Anxieties of Transmission: Rabbinic Responsa and Early Modern "Print Culture".

Abstract

The Talmud states: "God precedes afflictions with their remedy." But what if that remedy exacerbates the affliction? Early modern Jewish culture faced precisely this dilemma: A growing scholarly anxiety-transmitting and mastering crucial legal texts-was preceded by its solution, print. Print, however, simultaneously exacerbated the affliction. My article analyzes this dynamic's development in Jewish scholarly culture around the printing of rabbinic responsa in the mid-sixteenth century. Across early modern Europe, scholars grappled with simultaneously promising and overwhelming prospects of expanding textual corpora. This study illuminates shared dynamics of early modern knowledge, suggesting new approaches to print culture.