Tablet Magazine
The Jerusalem Print Workshop, providing free workspace for artists, revives an artistic tradition in an ancient city struggling with changing demographics and religious tensions.
In 1576, Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yitzchak Ashkenazi, a printer of religious texts driven from Prague by anti-Semitic edicts, arrived in the Holy Land by way of Lublin, Vienna, Constantinople, Rhodes, Sidon, and Damascus. Hauling his printing presses by horse cart, mule, and ship, Rabbi Eliezer finally settled, exhausted and nearly bankrupt, in Safed, in the Galilee. Though his shop was known to have printed only six books, it marked the birth of Hebrew printing in the Holy Land. Read more. See Gallery >>
