Johann Buxtorf, Impresario of Hebrew and Jewish Books

Johann Buxtorf (1564-1629) pursued the study of Hebrew and Aramaic and the writings and rituals of Jewish tradition through a long and productive life as a professor at the University of Basel and an impresario of Jewish texts. The focus of this work is on Buxtorf's scholarly practices -- for example, the ways in which he read and made excerpts from a wide variety of Jewish texts, recycled them in his polemical Juden schul (1603), a treatise on the customs and ceremonies of Ashkenazic Jews, and surveyed them in pioneering if incomplete bibliographies.

Using a wide variety of unpublished sources, including letters to Buxtorf from Jewish print professionals, this study follows him into the Basel printing houses that produced books in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish, and reconstructs how he worked there as both an editor and a censor -- even rewriting certain Jewish prayers to eliminate anti-Christian sentiments. Buxtorf took a special interest in the textual history of the Hebrew Bible: he argued that the vowel points and accents had entered its text at a very early stage.

This study shows that Buxtorf developed his views in dialogue -- and debate -- with both Jewish and Christian scholars. He often expressed contempt for both the Jews whose texts he read and those whom he occasionally met in Basel, Frankfurt, or elsewhere, yet his passion for Jewish literature of every kind never faltered.