Luah Shenat [5]491 … (Pocket Calendar for 5491), Yehudah Leib Bomsla ben Eliyahu Sofer, Prague: Grandsons of Judah Bak [1730]

16 leaves (4 x 2 7/8 in.; 101 x 74 mm). Title within typographic border, lightly soiled. Additional early blank leaves interleaved. Headlines shaved, 9r-10v, 15v-16r. Loss at corner of f. 16, expertly repaired, affecting several lines on verso; minor marginal losses not affecting text. Modern half calf over marbled paper boards; titles gilt on spine.

THE OLDEST KNOWN EXTANT HEBREW POCKET CALENDARS PRINTED IN PRAGUE

Calendars are inherently ephemeral objects that have only infrequently survived past the very limited time frame they were created to document. These exceedingly rare calendars, printed in Prague in the 1730s include the day and date of each holiday and fast day in the Jewish year, along with the appropriate biblical readings for each Sabbath. Since Prague's Jews, many of whose livelihoods were bound up in commercial trade, had to be able to effectively interact with their Christian neighbors, these calendars also note the months and fixed saints' days of the Christian ecclesiastical year as well as the dates of market- and fair-days in many European cities.

In addition to enumerating the year according to the standard Jewish reckoning, the preface to each calendar records the number of years that have elapsed since numerous important events in world and Jewish history. These include the Great Flood; the births of the Patriarchs; the Exodus from Egypt and the Revelation at Sinai; the building and destruction of both the First and Second Temples; the beginning of the Christian era; the great expulsions of the Jews in the 15th century and the Chmielnicki massacres in 1648. More recent local events are commemorated by specific dates, such as the devastating fire of June 21, 1689 that killed 150 people, and destroyed 318 houses and 11 synagogues in Prague's Jewish quarter.