Sabbatai Ben Josef

Sabbatai Ben Josef , also called Josef von Prag , Bass und Meschorer (* 1641 in Kalisch ; † July 21, 1718 in Krotoschin ) was a Jewish writer, scholar , bibliographer and publisher who worked in Poland , Bohemia , Holland and Silesia .

Life

Sabbatai was born in the western Polish city of Kalish and lost his parents during the great fire in the city in 1656. Together with his brother, he fled to Prague , where, thanks to his beautiful voice, he got a job in the choir of the Old New Synagogue . Two names Sabbatais come from this period - "Bass" or "Bassista", which refers to his voice, and "Meschorer" - "Singer" in Hebrew. In Prague he received his training as a Talmudic scholar, he also learned Latin and received general humanistic training. 1669 he came up with his first independent work: a processing of the Bible - glossary of Moses Sertel in Yiddish , which he a comprehensive grammar enclosed with the Yiddish language.

From 1674 to 1679 he made several trips to Jewish communities in Poland, Germany and Holland and from 1679 lived in Amsterdam , which at that time was the intellectual center of European Jewry. He worked on the translation of the Bible into Yiddish, which appeared in Amsterdam, and in 1680 published a large bibliographical work "Sifte jaschanim" (Mouths of the Sleeping), which described 2400 religious books, 2200 of them in Hebrew, with the author's name and the place of publication and year and a brief summary of the content. This gave him the name "father of the Jewish bibliography " and was also known and appreciated in the Christian world under the name of the "bass player". Translations of the work into German and Latin soon appeared. Another well-known work by Sabbatai from this period of his life was a travel guide for Jewish merchants and travelers, “Derech eretz” (“Good education”), with u. a. Directories of all major highways and distances in Europe.

After three years of efforts, Sabbatai succeeded in 1687 in obtaining permission to open a Jewish print shop in the Silesian town of Dyhernfurth . The first book he published was "Bet Shmuel" ("Samuels Haus", 1689), a commentary by Samuel von Loslau on the ritual code.

Sabbatai always drove himself to the fair in Wroclaw , where he ran a stand with the books he had published. On July 15, 1694, he was accused by the Breslau Jesuits of distributing blasphemous and anti-religious books and the city ​​magistrate confiscated them all. Only after a few years did he get it back.

In 1711 Sabbatai handed over the printing shop to his son Josef. At the same time Sabbatai and the son Josef Ben Sabbatai were accused by the professor of Hebrew at the University of Breslau , the Jesuit Frantz, of having published an anti-Christian, blasphemous and politically rebellious book by Nathan Hanover, “Schaare Sion” (“Gates of Zion ”) and received two months in prison. After that, Sabbatai was tired of life under the Habsburgs and moved back to Poland, where he died in Krotoschin in the house of his son-in-law Berl Nathan in 1718. The printing works existed until 1750, until 1729 under the management of Berl Nathans and later as the property of Sabbatai's granddaughter Esther.

Works (selection)

• Bor mosque. ("Moses Brunnen") with a grammar of Yiddish, Amsterdam 1669.
• Commentary on Siftej hakamim (“mouths of scholars”), Amsterdam 1680.
• Sift Yashanim. ("Mouths of the Sleeping") large bibliography of Jewish religious literature, Amsterdam 1680.
• Massekhet Derech Erez. (“Good education”) Amsterdam 1680.

literature

• Saverio Campanini: Paths to the City of Books. A contribution to the history of the Hebrew bibliography (the Catholic bibliographical "dynasty" Iona-Bartolocci-Imbonati). In: Peter Schäfer - Irina Wandrey (Hrsgg.): Reuchlin and his heirs. Researchers, thinkers, ideologues and weirdos. In: Pforzheimer Reuchlinschriften. 11, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2005, pp. 61–76.
• Encyclopaedia Judaica . Volume 4., Jerusalem 1971
• Publications from and about Sabbatai Ben Josef in VD 17 .