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JEWISH BOOK ANNUAL
In support o f an Ashkenazic origin for
Yiddish Type,
I invite the
reader to compare cursive and rabbinic hands o f the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries as presented in Figure 1 and else
where2with the
Yiddish Type
o f Figures 2 and 3. In the
Yiddish Type
o f Augsburg,3Constance,4and Zurich (Figure 2) selected arbitra
rily, for the moment, as typical, certain letters seem to me to be
especially characteristic:
alef, giml, zayen, lamed, mem, shlos-mem,
lange fey, tsadek
and
lange tsadek.
Note the prominent tails on the
giml
and the
shlos-mem;
the minor wiggle in an otherwise simple
vertical line that passes for a
lamed',
the
alef
that looks like a roman
k;
and the
tsadek
that seems to be halfway between a cursive and a
square letter. The
mem
defies easy description but is perhaps the
most distinctive letter o f all. These typical characteristics are
found both earlier and later in Ashkenazic Hebrew and Yiddish
manuscripts.
A number o f scholars assert that the origin o f
Yiddish Type
is to
be found in the type used for Rashi and the Targum in the Bolo
gna, 1482, Pentateuch (Figure 4).5 This type is normally des
cribed as Italian semi-square, and it seems to me to bear only little
resemblance to
Yiddish Type,
to have an entirely different feel.
The characteristics described above are largely absent.
2 See especially, Birnbaum,
Hebrew Scripts
I, cols. 307-8, #357 (Ashkenazic Cur
sive, 1484); II, #358 (Ashkenazic Cursive, 1502), #367 (Ashkenazic Mashait,
1412), #378 (Ashkenazic Mashait, 1477), #379 (Ashkenazic Mashait, 1492),
#380 (Ashkenazic Mashait, 1535), and others.
3 For facsimile, see IDC,
Hamishah Humshei Torah.
(Augsburg, 1544) or L. Fuks,
Das Altjiddische Epos Melo»kim
—
Bu»k
(Assen: Van Gorcum, 1965) which con
tains a full facsimile o f the 1543 edition.
4 For facsimile, see IDC,
Hamishah Humshei Torah. . .
.
(Constance, 1544) or M.
Weinreich,
Shtaplen
(Berlin: Wostok, 1923), p. 101.
5 M. Steinschneider and D. Cassel, “Jiidische Typographic und jiidischer
Buchhandel,”
Allgemeine Encyclopaedie
. . .
(Ersch und Gruber), 38 (Leipzig,
1851): 23, note 37, made this misidentification, misled perhaps by the
g im l
with a longish tail. They also suggested the type o f the Prague
T u r
o f 1540
(Figure 8) as an origin, but 1540 is too late, though the resemblance is good.
See also Weinreich,
Pintelekh,
p. 191; Herman Frank,
Idishe tipografye
(New
York, Hebrew-American Typographical Union, 1938), pp. 39-40; J.M.
Salkind, “Di geshikhte fun di idishe bukh-drukeray,”
Renesans
1 (1920):
41-50, 131-144; 194-205 and 2 (1920): 198-210, particularly, 2:199. Wein
reich, Frank and Salkind either independently made the same suggestions or,
more likely, blindly followed Steinschneider and Cassel.