This past week, I was called upon to appraise a fine private library. Among its treasures sat a remarkably fine and well-preserved set of the famed Frankfurt an der Oder Talmud – a work that occupies a singular place in the history of Hebrew printing and Jewish philanthropy.
Printed between 1697 and 1699, The Frankfurt an der Oder Talmud was the first complete Talmud ever produced in that city. The edition is inseparably associated with its benefactor, the legendary Court Jew Issachar (Behrend Lehmann) ha-Levi Bermann of Halberstadt (1661–1730), whose name appears throughout the volumes not merely as patron, but as protagonist. Bermann reportedly invested the staggering sum of 50,000 Rhenish thalers in the project, and then – rather than seeking to recoup his costs – distributed roughly half of the 5,000 sets to scholars and institutions, especially in Eastern Europe, where Jewish learning had been ravaged by the wars of the late seventeenth century. It was philanthropy on a scale that bordered on the audacious.
Each volume opens with not one, but two title pages. The first is a magnificent copperplate engraving by Martin Bernigeroth (1670–1733), widely regarded as one of the most elegant title pages ever designed for a Hebrew book. Moses and Aaron flank Kings David and Solomon, each figure carefully identified. Above them rises a portico crowned with a lamb and a laver – symbols long understood as a discreet autobiographical signature of Bermann himself: his levitical lineage and his astrological sign, Aries (Nissan), as he was born on 24 Nissan 1661. A Hebrew inscription praises the devoted service of the Levite, likening him to an unblemished lamb, while a central cartouche records Bermann’s role as patron. Nestled between David and Solomon runs the understated Latin motto, Cum Deo ex die.
Beyond its visual splendor, the Frankfurt Talmud introduced a development that would reverberate through the Hebrew printing world: the use of restrictive rabbinic approbations granting exclusive printing rights for periods of 15 to 25 years. Never before had such haskamot been employed to secure monopoly rights for a complete Talmud edition. The innovation would later ignite no small amount of controversy, particularly when Michael Gottschalk invoked these very haskamot to shut down the rival Amsterdam Talmud begun in 1714.
Gottschalk himself is a figure worthy of note. Originally a bookbinder and bookseller, he took control of Johann Christoph Beckmann’s Frankfurt an der Oder press in 1693 and would guide it for nearly four decades. The Frankfurt Talmud was his most ambitious undertaking – and ultimately his most enduring achievement. The project had initially sought backing from Moses Benjamin Wulf, Court Jew of Dessau, but spiraling costs, delays, and sheer inexperience led Wulf to withdraw, paying compensation and exiting the stage. Enter Bermann, whose resources and resolve ensured the project’s completion.
And then there is the human footnote – tucked away at the end of Meseches Niddah, printed in 1699. There, the typesetter signs the colophon. First, conventionally: “By the hand of the faithful typesetter in this holy work, Yisroel son of Reb Moshe.” But then, unexpectedly, another name appears. “And by the hand of his maiden sister Elle, daughter of Rav Moshe, in the year ‘Nekeivah tesovev gaver’ – ‘a woman shall go after a man.’”
The young woman, setting type in a world that rarely recorded her presence, signs her name boldly and leaves us to wonder what thoughts accompanied those final letters. Perhaps Elle believed that her own circumstances required an unconventional path – much like the verse she chose – to secure a future of her own and find herself a shidduch?