BENVENISTE, IMMANUEL

BENVENISTE, IMMANUEL (Manoel; Venice? c. 1608–Amsterdam c. 1660), Hebrew printer in Amsterdam. Benveniste's name appears in an entry in the Puiboken of that city, dated Feb. 10, 1640: "Immanuel Benveniste of Venice, 32 years old, parents still living…" Among the approximately 50 works he printed between 1640 and 1659 are Midrash Rabbah (1641–42), Mishnah (1643), and Alfasi's Halakhot (1643). His outstanding production, however, was the Babylonian Talmud (1644–48), which restored some passages expunged by the censor in previous editions. As correctors Benveniste employed Moses di Cordova b. Isaac of Constantinople (for the Midrash Rabbah) and the Amsterdam rabbi Abraham b. Joshua of Worms (for the Alfasi edition). Benveniste's editions can usually be recognized by the title page frame of a gate of prism-shaped stones with his printer's mark, a castle flanked by a lion with a star superimposed. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.S. da Silva Rosa, Geschiedenis der portugeesche Joden te Amsterdam 1593–1925 (1925), 29–30.; ESN 1 (1949), 62; Brugmans-Frank, 469, 476. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Fuks and R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands 1585–1815, 1 (1984), 146–84; M.J. Heller, in: Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, 19 (1994) 3–20. (Encyclopaedia Judaica (Germany) / A. K. Offenberg (2nd ed.)