I wonder how the following comments of his relate to Hebrew printing.

Q: What did you find most interesting of the trends that you uncovered in your study of the early book industry?

A: Two things. The first is the extent to which the new book market was underpinned by books that hadn’t played any role in the conventional narrative of what’s called the “print revolution.” The earliest commentators welcomed print, celebrating it as an essential part of the civilizing process on the way to modernity.

But inevitably this view concentrates on the most eye-catching of the newly-printed books: the great Bibles of Gutenberg and Plantin, Copernicus and scientific books, atlases, maps. The fact is that these big books almost always lost money. The engine room of the new industry turned out to be small books and pamphlets, at most two days’ work in the print shop, which could turn a quick profit. I think our project is the first thing that has really spelled this out in quantitative terms.

The second thing is our discovery of what you might call a two-speed Europe. The conventional geography of print always emphasizes how quickly it spread throughout Europe. Within 50 years of print’s invention, over 200 places had a printing press. But most of those early presses only survived a few years—they quickly went out of business and print contracted. What we discovered is around 85 percent of print output was produced close to the geographical center of European trade—in France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. This was the heart of production. Outside this central zone, Spain, England, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe had essentially dependent markets.

Other news on the digital front is more info from the Talmud Blog about the digitization of Hebrew journals, a welcome step. Lastly, Lion of Zion links to a post about problems encountered with the disposal of sheimot, broadly defined to be something which contains the name of God or certain religious objects that requires special disposal. Despite Lion of Zion’s aversion for throwing printed matter out, something which I sympathize with, there are times when certain things have got to go. One suggestion that wasn’t offered was trying to maximize the amount of things that can be recycled, something which I wrote about here.

The works slated for inclusion in the project will be selected by academics from Bar-Ilan and other universities over the next few months. In addition, a section of the data us (?) Hebrew texts, spanning the timeline from the Enlightenment until the modern era. The database will only include texts whose authors have been dead for over 70 years, and whose copyright has become available to the public.

The Web site operators, however, plan to make excerpts of more recently written texts available to Internet surfers with the approval of the authors. Such excerpts will feature links to the publishers’ Web sites where the books may be purchased in their entirety.

There is also an interesting article in the Hebrew Haaretz about a series called “Am ha-Sefer” (“The people of the book”), which is publishing the “classics” of the Jewish people. You can read about it here at the Hebrew Wikipedia or here. There will be twenty-four books in the series. I am not familiar with the series, but it looks like an interesting undertaking. While we are talking about digital texts, the latest article to discuss the future of the printed book and digital texts is “The Library in the New Age” by Robert Darnton. One reaction to Darnton’s article can be found here.

R. Zera says: The merit of attending a lecture lies in the running. Abaye says: The merit of attending the Kallah sessions lies in the crush. Raba says: The merit of repeating a tradition lies in [improving] the understanding of it. R. Papa says: The merit of attending a house of mourning lies in the silence observed. Mar Zutra says: The merit of a fast day lies in the charity dispensed. R. Shesheth says: The merit of a funeral oration lies in raising the voice. R. Ashi says: The merit of attending a wedding lies in the words [of congratulation addressed to the bride and bridegroom].

The first three statements directly concern learning, but what is also clear is that the origins of the merit or reward described in the first two statements has nothing to do with any type of comprehension, “running” and “the crush”. This is even more surprising being that all of these statements describe the attendance of sages at the pirka and kallah.[2] Rashi’s commentary on the first statement makes clear why, in his opinion the merit or reward is for running and not comprehension, most people couldn’t fully understand what was being taught so the reward was for the performance itself, not the actual understanding of what was being taught. (עיקר קבול שכר הבריות הרצים לשמוע דרשה מפי חכם – היא שכר המרוצה, שהרי רובם אינם מבינים להעמיד גרסא ולומר שמועה מפי רבן לאחר זמן שיקבלו שכר למוד ).
In a Jewish context, the performative and social aspect of learning has been described by Sameul Heilman in his The People of the Book. Returning to the post at Seforim, maybe the ubiquity of the Artscroll Talmud,[3] and the “Artscroll phenomenon” in general, signifies a paradigm shift in Talmud study. While in the past some people were exposed to the aggadot of the Talmud through such works as Ein Yaakov,[4] or such compilations such as Hok le-Yisrael (update: which doesn’t only contain aggadic selections from the Talmud), it is my unscientific guess, which could be wrong and shouldn’t be based on generalizations, that many Jews never saw a page of Talmud, and if they did, they didn’t understand much of what they read. Maybe the modern parallel for public events which involve lots of running and crushing is the SOY Seforim Sale-תבב”א.

[1] See Ephraim Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society in the Middle Ages, pp. 171-172 n.49 for a list of sources.
[2] I. Gafni, Yehudei Bavel be-Tekufat ha-Talmud, p. 209.
[3] I would also include similar undertaking in Hebrew such as Hevruta.
[4] Marjorie Lehman is currently completing a book on Ein Yaakov which will enrich this discussion.