Roizl Fishels of Cracow

Roizl Fishels of Cracow was a Jewish publisher and teacher. In 1586 she printed a book of Psalms translated from Hebrew into Yiddish by R. Moshe Standl. She included her own autobiographical Yiddish poem at the front of the book. In poem, she describes her genealogy saying she was granddaughter of Yuda Levy, who ran a yeshivah in Ludomir for 50 years. She also briefly mentions her father, Yosef Halevi, and her husband whom she calls simply R. Fishels. One line of the poem, “Here in the holy city of Hanover I donated ” implies that she funded the printing of this Yiddish book so that it would be available “in our own mother tongue.”At the end of the book, Roizl mentions date of completion and signed her name as “Roizl the Widow, daughter of R. Yosef Halevi.”