Recently, I was privileged to acquire, on behalf of a discerning patron, a copy of the Gal shel Egozim, a rare and singular sefer of sixteenth-century homilies on the Book of Genesis. Authored by Rabbi Menahem ben Moses Egozi (d. 1571), a luminary of Sephardic scholarship, eloquence, and poetry in the intellectual milieu of Constantinople, and printed circa 1593–1595, this work embodies the erudition and spiritual profundity of its era. The title, which may be rendered in English as “A Heap of Nuts,” is a masterful play upon the author’s surname, Egozi, while alluding to a Talmudic parable in Gittin 67a: the far-reaching wisdom of a scholar is likened to a pile of nuts, all cascading when a single nut is displaced – a fitting metaphor for the interconnectedness of Torah insight.
The sefer was printed in Belvedere, a palatial enclave near Constantinople, within the private residence of the remarkable Doña Reyna Nasi. The press itself was under the meticulous supervision of Joseph ben Isaac Ashkeloni, yet it is the patronage of Doña Reyna that imbues this endeavor with enduring historical significance. Remarkably, this was among the first Hebrew presses established and sustained by a woman. Widow of the illustrious Duke of Naxos, Don Joseph Nasi, Doña Reyna invested her remaining fortune – an inheritance of some ninety thousand ducats – to foster Jewish learning and scholarship. Though childless, her legacy was monumental: the daughter of the renowned philanthropist Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi, she devoted herself to sustaining the intellectual and spiritual life of the Jewish people.
Her press was conceived not as a commercial enterprise, but as a charitable institution dedicated to the proliferation of knowledge and literacy. Its operations can be delineated into two distinct phases: the Belvedere phase (1592–1594), within her own palace on the eastern shore of the Bosporus, which produced approximately seven titles, including the Gal shel Egozim; and the Kuru Tsheshme phase (1597–1599), after a brief hiatus, was relocated to the European side of the Bosporus, yielding roughly ten additional titles. Following Doña Reyna’s death in 1599, the press ceased entirely, leaving a void in Hebrew printing in Constantinople that would endure for nearly four decades – a testament to the singular and irreplaceable contribution of her life and vision.