Hebrew Almanac for the Year 5657 1896-'97

New York: G. Goldman. Printer: Stettiner Brothers, 1896. Wraps. Fair. Brochure issued by G. Goldman, a sausage maker located on Houston Street. A truly scarce relic. Although it is called a Hebrew Almanac, in fact the primary language is Yiddish, using Hebrew characters as was the standard script for Yiddish, with a fair amount of English. Thus Hebrew as used here is simply a synonym for Jewish. OCLC First Search has a listing for a Hebrew almanac issued six years earlier and printed by Stettiner, Lambert, but no institution is listed as having it, and there is an 1896 Hebrew almanac printed by a Philadelphia printer and clearly quite different from this one, and again, no institution is shown as owning it. And of several other references to Hebrew almanacs from the period, only one is indicated as held by a library, Hamilton College, for a year prior to ours, and this one is from another printer and clearly different from ours. 16mo. 11 by 7 cm. 32 pages, plus wraps. The front, if this were an English booklet, features a portrait of G. Goldmann. The front as a Yiddish booklet, is a simple promotion ad for Goldmann's business, which was sausage making. On the bottom of almost every page is a single line in bold type listing Goldmann's various products, one per page. Some of those products would be regarded as quite exotic today, or at least exotic in how they are named here. Examples are "smoked shoulder", or "Vienna sausage". Also promoting the business is a mention of free delivery to anywhere in the city. This might seem surprising, given the geographic size of the city by then and how long it would have taken to deliver all the way uptown with the speed of transportation then available. But practically, Goldmann's deliveries probably didn't often reach beyond a few block radius where the Jewish immigrant community was then clustered. Wraps detached, and they are torn down the middle -- the spine fold, with other tears and chips along edges, soiling, and overall grittiness. The pages show wear as well, but there is no loss of text, and the text is easily readable. (Inventory #: 20246)