Obj. ID: 35990
Jewish printed books Sema Dechaya by Elazar ben Aryeh Leib Me-Piltz, Warsaw, 1796
This text was prepared by William Gross:
The book was published by the widow of the non-Jewish Warsaw printer Petri Zawadski. This publishing house was responsible for the printing of some of the most vitriolic anti-Hasidic works of the turn of the century. The publisher's monogram appears on the title page; on either side are the words: "In the new printing house of the Widow Zawadski, who resides here in the the royal [capital] city of Warsaw".
The specialized craft and business of printing made for distinctive recurrent patterns throughout the 1800s. Family ties linked many printers, and successful presses often remained intergenerational businesses. During the nineteenth century, when the Jewish world center of print moved to Eastern Europe, and the social place and function of women improved, there were 24 women active in Hebrew printing and publishing, 17 of whom were in Eastern Europe. A substantial number of printing houses came to be run by widows, the most famous of whom was the Widow (Dvoyre) Romm, who exerted substantial control over the great Lithuanian publishing house from 1860 until her death in 1903. In at least one case, a major Hebrew press, in Lwów, was founded and run from 1788 to 1805 by a woman, Yudis Rosanes, who came from the Żółkiew line of Uri Fayvesh ha-Levi.