Early/Old Yiddish > Commentary for the masses
Mishle
Cracow, 1582
893.1BJ B82
The very first Yiddish books were printed in Cracow in 1534-5. It was in Cracow that fonts for “vaybertaytsh” (lit. “Women’s translation,” since Yiddish was assumed to be a language for women and uneducated men) were created exclusively for the printing of Yiddish texts. The printer of this copy of Proverbs (with Yiddish paraphrase and commentary by Mordekhai ben Jacob Toplitz) was Isaac ben Aaron Prostitz. He had been trained in Venice, and brought with him to Cracow various materials for printing that he had purchased from the Cavalli and Gryphius presses in Venice.