Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection

Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 123. SIDDUR (DAILY PRAYER BOOK) ACCORDING TO THE POLISH RITE, EDITED BY RABBI ZEVI HIRSCH BEN MEIR OF JANOW, JESSNITZ: ISRAEL BAR ABRAHAM, 1720.

SIDDUR (DAILY PRAYER BOOK) ACCORDING TO THE POLISH RITE, EDITED BY RABBI ZEVI HIRSCH BEN MEIR OF JANOW, JESSNITZ: ISRAEL BAR ABRAHAM, 1720

Auction Closed

November 20, 08:47 PM GMT

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

SIDDUR (DAILY PRAYER BOOK) ACCORDING TO THE POLISH RITE, EDITED BY RABBI ZEVI HIRSCH BEN MEIR OF JANOW, JESSNITZ: ISRAEL BAR ABRAHAM, 1720


158 folios (7 3/4 x 6 1/4 in.; 197 x 158 mm) (foliation: [1-2], 1-52, 52-63, 65-156) on paper. Title within border of typographic ornaments; decorative elements on ff. [2v], 105v-106r, 156v; the text of Ps. 67 set within a beautiful woodcut of a menorah on f. 55v; initial word of parashiyyot within woodcut featuring putti on f. 116r; ff. 149-150, 153-154, 155-156 uncut at upper edge. Very slight scattered staining; minor dampstaining, foxing, and dogearing; f. 4 slightly creased; light worming on ff. 53-156, repaired on ff. 82-95, 116-156 and usually affecting only individual letters. Modern blind-tooled morocco, lightly rubbed; spine in four compartments with raised bands; title, place, and date lettered in blind on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

Israel bar Abraham, who had converted to Judaism in Amsterdam, went on to print Hebrew books in various cities in Germany. From 1719 to 1726 and then again from 1739 to 1745, he worked in Jeßnitz, a small town situated between Halle and Wittenberg. There he issued the present title, a kabbalistically-suffused daily prayer book (with Passover Haggadah) accompanied by extensive instructions and halakhic discussions written “in Hebrew for scholars, in German [Yiddish] for the average man and for women.” The accompanying material is anthologized from several sources, most prominently Rabbi Jehiel Mikhl ha-Levi Epstein’s (d. 1706) famous liturgical work Seder tefillah derekh yesharah (Frankfurt am Main, 1697).


Provenance

Hirz […] (front flyleaf)


Beit ha-Midrash of Rabbi Jehiel Wallach [Hamburg] (ff. [1r], 156v)


Literature

Marvin J. Heller, “The Printer’s Mark of Immanuel Benveniste and Its Later Influence,” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 19 (1994): 3-20.


Vinograd, Jeßnitz 6