When “The Hebrew Hammer” Struck Twice on Rosh Hashanah

Ninety years ago, American baseball star Hank Greenberg played on the Jewish New Year holiday, even hitting two home runs, but later sat out Yom Kippur

Hank Greenberg in 1940, the Sporting News Archives

The lobby of Congregation Shaarey Zedek, in Southfield, Michigan, includes a display case dedicated to Hank Greenberg. Among the case’s contents are baseballs, pictures, autographs, programs and one of Greenberg’s bats from his career as a star player over 13 Major League Baseball seasons, 12 of them for the local team, the Detroit Tigers.

The headings above the synagogue’s display read, “Designated Mensch” and “Hank Greenberg is as famous for being Jewish as for what he did in the batter’s box.”

Hank Greenberg Tigers 6ba0fd 640 — Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers takes a swing, 1940, the Sporting News Archives

The New York-raised first baseman, nicknamed “The Hebrew Hammer,” achieved plenty at bat during his career, slugging 331 home runs (leading the American League in four separate seasons), hitting for a .312 average, winning two Most Valuable Player awards, and starring on two World Series-winning teams. The player earned enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame as an all-time great.

Greenberg Display At Cong. Shaarey Zedek 091024 Photo By Cillia Kleiman — “Designated Mensch” – The lobby of Congregation Shaarey Zedek, in Southfield, Michigan, includes a display case dedicated to Hank Greenberg.

Greenberg, whose parents had immigrated from Romania, was the first Jewish superstar in America’s national pastime in an era when his contemporaries included such legends as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller.

Hank Article 2 — Hank Greenberg was the most famous Jewish baseball player of his era. This article appeared in *The Kentucky Jewish Chronicle* on April 15, 1938, the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel

The best-known episode connected to Greenberg’s Jewish identity occurred when he weighed whether to play in the Tigers’ crucial games in September 1934 that fell on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This autumn marks the 90th anniversary of that High Holy Day season.

The situation echoed a generation later, when Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, another Jewish star from New York, opted not to face the Minnesota Twins in the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. Koufax pitched the next day and lost the game, but the Dodgers captured the championship.

Sandy Koufax, star pitcher for the L.A. Dodgers, pictured on a 1962 Bell Brand baseball card, via Wikimedia

Greenberg split the dilemma in 1934: He played on both days of Rosh Hashanah, but didn’t play on Yom Kippur. Greenberg even split the split: He attended services at Shaarey Zedek (the Conservative synagogue then was located in downtown Detroit) the morning of Rosh Hashanah’s first day before heading to Navin Field to play that afternoon against the Boston Red Sox.

Hank Article 3 — Greenberg was one of the most dominant sluggers in the game during his era. This article appeared in the November 22, 1940 issue of ⁨⁨the *J. Jewish News of Northern California*, the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel

He became a hero by smashing two home runs in Detroit’s 2–1 win. The Tigers lost at home to the New York Yankees when Greenberg sat out for Yom Kippur a week later. The next month, the Tigers reached the World Series.

According to a newspaper article at the time, Greenberg was swayed by phone calls from Tigers officials, including owner Frank Navin. Greenberg feared disappointing his team by sitting out on Rosh Hashanah.

“I hope I did the right thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have played. It’s a sacred day,” Greenberg told a teammate later that day.

The article quoted Greenberg as saying, “There wasn’t any way of getting a dispensation” by a rabbi to play. Other accounts had Greenberg seeking, and obtaining, a rabbinical waiver.

Hank Article 1 — “I hope I did the right thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have played. It’s a sacred day” – Greenberg faced a dilemma on Rosh Hashanah. This article appeared in the September 14, 1934 edition of *The American Jewish World.*

Greenberg might have consulted with Shaarey Zedek’s rabbi at the time, Abraham Hershman, said Aaron Starr, the current rabbi at the congregation, where Greenberg sometimes worshipped in its Detroit and Southfield locations.

“Rabbi Hershman was a halachic, observant Jew, so I often wonder about the permission given,” said Starr.

“Because [Hershman] was a baseball fan, maybe he offered a lenient p’sak [religious ruling], but I’m not sure on what halachic grounds. Or, maybe Mr. Greenberg found the rabbi he wanted [to rule favorably].”

In his autobiography, Greenberg wasn’t definitive regarding his actions. He wrote that he “wasn’t sure what to do” and implied that he played after reading in a newspaper article that a rabbi had found a Talmudic allowance for him to participate. A few paragraphs later, Greenberg wrote that he “caught hell from my fellow parishioners” who telephoned throughout the night to complain that he had played.

Greenberg no doubt faced complex social pressures. Jewish assimilation in the United States was still very much an issue, and religious accommodation wasn’t a given. Jews could lose their jobs by refusing to work on Shabbat. A leading figure at the time was Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest in Greenberg’s Detroit, who preached pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish views in national radio addresses.

Book — From *Hank Greenberg, Hall-of-Fame Slugger*, by Ira Berkow, illustrated by Mick Ellison, the Jewish Publication Society, 1991. The National Library of Israel has numerous books about Hank Greenberg in its collections.

The dilemma occurred in the second full season for Greenberg, then just 23. “Early on, he just wanted to be known as a player. He didn’t want the extra burden [of representing American Jewry], but he grew to accept it,” said retired N.Y. Times columnist Ira Berkow, who edited Greenberg’s 1989 autobiography, The Story of My Life, published three years after Greenberg’s death at 75.

Greenberg was close with several Shaarey Zedek congregants. Larry Katz, a current worshipper, said in a recent phone interview that Greenberg frequently was a dinner guest of Lou and Edith Blumberg and practiced his batting swing opposite the couple’s large mirror. Greenberg apparently never visited Israel, although his son and daughter bought him round-trip airline tickets as a 70th-birthday gift.

About a decade ago, Rabbi Starr led a discussion at the congregation’s Hebrew school about Greenberg’s High Holy Days dilemma.

“It was using his example and asking about what does it mean to be a Jewish hero,” he said.

“With every swing of his bat, he knocked away some of the antisemitism in America and raised the level of pride of Jews,” Starr said. “It was one of his most significant contributions.”

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler may be reached at [email protected].

The Jerusalem Talmud: The Beta Version of the Gemara

The Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud had roughly the same starting point, so why did only one of them become a canonical book?

Bar Nativ | 04.09.24

Jewish books Jewish Culture Judaism Land of Israel

Drawing by E.M. Lilien

The Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud are like the Coke and Pepsi of Jewish literature.

They were created in the same period and deal with the same subjects, but one achieved eternal glory and the other is a bit… bleak.

What makes a book canonical? One thing’s for sure: It’s not the book itself.

Let’s begin with a story:

For hundreds of years, Jews were forced to accept the fact that Seder Kodashim, one of the six orders of the Jerusalem Talmud, simply didn’t exist.

Some were sure it had disappeared, and some thought it had never existed. Until one day in the year 1905, when it simply popped up, out of nowhere

The mysterious copy was signed by the printer “Shlomo Algazi, AKA Friedländer.”

Algazi, who presented himself as a “pure Sephardi,” claimed that a single copy of Seder Kodashim had ended up in the possession of his brother in Turkey, and that he had copied it. The book was a huge success and the money started flowing in. But that’s when things started to go wonky.

שער סדר קדשים — Jerusalem Talmud, Seder Kodashim, 1909

The buyers soon noticed all sorts of puzzling details. The language and style matched the rest of the Jerusalem Talmud, but there was hardly any new information presented in these hundreds of new pages. Suspicions were raised.

Slowly, readers began to realize that the entire book simply contained variations on existing sources, and Algazi was accused of forgery.

He of course denied any wrongdoing and explained that the fact that the new order lacked new information was exactly the point! He argued that since the text already appeared in other places, no one thought it was worthwhile to preserve Seder Kodashim in its own right.

The readers weren’t convinced and even debated whether it was better to hide the book away or burn it. The lively debate reached its peak when rabbis published pamphlets in favor of Algazi, with sharp titles like “Avenging Sword” and “Answer to the Fool.”

חרב נוקמת — The “Avenging Sword” pamphlet, 1911

But it soon emerged that these pamphlets were written by none other than Shlomo Algazi, AKA Friedländer. Ultimately, Algazi confessed that he hadn’t actually found the book, and that he in fact wrote it himself.

He then also admitted that he wasn’t exactly Sephardi and that his name wasn’t Shlomo. He confessed that his real name was Zosia and that he was just an ordinary man from the very Eastern European town of Beshankovichy.

When I heard this story, I chuckled. But I was also curious about how such a large part of the Jerusalem Talmud could simply disappear. Seder Kodashim is one of the six orders of the Mishnah, upon which both the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud are based.

It isn’t even the only part that is missing from the Jerusalem Talmud. Entire chapters from other tractates have been lost over the years. Moreover, if you compare the Jerusalem Talmud to the Babylonian Talmud, you discover that the discussions in the former are much less developed and have been less thoroughly edited.

What happened? How is it possible that we have the Babylonian Talmud as a complete and developed work, while the Jerusalem Talmud seems like something you might have ordered on Ali Express?

I found the answer in this letter:

Nnl Aleph11383352240005171 Ie161057506 Fl161057523 — A letter written by Pirqoi Ben Baboi that was found in the Cairo Genizah, late 8^th century

Discovered in the Cairo Genizah, the letter was written approximately 1200 years ago by a Babylonian Jewish sage named Pirqoi Ben Baboi. Aside from the fact that his name is particularly fun to say, he provides a glimpse into an interesting moment in the history of the Jerusalem Talmud.

At the time that Ben Baboi wrote the letter, a halakhic struggle was underway between the rabbis of the Land of Israel and those residing in Babylon. Ben Baboi tried to convince the Jews of the Holy Land to adopt Babylonian Halakha, as embodied in the Babylonian Talmud. However, the community in Israel stood by the Jerusalem Talmud, which was created in the city of Tiberias, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Upon encountering this resistance, Ben Baboi then redirected his efforts to communities outside the Land of Israel that were still undecided between the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds.

In a letter to the community in the North African city of Kairouan, he writes that it is forbidden to follow the Halakha as it appears in the Jerusalem Talmud.

Take the following as a somewhat shocking example of differences in the two Talmuds’ halakhic rulings.

According to the Babylonian Talmud, an engaged couple is forbidden from being alone together to prevent them from engaging in forbidden relations before the wedding. In contrast, the Jerusalem Talmud allows the couple to meet alone before the wedding and even engage in intimate relations. Why? When the Land of Israel was under Roman rule, it was decreed that the local governors had the “right of the first night” with every virgin. The Jews of the Land of Israel preferred the bride and groom to consummate their marriage before this could happen, and thus possibly prevent rape.

Ben Baboi argues that customs of this nature are reasonable when facing harsh decrees imposed by the authorities. However, once the decrees are no longer imposed, it is forbidden to continue following them. He asserts that the entire Jerusalem Talmud is filled with these types of irrelevant rulings.

Lilien The Samaritan — Drawing by E.M. Lilien

There’s another issue as well: Even before the Talmuds were written down, they were transmitted orally from generation to generation. Ben Baboi claims that due to the harsh political situation, oral transmission in the Land of Israel was fragmented; People transmitted the knowledge, stopped when Torah study was prohibited by the rulers, and then tried to pick up where they had left off when it was permitted again.

What that means is that various fundamental principles which weren’t written down, or details that were handed down orally from generation to generation, simply dissipated over time. Imagine trying to reconstruct the Passover Seder without ever having experienced it. You might manage to understand more or less what’s happening, but a lot will be lost in the process.

Ben Baboi’s letter was another step towards the downfall of the Jerusalem Talmud. Its standing was questionable, so fewer copies were made, fewer people worked to interpret it, and it hardly ever served as a basis for halakhic rulings. Editors did not continue to refine the text over generations, as was the case with the Babylonian Talmud, and halakhic discussions came to a halt at an early stage, as can be seen in the book itself.

I find this process fascinating. The two Talmuds had similar starting positions and the Jerusalem Talmud even possessed a certain advantage. But one failed because the audience didn’t engage with it, and that engagement was essential.

Books aren’t preserved simply because they are “important” or “sacred”. A pile of words becomes a canonical text only if people consider it meaningful. The point here isn’t about the book itself; the encounter between people and the book is the whole story.

What’s interesting to me about studying old texts isn’t so much the content itself. After all, it’s not really relevant to my life. What interests me is understanding what happens in the space between a book and its readers – both those who preserved it until now and those who are currently trying to interpret it.

In other words, every encounter with a text enriches the text itself – the interpretation, the editing, and the meanings attributed to the words. When I read a text that has passed through many hands, I don’t just see the book placed before me; I engage in a dialogue with everyone who has engaged with it previously. And that’s pretty awesome.

Tu B’Av, the Jewish Valentine’s Day

“There’s nothing in the world I’d rather do than helping people find love,” says a matchmaker

Hillel Kuttler | 18.08.24

History of Israel Jewish Holidays Judaism

Girls dancing on Tu B’Av in Hadera, early 20th century. From the Khan Hadera Archive and Museum (Photo: Sonia Kolodany / Photo Sonia / CC BY 2.5), colorization by MyHeritage

This commonly happens in Israel each August: No sooner do digital promotions for lectures and worship services relating to Tisha B’Av fade than advertisements for love charms and singles events and romantic B&B getaways for Tu B’Av pop up.

The former event, the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av, is the saddest date on the calendar, a 25-hour period of fasting and commemorating such national calamities as the destruction in 586 B.C.E. and 70 C.E. of Jerusalem’s two holy temples. The second date, the 15th of Av, is known as the Jewish holiday of love and courtship, going back to the temple periods.

The calendar’s juxtaposition is considered intentional, with the solemnity of three weeks of mourning yielding to life-affirming joy — and what’s more life-affirming than young people finding each other, courting, falling in love and marrying?

Loveandwine — “Love and wine, wine and love” – A fairly Dionysian-looking poster promoting a celebration of the ancient Jewish festival of Tu B’Av at Kibbutz GIvat Hayim Ihud. This item has been made accessible thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Givat Haim Ihud Archive, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage and the National Library of Israel.

Tu B’Av shows “that we’re over the whole mourning period and are rededicating ourselves to love,” said Rabbi Avidan Milevsky, a psychology professor at Ariel University. “It’s a sense of healing, of rebuilding a Jewish home. We kind of heal from the destruction of the Temples by building a temple at home when we’re married.”

That’s all the more vital now, in the depressing year of 5784 that began with Hamas’ invasion of the western Negev on Oct. 7 and extended to the ongoing war in Gaza and against the southern Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorist organization.

There were “no happier days for Israel” than Yom Kippur and the 15th of Av, when “the daughters of Jerusalem would go forth and dance in the vineyards” wearing white garments, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said in the Mishnah of Taanit (4:8).

“And what did they say?” he asked rhetorically, referring to the young women.

“Young man, raise your eyes and see who you’re selecting for yourself. Don’t set your eyes on beauty, but on family.”

The ritual began at Shiloh, the Samarian town housing the tabernacle in pre-temple days. “Go and lie in wait in the vineyards, and see and behold if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance, then come out of the vineyards, and every man will catch his wife among the daughters of Shiloh,” reads the Book of Judges (21:21).

Nnl Archive Al11389623220005171 Ie2334644 Fl2583809 — Archaeolical ruins in ancient Shiloh. Photo by Ken Jacobson (American Colony, Jerusalem), the Lenkin Family Collection of Photography at the University of Pennsylvania Library, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

A variation of the ritual was revived more recently. For 11 years, through 2019, Shiloh’s historical site hosted thousands of women coming to dance in honor of Tu B’Av. It was done “just as in Biblical days and exactly at the same place and time where it was customarily done by Shiloh’s young women according to ancient tradition,” a 2019 pamphlet states.

That pamphlet was published by the regional council of Binyamin, a section of central Israel named for the tribe of Benjamin, who lived there in ancient times.

Tu B’Av celebrations in Ofra, 1975. This photo is part of the Archive Network Israel project and has been made accessible thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Yad Ben Zvi Archive, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage and the National Library of Israel.

If Tu B’Av represents singles joining, it also stands for reunification. The 15th of Av is the date a ban was lifted against the 11 other tribes marrying Benjaminites following the murder of the concubine of Givah that sparked a civil war, as told in the Hebrew Bible, also in the Book of Judges.

The Shiloh site dropped reenactments of the ritual dancing, but this August will host a concert by Israeli musician Eviatar Banai a few days after Tu B’Av in an event marketed to couples, according to an employee reached by phone.

A black-and-white photo from 1948 or 1949 shows young boys and girls at Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu participating in a Tu B’Av ceremony. The image, from the kibbutz’s archive, is in the National Library of Israel’s collection.

0001 Fl70279113 — Children taking part in a Tu B’av celebration in Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in 1948/49, this item is part of the Archive Network Israel project and has been made accessible thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu Archive, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage and the National Library of Israel.

Another item in the collection, from the 1980s, is a colorful drawing marketed to adults — “steak in pita with a glass of brandy” and “a romantic atmosphere,” the text reads — for a Tu B’Av gathering at the Caesarea coast.

Nnl Archive Al11461825700005171 Ie190499044 Fl190503584 — A poster promising “steak in pita with a glass of brandy” and “a romantic atmosphere” at a Tu B’Av celebration on Caesarea Beach, 1980s. This item has been made accessible thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Givat Haim Ihud Archive, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage and the National Library of Israel.

“The whole idea of Tu B’Av honors and recognizes romantic love and provides a framework that could work regardless of how a couple meets,” said Talli Yehuda Rosenbaum, a couples therapist and sex therapist in Beit Shemesh.

The ancient Tu B’Av ritual represents values in mating that remain primary today, including “consent and mutuality, choice and attraction,” she said. “It’s reframing the idea that marriage is just matching people up randomly.”

Aleeza Ben Shalom has worked as a matchmaker since 2012, when she lived in Philadelphia before moving to Israel. She even starred in Netflix’s reality-TV series Jewish Matchmaking.

“There’s nothing in the world I’d rather do than helping people find love,” she said.

“I’m part of the solution to modern-day people choosing no marriage over marriage. I’m part of the solution to build world peace,” said Ben Shalom, a resident of Pardes Hanna.

“It sounds crazy, but if we have stable, happy families, we can change the world for the greatest good.”

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at [email protected]

The Bible of the Conversos

Years after being forced to leave Judaism behind, many of the conversos of Spain and Portugal sought to return to their suppressed roots. The Ferrara Bible, which was printed in the 16th century and revised countless times, helped them rediscover their religion. Dozens of copies of this Bible are still scattered around the world today.

Daniel Lipson | 14.08.24

Conversos Jewish books Rare Books Rare Jewish Books Sephardic Jewry

After many years of being cut off from Judaism, the conversos of Spain and Portugal migrated to other countries around the world, with many of them attempting to return to the Jewish faith. They didn’t have much knowledge of Judaism, and they didn’t even know the Hebrew alphabet. However, childhood memories, family stories, and discreetly maintained traditions encouraged these “New Christians” to try to reconnect with their roots in their newly adopted homes.

Throughout the 16th century, converso communities began to print Jewish books in Spanish. Initially, these printed works included the foundational Jewish texts, followed later by works on Jewish philosophy, anti-Christian texts, and books of poetry. A Portuguese grammar book and a play based on the Book of Esther, both printed by conversos during this period, have been preserved. A little later, in the 17th century, conversos published what is considered the world’s first Jewish newspaper, the Gazeta de Amsterdam. The newspaper was published in Amsterdam and was primarily intended for Jewish merchants.

It all began in the city of Ferrara, in northern Italy. Conversos settled there in the 16th century, and established the earliest printing industry dedicated to works of Spanish and Portuguese conversos. The publishing work later moved to Venice, and then in the 17th century to Amsterdam, where it remained for approximately 200 years. During the expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the last decade of the 15th century, there was already a Jewish community living in Ferrara, and the Jewish printing house had been operating there for several years. From 1477 to 1551, it published the Arba’ah Turim (a work dedicated to Jewish religious law) and commentaries on the books of Job and Daniel.

מעיני הישועה — *Ma’ayanei Ha-Yeshua*, a commentary on the Book of Daniel by Don Isaac Abarbanel, Ferrara, 1551 (with the censors’ stamps on the last page)

Against this backdrop, Ferrara attracted many conversos wishing to return to their Judaism, since the location offered them such a comfortable environment. Among those who settled there was Abraham Usque, a converso who had printed Latin books in Portugal. In 1543, he came under suspicion of practicing Judaism in secret and fled from Portugal to Ferrara.

Shortly after the arrival of the conversos in Ferrara in 1552, a Spanish member of the community named Yom-Tob Atias published a siddur (prayer book) and later a book of the Selichot penitential prayers. Usque and Atias met each other and in 1553, they published a complete Bible in Spanish together. According to an inscription found on the inside cover, this was done with the approval of the Duke of Ferrara. The full title of the Bible they published was: “The Bible in the Spanish language, translated word for word from the true Hebrew by very excellent scholars, seen and examined by the office of the Inquisition.” To this day, it is commonly known as “The Ferrara Bible.”

Since it is a very literal translation, it is a bit of a strange read in Spanish; rather than writing the biblical stories in Spanish, the text is translated word for word, sometimes without syntax, exactly as it is written in the original Hebrew. While the Ferrara Bible was printed in Roman letters, some people consider the translation to be written in the Judeo-Spanish language of Ladino, because it adheres strictly to the original Hebrew text.

תנך — The Ferrara Bible, 1553. An inscription reads *Iblia en lengua española traduzida palabra por palabra de la verdad hebrayca por muy excelentes letrados vista y examinada por el officio de la Inquisicion* (“The Bible in the Spanish language, translated word for word from the true Hebrew by very excellent scholars, seen and examined by the office of the Inquisition.”)

The Ferrara Bible was first and foremost intended for conversos who wanted to study the Bible but did not have sufficient knowledge, if any, of Hebrew. The other target audience included Spanish-speaking Christians.

In the past, certain scholars surmised that in order to serve both types of readers, the Ferrara Bible was printed in two similar versions, with the differences reflecting the two target audiences’ respective expectations. In any case, the National Library of Israel has a copy of each version.

The “Christian” version states that it was printed by Jerónimo de Vargas and Duarte Pinel. The first page includes a long dedication to Duke Ercole II d’Este, who ruled Ferrara at the time of publication and granted Jews equal rights. The Jewish version was printed by the same two publishers, but in this version, they appear under their Hebrew names—Yom-Tob Atias (who some claim was Jerónimo de Vargas’ father) and Abraham Usque. In this version, the dedication is to Doña Gracia Nasi, the famous Portuguese converso and Jewish philanthropist. Doña Gracia may have funded the project or supported it in other ways.

הקדשה דונה גרציה — The dedication to Doña Gracia Nasi in the Jewish version of the Ferrara Bible

In the colophon – the final note attached to a book or manuscript summarizing its production process—some copies have the year written as 1553, while others have it written as the corresponding year in the Hebrew calendar, 5313.

קולופון — In the colophon at the end of this version of the book, the year is written in its Hebrew form – 5313.

However, the differences between the two versions of the Ferrara Bible don’t stop there. For example, they were printed in two different sizes and on different types of paper.

In the 1950s, Professor Stanley Rypins, a scholar of English literature, conducted a thorough examination of the existing copies of the Ferrara Bible. He found 49 different copies around the world and demonstrated that there were many differences among them, though most of these differences were small and insignificant.

Contrary to the assumptions of past scholars that the Ferrara Bible had both a Jewish and a Christian version, Rypins argued that there was in fact no version specifically tailored for Christian readers. On the contrary, over the years, some have even claimed that this Bible is anti-Christian and that the translations of certain verses that have been interpreted as a historical basis for Christianity maintain the original literal text, in an effort to undermine official Christian doctrine.

Nevertheless, in some copies, there is one significant change favoring Christian dogma. One of the verses used in Christianity for missionary purposes appears in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14. In the original, it reads as follows:

“Behold, the young woman is with child, and she shall bear a son, and she shall call his name Immanuel.”

In Christian literature, the verse was translated according to Christian theology, which asserts that Jesus’ mother is the Virgin Mary:

“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

In some copies of the Ferrara Bible, the Hebrew word almah is translated into Spanish as moca (young woman). In others, it is translated as virgen (virgin), and in most cases, the printers simply wrote alma in Roman letters, thus avoiding controversy. In about half of the copies found, the word alma appeared, and Rypins demonstrated that this was how the Bible was originally printed. He claimed that the word was later changed to virgen, likely for political-religious reasons, and after several printings, to moca. Each change required the printer to adjust the font to maintain a uniform length of the row of text. To achieve this, abbreviated words were sometimes expanded to their full forms, and sometimes small spaces were added between words.

Throughout the period of publication, errors in page order and typos were corrected in the various printed copies that were released. Nevertheless, typographical errors can still be found here and there in some of the copies. Rypins viewed all these issues as proof that the different editions of the Ferrara Bible were indicative of an ongoing process of corrections; it wasn’t that there were two versions, each intended for a different audience, rather – all copies of the Ferrara Bible were intended for Spanish and Portuguese conversos in the mid-16th century. In the copies Rypins found, it was also evident that due to the prohibition against writing or pronouncing the name of God unnecessarily, most copies used the capital letter “A” as a substitute for the name. Some copies also included a list of the weekly Haftarah portions read in the synagogue.

God’s name written as the capital letter “A”, from the beginning of the *Va’etchanan* portion in the Ferrara Bible

The illustrated title page of the Ferrara Bible includes a drawing of a ship being tossed about by stormy waters at sea. One of its masts is broken, and it is surrounded by waves, gusts of wind, and sea monsters. The illustration alludes to the situation of the Jewish People in general and the conversos of Spain and Portugal in particular. The printers were hinting at the eternal nature of Judaism, which is forced to fight against its spiritual enemies but manages to survive and persevere despite it all.

שער פררה — The title page of the Ferrara Bible. The ship being wrecked at sea symbolizes the Jewish People.

The ship is also depicted with an armillary sphere, an instrument that serves as a model of objects in the sky and which was used in maritime navigation. The armillary sphere was the symbol of Abraham Usque’s printing house and appears in other books he printed as well.

Masotav — An armillary sphere, Abraham Usque’s trademark, which appears on the title page of a travel journal by Benjamin of Tudela

Usque published over 25 books before his printing house was closed in 1558. One of his books, Shiltei Giborim (“The Signs of Heroes”) by Rabbi Yaacov Ben Yoav Elia of Pano, included a lamentation for 24 conversos who were executed in Ancona in 1556. News of this lamentation reached the ears of Bishop Antonio Ghislieri (later, Pope Pius V), who then demanded that the book be burned and Usque be punished.

Ushka — From the lamentation for the martyrs of Ancona, *Shiltei Giborim*, Ferrara 1556.

In 1996, literary and theater scholar Moshe Lazar published an accurate facsimile edition (that is, a new print completely identical to the original) of the Ferrara Bible, with a print run of 1,000 copies. Earlier, in 1992, to mark the 500th commemoration of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Lazar released a critical edition (one that traces all known editions) of the Ferrara Bible. In the introduction, Lazar wrote that to prepare this edition, he located some 60 copies of the Bible. These copies and others, which might still be circulating and unaccounted for in remote parts of the world, helped the conversos of Spain and Portugal return to Judaism in the 16th century.