by Scott-Martin Kosofsky Part 2:  A History of the Minhogimbukh For over four hundred years, the Minhogimbukh was among the most popular Jewish books in the European Diaspora, just after the Bible, the siddur (prayer book), and the Passover haggadah. It was published as the people’s guide to the Jewish year in dozens of editions from Amsterdam to Venice to Warsaw and Kiev. In addition to its rich presentation of the rituals and prayers, the book’s illustrated editions featured the zodiac and the seasons of farm life, giving it an additional role as a kind of Jewish Old Farmers’ Almanac. Its roots were in the Hebrew Sefer Minhagim written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century by the Hungarian rabbi Eyzik (Isaac) Tyrnau, one of a number of such works from the late Middle Ages. The Tyrnau text circulated in manuscript for about one hundred fifty years before its first printed edition, still in Hebrew, was published in 1566 in Venice. Eyzik Tyrnau’s time was one of tragedy and loss. His book was written in the aftermath of the Black Death (1348–1350) in the belief that there was a kind of symbolic equivalence between a people and its customs. By preserving its customs, even if only in writing, the community would survive the pestilence, expulsions, harsh laws, and persecution that characterized Jewish life of the period. Tyrnau’s work was thorough and well organized, setting the pattern for the later books of customs. The simplicity of his language suggests that he wrote forlaypeople rather than for other rabbis. His book’s basic outline was this: the Jewish week from the end of Sabbath through evening prayers on Thursday; preparations for Sabbath and the Sabbath day itself; the twelve months including all the holidays; and last, the life cycle events of marriage, birth, and death. In 1590, again in Venice, which was one of the centers of Jewish life in Italy, the Sefer minhagim was published for the first time in Yiddish, which would be the language of most of its editions for the next three hundred years. Leaning heavily on Tyrnau’s model, the author-editor-translator of this edition was Simon Levi ben Yehuda Gunzburg, who had come to Italy from Swabia; the printer was Giovanni (“Zuan” in Venetian dialect) di Gara, a Christian who specialized in Jewish works. The book was a tremendous success, as stated in the preface to the second edition of 1593: This useful little chapbook containing the traditional customs was first brought to the printing house by the honorable Rabbi Shimon Ashkenazi [Simon Levi Gunzburg] three years ago. The book has been praised and admired by all for its great usefulness and as a comprehensible guide to the customs and traditions of all Israel and Judah, especially to those of Ashkenaz [German Jewry and its sphere], which are explained by the author in great detail and with precision, following the sages and the rabbis. . . . Gunzburg soon saw the need for a second edition since all the copies of the first left his hands in great haste because everyone knew they were worth their weight in gold. But he did not see that as the reason to leave well enough alone; he now extended his view to include all the customs from other places he researched and collected, sparing no time and effort. . . . Also, there is more splendor and glory added [a reference to the forty woodcut illustrations and improved typography], in quality as well as quantity. Everyone will notice, nobles and small children alike, that this volume is thicker than the previous one. It is this second edition, published in “the big city of Venice” in 1593, that I believe is the standard upon which almost all of the subsequent editions were based. I have used it as both the framework and as a regularly recurring point of reference for this book. Seeing that Gunzburg treated the book so flexibly, I realized that the Minhogimbukh was more of a form than it was a specific text, and a very adaptable form at that. No records have been uncovered about the circulation of the customs books, but contemporary reports on other Jewish books of the time suggest that a success like the one described in the 1593 preface would translate to sales of between 1,500 and 3,000 copies. Clearly the sales were broad, since there were only about 1,500 Jews living in Venice at the time. Including customs from throughout Ashkenaz was clearly part of the publisher’s marketing strategy. Learn more; See Table of Contents above