Machzor mikol Hashanah [prayers for the Festivals and the days of Awe]. According to Aschkenazi rite.

(LITURGY)

Adam Burg

Thannhausen

1594

Prepared by Isaac Mazia and and Shimon Levi of Guenzburg. Few initial letters within cartouches.

Vinograd, Thannhausen 3

A singularly celebrated and famously rare Hebrew book. Printed in the Bavarian village of Thannhausen for the small number of Jews in Germany. Adam Burg, a Gentile press owner, was surreptitiously hired to print this prayer-book, as the Government forbade Jews from printing activity. Such was the fear in publishing this Machzor, prayers that might have been misinterpreted as blasphemy seem to have been deliberately left blank for individuals to provide by hand. Regrettably, the authorities discovered the unlawful publication mid-production. The Jewish editors were imprisoned and the complete print-run was confiscated. After the censor at the University of Ingolstadt considered the matter, all 1500 copies of the uncompleted Machzor were destroyed. For a census of the four copies extant (none in North America or Israel) see M.N. Rosenfeld, Hebrew Printing in Southern Germany (forthcoming). See also B. Friedberg, History of Hebrew Typography [Hebrew] (1935) p.54; and M.N. Rosenfeld, The Development of Hebrew Printing in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries in: New York Public Library Catalogue, A Sign and a Witness (1988) p. 97.