Joshua ben Mordechai HaKohen Falk. Sepher Avnei Yehoshua [“Stones of Joshua”: philosophical commentary to the Ethics of the Fathers].

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Jewish Messenger

New York

1860

FIRST EDITION. Composed in a striking typeface.

Vinograd, New York 53; Goldman no. 688.

The First Rabbinical Text Published in America. The First Hebrew Books Printed in New York. The author, Joshua Falk, was well aware of the revolutionary aspect of issuing a work of Jewish scholarship in Hebrew in the New World. His preface urges Jews to purchase this Books in order to prove that Jewish works of this nature do indeed have an audience in America, which in turn, will lead to more such rabbinic texts to be issued in this country. The typesetter, Naphtali ben Kathriel Samuel of Thorn also recognized the Books’s importance, viz. the colophon: “I give thanks that it was my good fortune to be the typesetter of this scholarly Books, the first of its kind in America.”