Avnei Yehoshua, Joshua Falk, New York: 1860

108 pages (7 1/4 x 4 3/4 in.; 185  x 120 mm). Lightly stained; final leaf minor loss at top inner margin; a few instances of minor chipping on foreedge and corners. Modern blind-tooled red morocco; titles gilt stamped on morocco labels. 

Vinograd, New York 53; Deinard, Koheleth America 4; Singerman 1653; Goldman, Hebrew Printing inAmerica, #688; Abraham Karp, From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures from the Library of Congress,New York: 1991, pp. 316-7.

This commentary on the Ethics of the Fathers is the first book written in Hebrew, other than the Bible or liturgies, to be published in America. Its author, Joshua ben Mordecai Falk, was born in the Prussian-Polish province of Posen in 1799, and came to America in 1858. Although he briefly served as a rabbi to the Jewish communities of Newburgh and Poughkeepsie in New York State, his greatest achievement was the publication of his commentary on the Ethics of the Fathers in 1860. Falk writes in his preface that this was originally intended to be a larger work called Binyan Yehoshua (House of Joshua); it was to comprise two smaller works, Avnei Yehoshua (Stones of Joshua) and Homat Yehoshua (Wall of Joshua.)

Meeting with little success in obtaining subscribers for his projected work, Falk turned for advice to New York's most prominent rabbi, Morris J. Raphall, who advised him to first publish a modest excerpt from the large work to use as a sample for soliciting prospective purchasers.  Raphall suggested that the title should be Reshit Bikkurim (First Fruits), which would carry a double meaning, the first work of the author, and more appealingly, the first work published in Hebrew in America.  Electing to keep the original title, Falk followed the rabbi's suggestion of printing a portion of the larger work.  The book's unique typographical feel resulted from the use of the Hebrew fonts of the weekly periodical "The Jewish Messenger," in whose New York offices the book was printed.

The import of his pioneering effort was recognized by the author, who implored the public to purchase the book in order to prove that Jewish scholarly works could indeed find an audience in an America which was at the time, still considered to be ignorant of Jewish scholarship.  But others would recognize this milestone of American Hebrew publishing as well.  Appended to the work, on the last page, is a colophon added by the typesetter, a Prussian Jew named Naftali ben Katriel Samuel of Thorn. "I give thanks" he writes, "that it has fallen to me to set the type for this learned work, the first in America."