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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Sam Jones in Madrid

New edition of Ferrara bible shows how persecuted Jews kept faith alive in Spanish

Part of the front cover of the bible, with the 'Biblia' in large letters on a frontispiece
Few of the Jews in Ferrara could speak or read Hebrew, which is how the Ferrara bible came to be the first complete, printed edition of the entire Hebrew bible in Spanish. Photograph: Marcial Gómez Martín/Fundación José Antonio de Castro/Biblioteca Castro

In 1553, a community of exiled Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had found refuge and patronage in the northern Italian city of Ferrara did something that would have been unthinkable, and very possibly fatal, in their former homelands.

They printed their own Hebrew bible in Spanish.

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