Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection

SHULHAN ARUKH (HALAKHIC CODE), RABBI JOSEPH CARO, [HANAU?]: DAVID BEN MENAHEM HA-KOHEN, 1627-1628

Auction Closed

November 20, 08:47 PM GMT

Estimate

7,000 - 9,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

SHULHAN ARUKH (HALAKHIC CODE), RABBI JOSEPH CARO, [HANAU?]: DAVID BEN MENAHEM HA-KOHEN, 1627-1628

4 parts in 1 volume (6 3/4 x 4 3/8 in.; 172 x 112 mm): Part 1 (Orah hayyim): 122 folios; Part 2 (Yoreh de‘ah): 114 folios; Part 3 (Even ha-ezer): 64 folios; Part 4 (Hoshen ha-mishpat): 136 folios on paper. Four divisional titles within borders of typographic ornaments; decorative elements scattered throughout, but especially on 1:2v, 122v, 2:114r, 4:136r; marks in pen on 3:36r. Slight scattered staining; browning and dogearing; edges frayed toward front of volume; small nicks in outer edges episodically throughout; small holes on 1:[1], 2:43; tape repairs in outer edges of 1:[1]-7, 101, 3:60 and in lower edges of 1:100, 118, 2:37, 47, 3:59; minor worming near lower-outer corners of 1:13-50, mostly affecting only individual letters, in upper margins of 1:37-52, in upper-outer corners of 2:104-3:26, and in outer margins of 3:49-4:136; short tears in lower edges of 1:9, 114 and in upper edge of 4:93. Later half-cloth over gilt-tooled brown leather, slightly scuffed and stained; red leather leathering piece with title lettered in gilt on spine; black edges; contemporary paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

A portable, one-volume copy of this fundamental code of Jewish law.

The present edition of Rabbi Joseph Caro’s Shulhan arukh (see lot 37) includes the glosses of Rabbi Moses Isserles (1525/1530-1572), a major Ashkenazic halakhic authority based in Krakow. The text of this octavo-format book is based on the quarto edition issued in Krakow in 1606-1607, which included controversial source citations anonymously added to Isserles’ glosses based on his more expansive work, Darkhei mosheh. According to its title page, it was printed “in a small volume, so that [readers] will carry it in their bosom to study it at all times and in all places, while at home or traveling.” (The publisher, David ben Menahem ha-Kohen, produced a ten-folio octavo-format prayer book, apparently also intended for wayfarers, in 1628.) The place of publication is not identified on the title page or elsewhere in the book. Although some have suggested Hanau, based on the city of origin of one of the book’s compositors, others have disputed this attribution.

Provenance

David bar Jacob ha-Kohen (1:[1])

[…] bar Abraham (4:136v)

Literature

Vinograd, Hanau 47

Herbert C. Zafren, “A Probe into Hebrew Printing in Hanau in the Seventeenth Century[,] or How Quantifiable Is Hebrew Typography?” in Sheldon R. Brunswick (ed.), Studies in Judaica, Karaitica and Islamica Presented to Leon Nemoy on his Eightieth Birthday (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1982), 273-285, at pp. 281-282, 284.

Herbert C. Zafren, “Hebrew Printing by and for Frankfurt Jews – to 1800,” in Karl E. Grözinger (ed.), Jüdische Kultur in Frankfurt am Main von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 231-271, at p. 235.