The Library’s 675 Hebrew books from the sixteenth century constitute one quarter of the approximately 2,700 titles known to have been printed in Hebrew from 1501-1599, according to the most recent estimates.¹

At first glance, 25% might seem somewhat less than impressive, but it is important to remember that many of these 2,700 titles consist of multi-volume works such as the Bible or the Babylonian Talmud, which alone went through many editions over the course of the sixteenth century. With this point in mind, the Library’s collection of sixteenth-century Hebrew books can, in fact, be seen as representative of the whole in terms of genres and authorship, and highly comprehensive in terms of geographical span. The Library of Congress holds books printed by almost all of the great printers of Hebrew in the sixteenth century and from almost every town or city where Hebrew books were printed over the course of the century, in Italy, Eastern Europe, and the Ottoman Empire.²

Its collections can also boast of an impressive number of printing firsts. Amongst these we could mention:

• the First Rabbinic Bible (Venice, 1517).³
• 22 of the 44 tractates of the precious first edition of the Babylonian Talmud, printed by Daniel Bomberg in Venice, 1520-1523. This includes a copy of Pesahim, the first treatise Bomberg printed.⁴
• the first Jerusalem Talmud (Venice, 1522-1523).
• the first Karaite prayer book (Venice, 1528-1529).⁵
• the first true polyglot volume from the Bible: Psalterium Hebraeum, Graecum, Arabicum, et Chaldaeum (Genoa, 1516).
• the first printed commentary on the Haggadah: Zevah Pesah (Constantinople, 1505).
• the editio princeps of the Zohar (Mantua, 1558-1560).
• the editio princeps (in fact, two copies) of the path-breaking Me’or Eynaim by Azariah de Rossi (Mantua, 1573/1574).
• the editio princeps of Iggeret Ba'ale Hayyim (Mantua, 1557).
• the editio princeps of Sefer Rav Mordecai as a separate work (Riva di Trento, 1558).
• the editio princeps of several collections of rabbinic responsa, including: Maimonides (Constantinople, 1514); Asher ben Yehiel (Constantinople, 1517); Israel ben Pethahiah Isserlein (Venice, 1519). The Library also holds a copy of the first printed novellae by Nahmanides (Venice, 1523).

Other important firsts in the Library’s collections include:

• the first Hebrew book to boast a title-page: Sefer ha-Rokeah (Fano, 1505).⁶
• the first Hebrew book with a true index: the responsa of Nissim ben Reuben Gerondi (Rome, 1545-1546).⁷
• the first dated book printed in North Africa: Sefer Abudarham (Fez, 1517). 
• the first book printed in the Land of Israel: Lekah Tov (Safed, 1577).
• the first book with a Hebrew map (more or less!) of the New World: Iggeret Orhot Olam (Venice, 1586).

The above titles might well be considered the pearls of any sixteenth-century collection.  But even without a claim to “firsts,” there are other items in the collection eminently worthy of mention, among them a copy of Lehem Yehuda (Sabbioneta, 1554), with the author’s moving eye-witness account of the burning of Hebrew books in Italy in 1553⁸; the rhymed tales of Mashal ha-Kadmoni with their charming woodcut illustrations (Venice, ca. 1547); and 5 books printed by Doña Reyna Nasi in the press she established first in Belvedere, her princely home in Ortoköy just outside Constantinople, and subsequently in Kuru-Chesme.⁹ We could also mention a number of important early imprints from Constantinople, amongst them a complete early edition of Halakhot Rav Alfas (1509); Maimonides’ Sefer ha-Mitsvot (1510?); and the Midrash Tehilim whose first half was published in Constantinople, 1512, and the second half in Salonika, 1515.  And perhaps most significant of all: the extremely important fragments from a projected edition of the Babylonian Talmud in Sabbioneta, 1554; about which very little is known – and much conjectured.¹⁰

Together with its strengths, the Finding Aid also points out a number of significant gaps in the Library’s collections; and certain titles, such as the Second Rabbinic Bible or imprints from the few cities not represented in our collections, remain desiderata. Chief amongst these:  

• the Hebrew Bible printed by the Nahmias brothers in Constantinople,1505.¹¹
• any of the early imprints from Prague by the important printer Gershom ben Solomon ha-Kohen, especially the magnificent Bible printed between 1514-1518, or the Passover Haggadah which he printed in 1526.
• any of the books printed at the first Hebrew press in Cracow, that of the brothers Samuel, Asher and Elyakim Halicz. Of particular note is Asher Anshel’s Mirkevet ha-Mishneh (Cracow, 1534): the first Yiddish book printed in Poland.¹²
• the only two sixteenth-century Hebrew books known to have been printed in Cairo: Refu’ot ha-Talmud (1556) and Pitron Halomot (1557).
• the earliest Hebrew calendar printed in pamphlet form: Lu’ah (Constantinople, 1510).
• Midrash Rabbah (Constantinople, 1512), an important landmark in the history of the text notwithstanding its many inaccuracies.

And last but not least, the Finding Aid points out books (19, to be exact) with two or more copies in the Library’s collections¹³ as well as sets of books lacking in specific volumes. So, for example, we can easily see from the Finding Aid that the Library of Congress lacks the first volume in the 4-volume set of responsa by Joseph ben David Lev; or, to cite another example, Part One of Bomberg’s edition of Halakhot Rav Alfas (Venice, 1521-1522) - a fact not immediately apparent from the books themselves since the binding simply, and somewhat misleadingly, reads: “Volume One” and “Volume Two.”