168 folios (6 1/4 x 3 1/2 in.; 159 x 89 mm) on paper; headers throughout; catchwords on most pages. Tapering text on ff. 1r, 122v; reproduction of Star of David-shaped amulet on f. 123r. Slight scattered staining; many corners dogeared; margins of title repaired; reinforced along gutter of ff. 4, 17, 46, 125, 155-165; outer corners of ff. 4, 164-165 reinforced; smudged ink on ff. 26r, 27v; small tear in gutter at foot of f. 43 and near foot of f. 130; small hole in center of f. 76 affecting a few letters; minor worm track near upper margin of ff. 127-165. Modern blind-tooled leather; spine in six compartments with raised bands and floral motifs; gilt title, date, and place of publication on spine; silk bookmark; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.
Rabbi Jacob Emden (1697-1776), an important independent halakhic authority and kabbalist, was also one of the most prolific and inveterate anti-Sabbatian polemicists of his day. In this and other ways, he was the devoted son of his father, Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Ashkenazi (1660-1718), who had himself become embroiled in a controversy involving crypto-Sabbatianism back in 1713-1714. Emden’s heresy-hunting career took off in 1751, when he accused Jonathan Eibeschuetz (1694-1764), the rabbi of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek, of having composed amulets invoking the name of the false messiah Shabbetai Zevi (1626-1676). Though Eibeschuetz, one of the generation’s most widely-respected preachers, halakhists, and
yeshivah deans, defended himself in writing and marshaled support from rabbinic colleagues across Europe, Emden, with the help of a printing press he kept in his home in Altona, would continue publishing against him (and his defenders) even after Eibeschuetz’s death in 1764.
The present lot is a rare complete copy of Emden’s Sefer hit’abbekut (Book of Struggle), composed of four treatises – Hit’abbekut, Sehok ha-kesil, Yekev ze’ev, and Gat derukhah – polemicizing against Eibeschuetz and other suspected heresiarchs. The work also includes important protocols on the Sabbatian activities of students at Eibeschuetz’s yeshivah in Hamburg, as well as in the yeshivah of Pressburg. Though the title page gives the date [5]522 (1762), printing continued at least until [5]529 (1769), as evidenced by a note on f. 154r.
Literature
Vinograd, Altona 72
Isaac Yudlov and G. J. Ormann, Sefer ginzei yisra’el: sefarim, hoverot, va-alonim me-osef dr. yisra’el mehlman, asher be-beit ha-sefarim ha-le’ummi ve-ha-universita’i (Jerusalem: JNUL, 1984), 256 (no. 1709).
