The rise of printing had major effects on culture and society in the early modern period, and the presence of this new technology--and the relatively rapid embrace of it among early modern Jews--certainly had an effect on many aspects of Jewish culture. One major change that print seems to have brought to the Jewish communities of Christian Europe, particularly in Italy, was greater interaction between Jews and Christians in the production and dissemination of books.

Starting in the early sixteenth century, the locus of production for Jewish books in many places in Italy was in...