| As
Printer
Between 1674 and 1679 Bass traveled through Poland,
Germany, and Holland, stopping in such cities as
Glogau, Kalisz, Krotoschin, Lissa, Posen, Worms, and
Amsterdam, the centers of Jewish scholarship. He
finally settled at Amsterdam in 1679, where he entered
into friendly and scholarly relations with the eminent
men of the German and the Portuguese-Spanish
communities. That city was the center of Jewish
printing and publishing, and Bass, becoming thoroughly
familiar with the business, resolved to devote himself
entirely to issuing Jewish books. With a keen eye for
the practical, he perceived that the eastern part of
Germany was a suitable place for a Jewish printing
establishment. The literary productivity of the
Lithuanian-Polish Jews was at this time obliged to
seek an outlet in Amsterdam or Prague almost
exclusively; Bass accordingly fixed upon Breslau as a
suitable place for his purposes, on account of its
vicinity to the Polish frontier, and of the large
commerce carried on between Breslau and Poland. Hence,
after a residence of five years, he left Amsterdam;
going first, it seems, to Vienna, in order to obtain a
license from the imperial government. The negotiations
between Bass and the magistrates of Breslau occupied
nearly four years, and not until 1687 or 1688 did he
receive permission to set up a Hebrew printing-press.
At Dyhernfurth
Thereupon he settled
at Dyhernfurth, a small town near Breslau founded
shortly before 1663, whose owner, Herr von Glaubitz,
glad to have a large establishment on his estate, was
very well disposed toward Bass. In order the more
easily to obtain Jewish workmen, Bass united into a
congregation the small band of printers, typesetters,
and workmen who had followed him to Dyhernfurth, for
whose needs he cared, acquiring as early as 1689 a
place for a cemetery.
The first book from Bass's press appeared in the
middle of August, 1689, the first customer being, as
he had anticipated, a Polish scholar, Rabbi Samuel ben
Uri of Waydyslav, whose commentary Beit Shmuel on
Shulchen Aruch, Eben ha-'Ezer, was printed at
Dyhernfurth. The books that followed during the next
year were either works of Polish scholars or
liturgical collections intended for the use of Polish
Jews. Being issued in a correct, neat, and pleasing
form, they easily found buyers, especially at the
fairs of Breslau, where Bass himself sold his books.
But the ill-will against Jews, apparent since 1697 in
Silesia, and especially at Breslau, greatly injured
Bass's establishment; he was himself forbidden to stay
in Breslau (July 20, 1706). Another stroke of
misfortune was the partial destruction of his
establishment by fire in 1708. To this were added
domestic difficulties. When an old man he had married
a second time, to the great dissatisfaction of his
family and neighbors, his wife being a young girl. He
finally transferred his business to his only son,
Joseph, in 1711. His trials culminated in his sudden
arrest, April 13, 1712, on the charge of having spread
abroad incendiary speeches against all divine and
civic government. The Jesuits, who looked with an evil
eye upon Bass's undertaking, had endeavored, in a
letter to the magistrate of Breslau, as early as July
15, 1694, to have the sale of Hebrew books
interdicted, on the ground that such works contained
"blasphemous and irreligious words"; and they had
succeeded. As the magistrate saw, however, that the
confiscated books contained no objectionable matter,
they were restored to Bass.
In 1712 the Jesuit father Franz Kolb, teacher of
Hebrew at the University of Prague, succeeded in
having Bass and his son Joseph arrested, and their
books confiscated. The innocent little book of
devotions, Nathan Hannover's Sha'are Zion (Gates of
Zion), which Bass reprinted after it had already gone
through several editions, was transformed in the hands
of the learned father into a blasphemous work directed
against Christianity and Christians. Bass would have
fared ill had not the censor Pohl, who had been
commissioned to examine the contents of the books,
been both faithful and competent. In consequence of
his decision, Bass was released after ten weeks'
imprisonment, at first on bail, and then absolutely.
The last years of his life were devoted to the second
edition of his bibliographic manual, which he intended
to issue in enlarged and revised form. He died July
21, 1718 at Krotoschin without completing the work.
Literary Activity
Bass's works have the
constant characteristic of answering practical needs.
Instructional Works
In 1669 he reprinted
Moses Sartels' Judæo-German glossary on the Bible,
adding a grammatical preface, a work intended to
supply the lack of grammatical knowledge among
teachers of the young, and to furnish the latter with
the correct German rendering in translating the Bible.
Bass was greatly interested in improving the
instruction of the young, and recommended the
German-Polish Jews to imitate the methods of
instruction obtaining in the Portuguese community of
Amsterdam (Introduction to Sifte Yeshenim, p. 8,
translated by Güdemann, in Quellenschriften zur Gesch.
des Unterrichtswesens, pp. 112 et seq.), describing in
detail their curriculum. His subcommentary on Rashi's
commentary on the Pentateuch and the five Megillot
(Amsterdam, 1680, and many times reprinted) is also
intended for elementary instruction. In this little
book he has summed up with admirable brevity and
clearness the best work of his fifteen predecessors,
who had commented on Rashi; the book being even to-day
a most useful and almost indispensable aid toward
understanding and appreciating Rashi.
A most interesting and somewhat amusing little work is
Bass's itinerary, entitled Masseket Derek Ereẓ, a
treatise on the roads of the country (Amsterdam,
1680); the book, written in Judæo-German, contains
also tables of all the current coins, measures, and
weights in European countries, and a list of routes,
post connections, and distances.
Bibliographical Work
Bass's chief work,
however, is his bibliographical manual Sifte Yeshenim
(Lips of the Sleepers; compare Cant. R. to vii. 10)
(Amsterdam, 1680, frequently reprinted). This work
contains a list of 2,200 Hebrew books, in the
alphabetical order of the titles, conscientiously
giving the author, place of printing, year, and size
of each book, as well as a short summary of its
contents. The majority of the books described he knew
at first hand; the description of the others he
borrowed from the works of Buxtorf and Bartolocci
(from the latter only in the first part).
Bass's work is distinguished not only by its brevity
and accuracy, but by an entirely original feature, in
respect to which he had no predecessor, and almost no
successor; namely, a classification of the entire
Jewish literature, as far as he knew it. He divides
the whole into two chief groups, Biblical and
post-Biblical, and each group again into ten
subdivisions. Thus, dictionaries, grammars, and
translations form a subdivision of the Biblical group;
while Talmud commentaries and novellæ are included in
the Talmudic group. Although this classification is
still very superficial and primitive, it indicates its
author's wide knowledge and astonishing range of
reading. In addition to the list and classification of
the books, Bass gives an alphabetical index of
authors, including one of the Tannaim, Amoraim,
Saboraim, and Geonim.
Bass's introduction to his work is most characteristic
of the spirit prevailing among German Jews at that
time: he cites ten "religious reasons" for the
usefulness of his work. Not only was Bass's
undertaking new to the German Jews, but it also
appeared strange to them; only the Portuguese Jews of
Amsterdam, who had a leaning toward methods and
systems, knew how to appreciate him. Christian
scholars, however, were at once impressed by the
scholarship, style, usefulness, and reliability of the
bibliography. Latin as well as German translations,
some of which are still extant in manuscript, were
undertaken by Christian Orientalists. The greatest
proof of Bass's merit lies in the fact that Wolf's
Bibliotheca Hebræa is based chiefly on the Sifte
Yeshenim. |
