Hamisha Humshei Torah im Kzat Peirush Rashi...Haftarot...u-Megillot (Pentateuch with abridged commentary of Rashi...Haftorahs...and the Five Scrolls), Cremona: Vicenzo Conti, 1560

2 +164 leaves (11 1/2 x 8 in.; 292 x 202 mm).Complete; [(2),(4),1-160]. Illustrated title page within architectural frame, shaved; fifty-eight incipits comprising individual decorative woodblock letters, with book headings further embellished within woodcut frames. Several pages remargined. Dampstaining, some soiling, browning and foxing. Owners' notes on title page, ff. 1r, 17r, 48r, 76r, 129r,156v; bound with 1632 commercial letter, laid to size; sprinkled edges. Later tree calf; rebacked; gilt stamped spine in six comparments over raised bands.  

Hertz Hayyim Levi Pollak- Title page, ff. 17r, 48r, 76r, 129r,156v;
Menahem bar Hayyim Toslin Segel- f.1r; Jacoppo Seni Polacho, Lazar Portaleone, Absalmon Ispagnolo, parties to the commercial letter from 1632--bound in.

Jerold Coleman Frakes,Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750, Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 305; Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, trans. B. Martin, New York 1975, vol. 7, pp. 120-121; Chone Shmeruk, 'Yiddish Printing in Italy', Yiddish in Italia, Milano 2003, pp. 171-180; Judah Joffe, "Dating the Origin of Yiddish Dialects," Field of Yiddish, vol.1, pp. 102-121.

The first Yiddish translation of the Pentateuch written by a Jew

Although the earliest Yiddish text ever printed was Almekhtiger Got, a song added to the Prague Haggadah in 1526, by the 1540s the locus of Yiddish printing had moved to Italy. This 1560 edition of the Pentateuch printed in Cremona  is still considered the most ambitious Yiddish undertaking of its time. Published by Judah Leib ben Moses Naphtali Bresch and printed by Vincenzo Conti, it represented a real departure from previous Yiddish translations of the Bible. 

While earlier editions had appeared in both Augsburg and Constanz, these were the work of apostate Jews who had converted to Christianity, thus rendering their translations suspect in Jewish eyes.  Bresch made liberal use of these earlier editions but offered "improvements" that included selected excerpts from Rashi's Pentateuch commentary and legends from the Midrash, all translated into idiomatic Yiddish and presented with the biblical text.  In addition, special fonts known as vabertaytsh (lit. womens' fonts) were prepared for this volume, one for the main text and another for the commentary that appeared alongside it.

This edition was intended to present a printed version of the Jewish Bible that was accessible to non-scholars.  Accordingly it was designed to appeal to a specific target audience comprising two groups as explained in the introduction. The first, explains Bresch are the " men who in their youth were unwilling or unable to study, but now, in their older years are eager to learn but ashamed to study with a teacher."  Another constituency that can certainly benefit from this work, he continues, "are the young women and maidens, that they might know the Torah of God, blessed be He, and what piety is, if they will read herein on all the Sabbaths and festivals." 

In addition to its enormous literary significance, this rare volume is important linguistically as well. The preface to the translation comprises twenty-four rhymed verses printed in square font with vowel points, thus providing a great deal of information about Yiddish pronunciation of the period.  Judah Joffe has called this page "the most important printed document for the pronunciation of sixteenth century Western Yiddish."

It should be noted that the present volume is also a striking glimpse into the state of the Hebrew typographic arts in the mid-sixteenth century.  In addition to the two newly cut vabertaytsh Yiddish fonts, the printer Vincento Conti used three different sizes of square Hebrew fonts (four if one also includes the title page) as well as the widest array of woodcut Hebrew initials ever used in a single volume.