Jacob Ashkenazi of Janov

Little is known about the life of Jacob Ashkenazi of Janov, author of one of the most famous and successful Yiddish books, the Tsene rene (Go Forth and Look). He was likely born in Poland, where he lived most of his life, and he might have made a living as a preacher. The earliest known edition of the Tsene rene is the one printed in Basel in 1622, but there seemed to have been at least three earlier editions. The book is organized according to the weekly Torah portions of the year, offering a selection of traditional commentary and exegesis in Yiddish. The Tsene rene offered Ashkenazic women, who were rarely literate in Hebrew, access to religious texts in an approachable Yiddish adaptation of the weekly Torah and Haftarah readings, as well as the five megilot. This book was republished countless times in Europe, the United States, and Israel.