February 17 1475 – 10 Adar 5235
The first Hebrew book marked with a publishing date was printed in Reggio Calabria in Italy. An edition of what has become the classic commentary on the bible, Rashi’s (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak) compilation of legends, laws and grammatical comments drawn mostly from the Talmud, the book was also the last Hebrew book published in the town. It’s publisher, a Spanish Jew named Avraham ben Garton, showed a canny commercial sense, as Rashi’s commentary has become the place where every student, especially children, begin their study of the Biblical text. Garton chose to a cursive Sephardic script for the commentary, which is now known as a result as “Rashi script.” Three hundred copies were printed for Garton to take back to Spain and distributed there. But between the confiscations of Hebrew books by the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of Spanish Jewry less than two decades after publication, all the copies except one have been lost. That one surviving example is in the library of Palma, in Italy.