Mashket originated as a typeface imitating the
Ashkenazic semi-cursive used for both Hebrew and Yiddish. The earliest extant
printed book in which Yiddish constituted a major segment,
The Second Chariot () (1534), attributed to Rabbi Anshel ben Eliakim ha-Levi Tsion, was written in
mashket. The type family came to be used almost exclusively for Yiddish with the dominance use of block and "Rashi" scripts (the latter based on
Sephardic semi-cursive) by early Hebrew
typographers such as the
Soncino family. The typeface later became associated with devotional women's literature. As a result of their not being present in the
yeshivot, women were usually fluent only in the Yiddish (the
vernacular among
Ashkenazi Jews), and literate only in Yiddish, if at all. Thus early religious works in Yiddish were mostly created for women's edification. The
Tseno Ureno was a
Yiddish-language prose adaptation of the
Chumash, its corresponding
Haftarah portions, and the Megillot. It dates to at least 1622 and has been published in block print and
vaybertaytsh. Similarly,
tkhines were
supplicatory prayers written in Yiddish (usually for women) rather than in Hebrew and Aramaic, in contrast to the normative
Jewish liturgy. They proliferated in the 16th and 17th centuries, and continued to be written and published, usually in
vaybertaytsh, into the early- to mid-20th century. Square print began to replace
vaybertaytsh in Yiddish books in the 1830s. By the late 19th century, nearly all books in Yiddish were printed in square letters. ==See also==