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Monsohn Family of Jerusalem and the A.L. Monsohn Lithographic Press

Abraham-Leib ben Yitshak Monsohn (Hebrew: ר' אברהם-לייב ב' יצחק מאנזאהן), known as “Avrom-Leib Shames,” was a member of the first Ashkenazi prayer quorum in the Old Yishuv community of Jerusalem at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He was born in Mogilev and immigrated to Jerusalem in 1832 with other students of the Vilna Gaon. His first wife was Zelda; he later married Dahde, believed to have been of the Maghrebim or North African Jewish community of Hebron. Abraham-Leib was the first beadle and caretaker (shamash) of the Menachem Zion and Hurva synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem, and of Rachel's Tomb on the outskirts of Bethlehem. He also was an aid to community leader Shlomo Zalman Zoref and accompanied him to Constantinople to obtain the sultan's permission to build the Hurva synagogue. Abraham-Leib’s son, Yoel Yosef Shimon Monsohn (Jerusalem, c.1843-c.1907), called “Shimen Shames,” later assumed the communal tasks his father had performed. Shimen Shames was married to Gitl (née Yofe), whose family migrated to Hebron from Shklov in the 1820s.

Shimen Shames’ son, Abraham-Leib II (Jerusalem, c.1871-1930), together with his brother Moshe-Mordechai, were sent to Frankfurt in 1890 to study lithographic printing. Upon returning to Jerusalem with a hand press, they established the A.L. Monsohn Lithographic Press in the Old City of Jerusalem, in the courtyard opposite what is today the Old Yishuv Court Museum (Hebrew: מוזיאון חצר היישוב הישן) at 6 Or Ha-Hayim Street in the Jewish Quarter. It produced about 300 color prints per day, the only color printing done at the time in Jerusalem. In 1894 they imported a new machine which could print 1,000 copies a day—a great advance in local printing. The founders of the Monsohn press produced Jewish-themed color postcards and greeting cards documenting the evolution of the Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, and religious material such as decorative plaques for synagogues and posters for Sukkot booths, and later, labels, packaging and advertisements for the pioneering entrepreneurs of Eretz Israel. The Monsohn Press received special permission from the city’s rabbis to print for Christians and Moslems, so long as the material could not be used to missionize. While Eretz Israel was under Ottoman control, Abraham-Leib Monsohn also printed the maps for the Ottoman military leader Djemal Pasha, in his headquarters in Mount Scopus.

For years, the Monsohn Press was considered the best and most innovative in the country—pioneering in such techniques as gold-embossing and offset printing, among others. Early items for tourists included collections of Flowers of the Holy Land (c. 1910-1918)—pressed local flowers accompanied by scenes from the Eretz Israel countryside and relevant verses from the Bible, bound in carved olive wood boards. In 1934 Monsohn moved into the new, western part of Jerusalem, in a shop with four presses and 30 workers, including Abraham-Leib’s sons, David, Yosef, Moshe and Shimon, and his daughter Raytse’s husband, Abraham Barmacz. The concern did business with all sectors of the city’s population, including Arabs, for whom they printed in Arabic. Among their clients were Ginio, Havilio, Elite, Shemen, Dubek, and other renowned national brands, manufacturing products such as wine, candies, oil, and cigarettes. They also printed movie and travel posters, and government posters, postcards and documents. During the Tzena austerity period Monsohn was the exclusive printer of government coupon booklets. Shimon Monsohn and Shimon Barmacz were responsible for the press in its final stage, during which it also produced color maps and printed books, especially offset editions of sacred works. Unable to compete with larger, more modernized concerns, the Monsohn Press closed in 1992. A grandson of the founders helped establish Keter Press, printer of the first edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica and still one of Israel’s leading printing establishments. The past generations of the Jerusalem Monsohn's are buried in the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. The prints produced by the A.L. Monsohn Lithography are sought after by collectors the world over.

References

Category:Palestinian Jews Category:Jewish history Category:Burials at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives