Joseph Raphael de Abraham (Jorge Mendes de Castro) Athias

https://www.joodsamsterdam.nl/nieuwe-herengracht/ Nieuwe Herengracht 103 – Joseph Athias
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/eegh004amst05_01/eegh004amst05_01.pdf
https://ms.wikitrev.com/wiki/Joseph_Athias
https://www.genealogieonline.nl/en/rodriguez-lopez-y-uribe-senior/I...

Joseph b. Abraham Athias: His Printing-Press. Printer and publisher; born in Spain, probably at Cordova, at the beginning of the seventeenth century; died at Amsterdam, May 12, 1700. When very young he was sent by his father to Hamburg in order to receive a Jewish education. Somewhat before 1658 he seems to have gone to Amsterdam, where he established himself as a printer and publisher; for in the following year there was issued from his press "Tikkun Sefer Torah" (Order of the Book of the Law), with an introductory poem by Solomon de Oliveyra. During the next two years he was engaged on his well-known edition of the Bible, the proof-reading for which was entrusted to John Leusden, professor at Leyden. As Steinschneider says, the admirable mechanical execution of the edition entitles it to rank among the most beautiful specimens of Hebrew presswork; and it won for Athias so great a reputation that he was thereupon taken into the Printers' Gild (March 31, 1661).

Printer's Mark of Joseph Athias.Other works published by Athias were: Pentateuch, with Megillot and Haf?arot, 1665; the Psalms, with a Dutch translation (proof-reader J. Leusden), 1666-67; the second edition of his Bible, 1677, more carefully prepared than the first, and with still more beautiful type and decorations. For this edition the States General of the Netherlands awarded him a gold medal and chain worth 600 Dutch florins. On the title-page is a cut of the medal. This edition gave occasion for a small broadside by Athias, entitled "C?cus de Coloribus, contra Reprehensiones Sam. Maresii de ed. Bibl." Amsterdam, 1669. Athias published also "En Ya'a?ob" (1684-85), as well as prayer-books and liturgies according to the Portuguese and German rituals.

Athias' printing-establishment was one of the best equipped in Amsterdam. His wealth enabled him to lavish money on the cutting and casting of type, and to demand artistic work of his designers and die-sinkers. The edition of Maimonides' Yad ha-?aza?ah, with "Le?em Mishneh," 5 vols., Amsterdam, 1702-3, begun by Athias and completed after his death by his son Emanuel, is, as Steinschneider says, one of the most elegant and most admired products of the Hebrew press. At the end of the work the fact is mentioned that on July 9, 1667, Athias' father was burned as a Marano at an auto da fé at Cordova. The molds and letters used by Athias came into the possession of the printing-house of Proops.

Judæo-German Bible.

One ugly feature in Athias' business career was the circumstance connected with a Judæo-German edition of the Bible. The printer Uri Ph?bus, grandson of Moses Uri Levi, the first Sephardic rabbi at Amsterdam, employed a certain Jekutiel Blitz to write a Judæo-German translation of the Bible; and, before he began to print it, he obtained from the Polish Council of the Four Lands the privilege that for ten years all reprints were to be prohibited and laid under ban (Nisan, 1671). The rabbis of the Portuguese and German congregations of Amsterdam and elsewhere confirmed this privilege. Ph?bus, whose entire fortune was risked in the undertaking, felt himself under the necessity oftaking two Christian partners, the alderman Wilhelm Blau and the jurist Laurens Ball. Through their influence he obtained from John III. Sobieski of Poland the further privilege that this Judæo-German translation was to have copyright in Poland for twenty years (Oct., 1677). The work was not completed, when one of his compositors, impelled by envy, robbed him of the fruits of his labor. This compositor, Josel (Joseph) Witzenhausen, himself made a translation for which he secured Athias as printer and publisher. Athias through his weaalth possessed certain advantages over his rival, and was also able to obtain privileges for his translation from Holland and Zealand, and even succeeded, through a Jewish agent of the Polish crown in Holland, Simon by name, in gaining still morore favorable protection from the Council of the Four Lands (Jaroslaw, Sept. 21, 1677; Lublin, April 27, 1678). Although Witzenhausen was warned not to compete with Ph?bus and Blitz (Oct. 13, 1676), neither he nor Athias paid any attention to the injunction, and they began to print as early as Dec. 5, 1678. The edition of Ph?bus appeared at Amsterdam in 1678; that of Athias, in its complete form in 1679. The latter contained a Latin preface dedicated to the Great Elector, in which Athias praises the condition of the Jews in Prussia.

A justification for Athias' conduct was claimed in the fact that ten years had elapsed between the first and second approbations given by the Council of the Four Lands. Whether Meyer Stern, first at Frankfort-on-the Main, then chief rabbi of the German community at Amsterdam, was proof-reader for Athias' edition as well as for that of Ph?bus, and whether he thus lent his countenance to the unjustifiable wrong done to the latter, is uncertain, despite Witzenhausen's mention of him as proof-reader for Athias. The matter has been so fancifully discussed, and so much that has been written concerning it is such pure invention, that nothing can now be accurately determined. The literature on the affair is now rare, having consisted mainly of loose leaflets and broadsides.

Bibliography: Wolf, Bibliotheca Hebr?a, iii. 944; Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. Nos. 5886, 7828; Kayserling, Bibl. Españ-Portug.-Jud. p. 14; Grätz, Gesch. der Juden, 3d ed., x. 244, 299; T. Tal, in Woord en Beeld, Sept., 1897, pp. 316 et seq.; Jaarboeken voor de Israëliten, 1835, iv. 29; Koenen, Geschiedenis der Joden in Nederland, p. 326.