New stamp issue – Czech Republic: 500 Years of Hebrew Printing in Prague

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New stamp issue – Czech Republic: 500 Years of Hebrew Printing in Prague

The 500th anniversary of the printing of the first Hebrew book in Prague will be celebrated in December 2012. The publication of the book made Bohemia and its capital city one of the first locations where Hebrew printing houses managed by Hebrew printers were established; the very first ones were several houses in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and Constantinople. The only other establishments in this territory that used Hebrew letters to print books were in Prostějov in the early 16th century, followed by Brno and, temporarily, Mikulov in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The end of Hebrew printing in Prague was directly linked to the events of the Second World War.
Mainly at the beginning Hebrew printers maintained close professional and business relations with their Christian colleagues, printers or carvers of illustrations and decorative blocks. This approach contributed to the outstanding form of printing and decorations of Hebrew prints made in Prague mainly in the 16th century, such as the 1526 Passover Haggadah (story of the Israelites´s Exodus from Egypt and prayers for the Passover holiday), which is considered by experts in Hebrew prints as one of the most beautiful Hebrew books in general. Contrary to the established idea, Hebrew books used to come out with illustrations, and even with figurative scenes. Although certain blocks could be taken over from Christian printers, they had mostly to be ordered because of the completely different Jewish traditional iconography. Inspired by their Christian colleagues, printers of the oldest Hebrew books produced in Prague also used the emblem of the city of Prague in their prints; it was used both as a significant visual identification element and, without any doubt, also to show their local pride.
The bulk of the local Jewish prints were religious literature, prayer books and Bibles, religious-legal texts, and the accompanying annotations. Literature in Yiddish (written or printed also in Hebrew letters) started to come out in the late 16th century; it was the spoken language in the then Czech Jewish community and gave access to literature also to less educated male and female readers. Yiddish was used to print not only biblical translations or moral texts but also entertaining literature books, songs, and all sorts of practical manuals to entertain and educate these readers. In the first half of the 17th century Prague was the European centre of Yiddish book printing. The 19th-century process of emancipation and assimilation of Czech and Moravian Jews removed the need to print this kind of literature; Jewish publishers already printed in German or Czech and Hebrew was used only to publish prayers and Bibles required to practice religion.

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