Books have always suffered from `printers' devils,' most of
them involving misplaced pages or other obvious, negligible
errors. But sometimes, the mistakes are more `creative.' Does
`R' Eliezer Manwell' sound queer to you? And what does "133
Like the Grass of the Field" mean?
Printers, for their part, used to hang the galleys of books
by the doorway of their print shops and promised to pay a
reward to anyone who could find an error. Many mistakes
stemmed from ignorance; for example, that of gentile printers
who didn't understand what they were printing, yet
nonetheless inserted their own `improvements' into the text.
Most ridiculous of all are the amendments made by various
censors who excelled in boorishness.
*
The scholar, hunched over his seforim, rubbed his eyes
in amazement. Maseches Pesochim in front of him was
opened to the third chapter, in the sugya of one who
goes to slaughter his Pesach sacrifice and to circumcise his
son. But in the copy of Beis Habechira by the
Meiri which he was examining at that moment, the
version was, shall we say, aberrant. "One who goes to
slaughter his son and to circumcise his Pesach sacrifice . .
. " There it was: black on white, in front of his very
eyes.
This mistake that crept into the edition of the Meiri
which was published in Jerusalem in 5724, is an interesting
case in point of these very printers' errors, but not so rare
an example. In another instance, any interested person could
encounter a novel phrase, "133 Like the Grass of the Field."
In the handwritten manuscript, the cursive letters were
tzadi, tzadi, vov — tzatzu (sprang up), which
was misinterpreted as the digits "133." The typesetter just
went ahead without thinking, and produced the comical error
which you see.
Mistakes are as old as the written word itself. Chazal have
already warned us not to study from works that were not
carefully proofread, precisely because of blunders like the
one with the circumcision. "A mistake, once it enters, it
stays" (Pesochim 112a). A work that has not been
examined, they warned, should not be allowed to remain in
one's house for over thirty days, for then one transgresses
the posuk, "Do not allow a mistake to dwell in your
tent" (Iyov 11:14 cited in Kesuvos 19b).
Proofreading, therefore, was a very important aspect of
writing, and proofreaders used to receive their wages from
donations of the Office of the Beis Hamikdosh (ibid.
106a).
The invention of the printing press brought, alongside the
obvious advantages, also new problems. The speed of printing,
the need to deal with the typesetting of myriads of letters,
or simple laziness and inaccuracy, compounded the problem.
The advantage of this new invention was that so long as a
book had not yet been printed, one could still correct the
mistakes without leaving any signs.
Since the very inception of the printing era, the printers
were employing professional proofreaders who checked over
each book more than once. R' Moshe ben Chaviv, who glossed
the Ibn Ezra's commentary on the Torah in Naples in 1488,
wrote, "I reviewed every single page 2-3 times. I purified it
like the silversmith removes the dross from the silver ore; I
examined it like the goldsmith smelts his raw gold, sevenfold
purified."
He Brought Nonsense
Many of the printers and typesetters in the beginning of the
printing era were gentiles. They were to blame for much of
the discrepancies in the seforim that were printed,
since they did not begin to understand what they were working
with.
Four hundred years ago, the proofreader Shmuel Ibn Dyssus
wrote in Keser Shem Tov by R' Shem Tov Melamed that,
"Sometimes one lead letter or more falls and the craftsmen,
not being Jewish and being unable to read Hebrew, put it
wherever they arbitrarily wish, or interchange it with
another, and I am really not to blame for it." But it seems
that ignorance did not only lie in the realm of the simple
lay workers, whom no one expected to be especially
scholarly.
In 1632, a Concordance on the Tanach was
published in Basil, Switzerland, compiled by Johannes
Bukstorf. He was a professor of Hebrew in the Basil
University, and in academic circles he was considered an
expert in linguistics, having authored many distinguished
works and studies in Hebrew grammar. Apparently, however,
being proficient in the grammar of a language does not
guarantee knowledge and understanding of it. In the Talmudic
dictionary which he prepared, he explained the law of,
"Kaddish Derabbonon after completing a tractate [that
is, after a siyum masechta]" as: "A talmudic scholar
who is produced after his having completed studying a
tractate." And this was not the only gross error in his
book.
R' Boruch Epstein writes that apparently that same
`intellectual' erred by reading kodosh instead of
Kaddish. Whatever the reason, and despite the fact
that this was a holy work, it is enough to indicate the sheer
ignorance that was rampant even among the so-called academics
who should have been fluent at least in their area of
specialization.
Bukstorf also toiled over his Concordance towards the
end of his days, together with his son. This work was truly
considered a milestone achievement with regard to
concordances. Yet, it did not disturb him to include under
the word hevel, alongside verses dealing with the
concept of vanity, such as, "Hevel hayofi," also a
verse relating to Hevel, son of Odom Horishon. One of the
users of the Concordance could not help commenting on
this strange juxtaposition, and inserted his own apt comment
of "VeHevel heivi gam hu", referring to the vanity,
inanity and boorishness of the Swiss professor-author: he
too!
A Coin Reward for Each Mistake
Gentile printers were aware that they didn't understand
Hebrew works, and they employed Jewish workers and
proofreaders. The problem manifested itself on Shabbos, when
obviously they could not come in to work. And thus did the
presses roll, including the mass of errors over which they
had no control. A. Haberman, who wrote an extensive essay on
this subject, brings as an example the words of R' Meir
Princz: in the Yalkut Shimoni edition which was
published in Venice in 1567, he complained that "the work is
being done by gentiles, and on Shabbos. Two presses are busy
rolling, but there is no one to supervise what they
produce."
The proofreader, Yitzchok Troyes, writes in his introduction
to Reishis Chochmoh which was published in 1579, about
the difficult life of the proofreaders in their gentile
environment: "The taskmasters in the print shop are forever
rushing us, saying: finish your quota of work each day and
let the presses roll — for they must produce a
specified amount every day. Thus, they don't let the
proofreaders do their work with the proper concentration and
time allotment."
And if that were not enough, "The majority of the book was
printed by the gentiles during the month of Tishrei, which is
mainly holy days."
To be sure, even the Jewish proofreaders made mistakes,
generally not due to faulty comprehension but simply because
of the human propensity to err. "Even though we possessed
many precise and good versions," it was said of the Soncino
Tanach from 1486, "still, there were some mistakes and
inaccuracies. For after all, in reality, a book without a
single discrepancy or blunder is extraordinary and very
unusual."
In the margin of the compilation there is mention of a R'
Eliezer Manwell. A strange name? The original has it as R'
Eliezer Matol, but the chief typesetter divided the letter
tes from the middle into two (nun and
vov).
The name of Rav Hai Gaon also fell sacrifice to a printer's
devil. It occurred in the work composed by some scholar or
other on the essays of Rav Hai which were quoted in Sefer
Ho'itur. One of these began with the words, "Verav Hai
de'omar — And Rav Hai says . . . " But it turned
out that it wasn't even referring to Rav Hai. It was
punctuated wrongly and the true reading rendition is,
"Verav, hai de'omar . . . — And Rav, the one who
says . . . "
There is an interesting apology made on the part of a
proofreader to be found in "Tefilloh LeMoshe" which
was published in Dessau in 1696. The owner of the printshop
was a convert, R' Moshe ben Avrohom Ovinu, and his two
daughters, Ella and Gella, were his right hand assistants.
Ella apologizes, in Yiddish, that she was only nine years old
when she set the type of the Yiddish-teitch-
translation of the book. Thus, it is likely that there were
errors.
End of Part I
