“ומט הער איר ליבן מאנן אונ׳ פֿרויאן אונ׳ טוט דאש שין ביכֿל אן שויאן”

(Come here, you dear women and men and take a look at this nice booklet) is the formulaic beginning of the early modern Yiddish frontispiece of the זיבן ווייזן מיינשטרביכל (Seven Wise Masters Booklet, Zibn vayzn maynster bikhl) from 1602. The Zibn vayzn maynster bikhl belongs to one of the most widely known story collections in world literature commonly known under the title the Seven Sages of Rome or the Book of Sindbad. Though neither the place nor the printer is named, the typeface and title indicate that it was printed in Konrad Waldkirch's press in Basel. The title page states that it was edited by Yankev Vayl and Yankev Moykher Sforim (also known as Jacob Buchhändler, Jacob ben Abraham, or Yankev Polak) of Mezritsh (now Międzyrzec Podlaski, Poland) who served between 1598 and 1603 as corrector and commissioner at Waldkirch's printing house—much to the chagrin of the Christian Hebraist Johannes Buxtorf (1549–ca. 1615), who did not think highly of Yankev Moykher Sforim's Hebrew skills, but still used him as a procurer of Hebrew and Yiddish books and manuscripts, including a manuscript version of the Mayse bukh (Book of Stories), one of the most successful story collections in Old Yiddish. Using an almost identical formula, which reads “ומט הער איר ליבן מאנן אונ׳ ורויאן אונ׳ טוט דאש שין מעשה בוך אן שויאן” (come here, you dear women and men and take a look at this nice book of stories), the Mayse bukh was also commissioned for printing at Waldkirch's press by Yankev Moykher Sforim in 1602. Addressing “יבן ורו” (dear women and girls) in the 1602 Zibn vayzn maynster bikhl and “ליבן ורויאן” (dear women) in the Mayse bukh, Yankev Moykher Sforim repeats the same threat in both books that he would go to “פֿרעמדן לנד” (foreign countries) such as Russia and Poland if women did not buy his books. He clearly had a very similar readership in mind for his two publications.