Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
SIDDUR (DAILY PRAYER BOOK) ACCORDING TO THE POLISH RITE WITH YIDDISH TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY, AMSTERDAM: MOSES BEN ABRAHAM MENDES COUTINHO, 1703-1705
Auction Closed
November 20, 08:47 PM GMT
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
SIDDUR (DAILY PRAYER BOOK) ACCORDING TO THE POLISH RITE WITH YIDDISH TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY, AMSTERDAM: MOSES BEN ABRAHAM MENDES COUTINHO, 1703-1705
2 parts in 1 volume (7 1/2 x 4 5/8 in.; 188 x 118 mm): Part 1 (Seder ha-tefillot mi-kol ha-shanah): 318 folios; Part 2 (Seder tehillim and Seder tkhines): 93 folios on paper. Part 1: Elaborately engraved title page featuring a woman observing the three “women’s commandments”; decorative elements on ff. [2r], [3v], 196v-197r, 220r, 268r-v, 300r-v, 315v. Slight scattered staining; thumbing and dogearing; pages closely cropped, occasionally affecting headline; light browning, heavier on ff. 173-228; small nicks in outer edges of ff. [1-2], 216 and in lower edges of ff. 204-206, 229; two small holes affecting a few letters on f. 37. Part 2: Titles of both title pages within borders of printer’s ornaments; decorative elements on ff. 74v-[75v], 92r-v. Small nick in outer edge of f. 70; slight damage in outer edges of ff. 72-92 due to silver clasps at rear; f. 92 strengthened along gutter. Contemporary lacquered green calf, slightly abraded and worn on spine; spine in five compartments with raised bands; two handsome engraved silver clasps with collinade-form hinges and four silver corner pieces, all engraved with floral motifs; gilt and gauffered edges; modern patterned paper flyleaves and pastedowns.
A deluxe copy of a siddur marketed especially to women.
The present liturgy features the daily, Sabbath, and festival prayers, as well as a Passover Haggadah, Pirkei avot, weekday Torah readings, piyyutim (liturgical poems), and the book of Psalms. Most of these texts are accompanied by a Yiddish translation, with occasional commentary, composed by Eliakim ben Jacob Shatz of Komarno (Ukraine), a teacher and cantor in Amsterdam involved in a number of translation and publication projects in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The book’s title page depicts a woman in period costume observing the three “women’s commandments”: removing a small portion of dough while preparing bread, lighting candles for Sabbaths and festivals, and separating from her husband during her menses. This and the inclusion at the rear of tkhines, women’s supplicatory prayers in Yiddish, suggest that the book was meant primarily for female use. Indeed, the present luxury copy, bound in contemporary lacquered calf with (possibly later) engraved silver corner pieces and clasps and boasting gilt and gauffered edges, was owned in the early nineteenth century by one Berla (Perla) bat Phinehas, who noted the dates of her father’s and mother’s yortsaytn on the front flyleaf.
Provenance
Berla [Perla] bat Phinehas, Tuesday, 12 Kislev [5]586 [November 22, 1825] (front flyleaf)
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), 434 (no. 582).
Mirjam Gutschow, Inventory of Yiddish Publications from the Netherlands[,] c. 1650-c. 1950 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007), 48 (no. 156).
Judah A. Joffe, “Yidishe prakhtdrukn,” YIVO bleter 16 (1940): 45-58, at pp. 50-51 (no. 6).
Vinograd, Amsterdam 801