JEWISH ENLIGHTENMENT SCHOLARSHIP, 1818

(HEBREW BIBLE). OTTENSOSSER, David. SCHWABACHER, Heimann. Kiryah ne'emanah sefer Ezra mit uebersetzung und be'ur von Heimann Schwabacher und David Ottenzosser. [Fürth]: Isaac ben David Zirndorfer, 1818. Small octavo, contemporary sheep boards rebacked.. $1350.

First edition of this Hebrew and German edition of the Book of Ezra, prepared and printed by three eminent figures of 19th-century German Jewish scholarship.

Uncommon Judeo-German edition of the Book of Ezra, offering Hebrew text and a German translation (transliterated in Hebrew characters) on opposing pages with accompanying commentary. Heimann Schwabacher and David Ottensosser, the editors, were leading figures of the Haskalah—an Enlightenment movement calling for rationality and secular education—in Fürth, a major Jewish center with a long history of Hebrew printing. This work was printed by Isaac ben David Zirndorfer (sometimes given as Zürndorfer or Zürndorf), proprietor of a distinguished Jewish press in Fürth: "Fuerth, a center of Talmudic learning, established its first Hebrew presses in 1691. In 1737 Hayyim b[en] Zvi Hirsch opened a print house in Fuerth, issuing some 80-100 Hebrew titles in the next three and a half decades. When Hirsch died in 1772, his widow managed the shop for two years until her marriage in 1774 to Isaac b[en] David Zirndorfer. Zirndorfer and his family managed the press until 1868" (William Gross, for the Center for Jewish Art). Vinograd Furth:726.

Pages age-toned, binding with expected age-wear, edges expertly restored. Scarce.