Jacob ben Naphtali ha-Kohen

Born in Gazzuolo, Italy, Jacob ben Naphtali ha-Kohen managed Tobia Foà’s Hebrew printing house in Sabbioneta. In 1556 ha-Kohen settled in Mantua where he oversaw the printing of numerous works for the printing house of Venturino Roffinelli, some alone and some in cooperation with others. The first book he worked on in Mantua was Sefer ha-baḥur (The Book of [Elijah] Baḥur), a grammatical work by Elijah Levita, published in 1556. He was also involved in printing editions of Pirke Avot, Sefer ha-yetsirah (Book of Formation), and others. In the years 1558 to 1560, Jacob was engaged, together with Meir ben Ephraim of Padua, in printing the first edition of the main text of kabbalah, the Zohar. In 1557, Jacob printed Tikune ha-Zohar, an appendix to the main body of the Zohar that contains seventy kabbalistic midrashic commentaries on the first word of the Pentateuch, Be-re’shit, to which he appended this colophon.