Teshuvot She'elot (Responsa), Solomon ibn Adret, Rome: Obadiah, Manasseh and Benjamin [ca. 1469-73]

160 leaves, (8 x 6 in.; 205 x 150 mm), lacking only the initial and and final blanks. collation: 1-–15¹⁰, 16¹². Quires unsigned. Initial leaf with small hole in lower margin, not affecting text; owner's stamp and notes. Minimal marginal water stains, resulting from coloring on mottled purple edges. A good copy with very strong paper. Modern blind tooled morocco; brass clasps and catches; housed in a buckram and morocco clamshell case.

Nahum Dovber Friedman of Sadigora of the famous Friedman dynasty of Hassidic rabbis of Sadigora, Ukraine--his stamps.

Vinograd Rome 8; Offenberg 55; Goff Heb-95; Hain 14245; Steinschneider 6891.24; Thes A25; Iakerson 5; BMC XIII 5 (C.50.b.19)

FIRST EDITION; PROBABLY THE SECOND PRINTED HEBREW BOOK

Solomon ibn Adret (ca. 1235-1310), a pupil of Nahmanides, served as a rabbi in Barcelona, but was the recipient of halakhic queries from all over the Jewish world. This volume, probably the second Hebrew book ever printed, comprises a collection of 420 numbered responsa. The only such collection printed in the fifteenth century, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the day-to-day lives of contemporary Jews.

One fascinating case (responsum #4), poses the dilemma of a man who made a sacred vowed to abstain from playing dice, insofar as gambling was forbidden by halakha. Fearing, however, that his evil inclination would prove too strong for him to resist, he sought to be absolved from his vow, arguing that he might thus avoid violating two precepts, gambling and the violation of an oath. Additional responsa by, or attributed to, ibn Adret continued to be gathered and printed in numerous editions from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.

None of the six Hebrew books now assigned to Rome, ca. 1469–1473, give Rome as the place of printing, and only one of them names the printers (see lot 32). They were all conventionally dated ca. 1480 until Moses Marx, in an influential study, argued that they seemed in various ways to reflect the influence of the early Christian printing shops in Rome, particularly that of the first Rome printers, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz. Subsequently, A. K. Offenberg has strongly reinforced Marx's view, especially on the basis of the paper stocks used by the press, and has suggested their probable sequence.