Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
SEDER BERAKHOT (VARIOUS BLESSINGS, LITURGICAL TEXTS, AND HALAKHIC TREATISES), EDITED BY BENJAMIN SENIOR GODINES, TRANSLATED BY RABBI ISAAC ABOAB, AMSTERDAM: ALBERTUS MAGNUS, 1687
Auction Closed
November 20, 08:47 PM GMT
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
SEDER BERAKHOT (VARIOUS BLESSINGS, LITURGICAL TEXTS, AND HALAKHIC TREATISES), EDITED BY BENJAMIN SENIOR GODINES, TRANSLATED BY RABBI ISAAC ABOAB, AMSTERDAM: ALBERTUS MAGNUS, 1687
366 folios (4 7/8 x 2 3/4 in.; 122 x 70 mm) (collation: i-xxx12, xxxi6 [final two folios blank]) on paper; modern foliation in pencil in Arabic numerals in upper-outer corner of recto. Engraved frontispiece featuring the book’s title, depictions of Jewish rituals involving the five senses, and the editor’s initials (B.G.); frontispiece painted in fine watercolor; printed decorative elements and manicules scattered throughout; engraving illustrating the tekufot on f. 339v. Slight scattered staining; minor dogearing; a few pages closely cropped, affecting words near the outer edges; frontispiece supplied and remargined; ff. 180-251 supplied; small repairs in outer edges of ff. 15 (slightly affecting one word), 118, gutter at head of f. 35, upper-outer corner of f. 192, and lower-outer corner of f. 238; light worming in outer edges of ff. 170-176, 192-195. Early gilt-tooled calf, with small losses along edges and rebacked; original brass clasp on fore-edge intact; turn-ins gilt; gilt edges (edges of ff. 180-251 also colored red); early marbled paper flyleaves and pastedowns.
An elegant, pocket-size bilingual devotional compendium with a painted frontispiece.
The present lot comprises a liturgical and halakhic handbook for use throughout the year. It includes blessings and prayers (in Hebrew with Spanish translation) recited at home and in the synagogue, during the week and on Sabbaths and festivals, over food and over various rituals, as well as at lifecycle events (weddings, circumcisions, celebrations of a daughter’s birth, when visiting the sick, etc.). It even includes a full Passover Haggadah. Halakhic treatises in Hebrew and/or Portuguese discuss the laws of ritual slaughter, inspection of an animal’s organs, dough and ritual bath preparation, and the Jewish calendar. At the rear are several calendaric tables, as well as a chronology of important events in world/Jewish history from the Deluge through the 1648-1649 Chmielnicki Massacres.
The book’s editor, Benjamin Senior Godines, writes in the introduction that he found the manuscript on which the edition was based in the collection of the wealthy merchant Rabbi Isaac de Mattathias Aboab (1631-1707), who also served as the translator into Spanish. Some of the more unique texts included herein are a blessing recited when purchasing a slave, a prayer for those killed in autos-da-fé, and descriptions of ascetic practices (e.g., flogging) for the eve of Yom Kippur. A parallel Hebrew-only edition of the book was issued around the same time by the same publisher.
Provenance
Rs. Lima (f. 363v)
Literature
Lajb Fuks and Renate G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands[,] 1585-1815: Historical Evaluation and Descriptive Bibliography, vol. 2 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), 286 (no. 607).
A.M. Habermann, “The Jewish Art of the Printed Book,” in Cecil Roth (ed.), Jewish Art: An Illustrated History, revis. Bezalel Narkiss (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1971), 163-174, at p. 168.
Marvin J. Heller, The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus, vol. 2 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), 1108-1109.
Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, Sifrei yesod: sifrei ha-yesod shel ha-sifriyyah ha-yehudit ha-toranit (n.p.: Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, 2019), 126 (no. 447).
Vinograd, Amsterdam 536