Treasures from the Rebbe's Library: Episode 1

I was asked to give several short lectures about the history of the Jewish book starting some 550 years ago about around the year of Islamic 1470. the earliest 30 years of Jewish print since summer since 1470 till 1500 are called incarnable which means the diaper period of the Jewish printed book the earliest books that was published in the Years between foreign 1470 1475 the earliest five years of the printed Jewish book didn't have a date on the book when it was published the fact that we know when it was published it's only assumption or from outside sources the first safer was ever published we did date foreign that was published in the islamide 7 1475 a Reggio de Calabria is a city in the area of Calabria that we know of the Israel it's a very rare safer there is only one copy that we know of the safer in the library of Pharma in this Library we have two pages of this the reason why we have sometimes several pages of a book as describing now and the future several short lectures is because in those days the binders there was not necessarily Jewish and when they had to make a hardcover binding they didn't have them cardboards like we have today to make out of it a a hardcover binding what they did is they took some scrap paper or pages from the Sheamus that people didn't need anymore they took several pages and they pasted together with glue it should become like a cardboard and then they bound to say that with it covered with parchment gave it the look of a hardcover binding when in the libraries they see a old book that was published like 450 or 500 years ago and the cover is somewhat soft it's easy to understand that's probably over there we have pages from earlier things that in like 50 years later they didn't need that anymore and they put it to the Sheamus so the binder would take that and makes ever several Pages a cover for a safer and that's how we get many of the real real old painted sport was the first dated painted Jewish book but several years later they published the Tanakh with the Russia around it so they didn't need any more the separate volume of Russia later so they put it in the Sheamus and then the binder took it from there and made out of it hardcover binding so therefore it comes out that sometimes we have only a few pages and in this case we have two pages of this very rare old print interesting to note that we know that we have a Russia script Russia script has nothing to do with Rashi himself because Dash is kept that we know of is the script that Dragon used to write theirs Forum in Spain and this foundic countries the regular script is spacious little voice the script that they would write letters is a fast script that they used to use in this foundic countries then there is a what is called hatsukonus half script because this Russia that we have xav is a little similar to the printed one and a little similar to the script of riding so this is called the rabbinic script Rashi didn't write this script he lived in France which is a Scholastic country not asphalic country they use them in other script the reason why we call this Russian escaped is because the first time it is safe I was published with this script is and then several years several years later when they published the hummus with Russia and the battle the homage was printed letters Asia's little boys cassava children and Russia in the bottom was in this script so they call it Russia script several years after the Russia that we are speaking about was published they started printing in Spain a talmud a talwood which is as the talmud in the center and Russia and imagined in that they did not probably put into the space as yet was only gimbabre and Russia the tablet itself was cassava shooting Asia's little boys Russia was with this script and therefore for all these reasons that the Russian in the early generation of Jewish paint was published always with this script they call it the Russia script the script that Russia is printed with we have mentioned that several years later foreign they started printing a chass a talmud in Spain where the center of the page is the mother and and the margin is Russia we'll discuss this in the future short lecture