebrew from right to left and intended for Jewish religious practice -- perhaps a traditional Jewish prayer book, a simple leather-bound volume filled with austere Hebrew text. Or maybe a Torah scroll, the age-old format of the Five Books of Moses, with its tightly coiled sheets of yellowed parchment.
But "Chosen: Philadelphia's Great Hebraica," the current exhibition at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, demonstrates that not all Hebrew books are written in Hebrew, nor are they meant for use only by Jews.
Included in the show, for example, is the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in what would become the United States and the first Hebrew alphabet printed in the New World. Frustrated by earlier translations of the Psalms that were insensitive to the rhyme of the original Hebrew, the Massachusetts Bay Puritans produced their own translation in the spirit of the Hebrew text but in English meter studded with Hebrew letters. This was a Hebrew book neither for Jews nor written entirely in Hebrew.
"The Hebrew book is not defined by language, place of origin, or form," explains the exhibition's curator Judy Guston, curator and director of collections at the Rosenbach. "I wanted visitors to recognize that the Hebrew book isn't a monolithic thing."
Taken as a whole, Jewish books represent the longest continuous tradition of book production throughout Europe and the Near East. Over time, Jewish books retained their traditional texts (such as the Bible) and forms (such as scrolls), but they also reflected the influences of Jewish communities' cultural interactions and technological innovations. In this way, they come to embody the nature and nuance of Jewish experience writ large. The history of Jewish books becomes a history not only of religious tradition but also of human experience; not only of intellectual achievement but also of artistry.
Joining biblical scrolls, illuminated manuscripts, and ancient prayer books dating from the eleventh through the eighteenth centuries, the exhibition "Chosen" presents the stories behind these books. Who wrote them and what kinds of people used them? Where did they originate and where did they travel? The texts come from the Rosenbach's own collection and seven different Philadelphia institutions, ranging from university libraries to synagogues to the Free Library of Philadelphia. Never before exhibited together, many are on public display for the first time. In the exhibition, co-curated by David Stern, professor of classical Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania, previously disconnected holdings become a true collection, an assemblage that speaks to a rich and variegated history.Jewish law or halakhah prescribes the form of Torah scrolls used for ritual purposes. (In contrast, Hebrew Bibles in book form are used for everyday study.) Rabbinic law specifies that scribes write the Torah in black ink on parchment. Instructions detail how scribes will rule each line, what kind of ink they will use, and the kind of pen the scribe will use to write. The width of each margin, the length of each column, and the number of corrections permissible per page are all stipulated. From the third century of the common era until today, only when the scribe executes these perfectly could a community regard a scroll as "kosher."
In this way, the rabbis set guidelines for the very appearance of each Torah for centuries to come: the way the scrolls would look to a congregation, the way they would be held by their guardians, the way they would feel as reader traced a line of text with a pointer or yad.
But throughout history new technologies and regional book cultures have been at least as influential as rabbis in shaping the Hebrew book. As curator David Stern explains in the catalog accompanying "Chosen", the production of a medieval Hebrew manuscript, for example, was "a complex exercise in cultural interaction, frequently involving a scribe, a punctuator and proofreader, a decorator or illustrator, a bookbinder, and, in the case of a Bible, a masoretor" or biblical interpreter. As a result, innovation and novelty abound in Hebrew books.
When the Jews moved from the Near East to Spain and Portugal, new cultural influences resulted in changes to the composition and decoration of Jewish books. A Hebrew Bible from Lisbon, dating from 1496, reflects these adaptations. According to rabbinic law, biblical scribes must write "Song of the Sea," the poetic verses found in Exodus 15, to resemble a brick-like structure. In the Lisbon Bible, an elaborate blue border flecked with red dots and gold leaf surrounds the traditional text. As Guston describes it, "Each page is more beautiful than the next. They are painted, gilded, filled with micrography [tiny, decorative writing] and covered in a tortoiseshell binding." The script itself follows a Portuguese tradition, while the border resonates with Spanish designs.
