Description
99 leaves (11 ¾ x 7 in.; 30 x 180 mm). collation: 1-56, 161, 18=99 leaves. Title set within decorative architectural frame; verso of title page with printer’s devices, the first a stylized depiction of the Temple in Jerusalem surmounted by a text banner, and below that a vignette depicting two lions and a fox (an allusion to Babylonian Talmud, Baba Mezi'a 84b) surrounded by the text of Isaiah 29:1 and the names of the printers. Numerous initial word panels within decorative frames; multiple tailpieces. Folio 84v, the schematic map showing the wanderings of the Israelites on their way to the Land of Israel. An additional illustrative calendrical chart in the shape of a hand on the verso of the fifth leaf of the rare added unnumbered appendix, absent in most copies. Lightly stained and browned. Owner’s notations and library inkstamp on title page. Modern brown morocco. Title gilt stamped on upper board.
Provenance
Rabbi Shlomo of Dubno (1739-1813), widely renowned for his expertise in scriptural massorah and Hebrew grammar and one of the editors of Mendelssohn’s Biur--his signature on title page.
Literature
Vinograd Prague, 123. Wajntraub, E.; Wajntraub, G.,
Hebrew Maps of the Holy Land¸Wein: Bruder Hollinek, 1992 (pp. 39-41); Lawrence Kaplan, “Rabbi Mordekhai Jaffe and the Evolution of Jewish Culture in Poland in the Sixteenth Century,” in Cooperman,
Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century.
Catalogue Note
FIRST EDITION
Mordechai Jaffe (ca. 1535 – 1612), talmudist, kabbalist, and communal leader was a student of both Moses Isserles (ReMA) and Solomon Luria (MaHaRSHaL), and in his own right, one of the giants of the sixteenth-century Ashkenazic rabbinic landscape. Jaffe dedicated a large part of his life to the composition of his own magnum opus, the Levushim. Comprising ten volumes in all, each of which shared the initial word Levush, five were concerned with halakha, while the remaining five Levushim comprised a selection of commentaries and sermons. Levush ha-Orah is the sixth book of the Levushim. It provides elucidations and novellae on the Pentateuch commentary of Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi). Jaffe’s intellectual complexity, brilliantly displayed in this supercommentary to the most important medieval work of biblical exegesis, is an expression of his “dual commitment” to philosophy and Kabbalah.
The present copy includes the important Map of the Land of Israel as well as the rare unnumbered appendix, which is absent in most copies.
