BABYLONIAN TALMUD, TRACTATE PESAHIM, VENICE: DANIEL BOMBERG, [1519-1520]

139 folios (13 1/2 x 9 1/8 in.; 341 x 230 mm).

Pesahim (Passovers), the third tractate in the order Mo‘ed, concerns the laws of the Passover festival and its attendant rituals. Originally divided into two parts, Pesah rishon (First Passover) and Pesah sheni (Second Passover), the treatises were later combined and renamed Pesahim (in the plural). Comprising the first four chapters (ending on f. 57b), Pesah rishon treats the laws of hamets (leavened bread), matsah (unleavened bread), maror (bitter herbs), and haroset (a paste of fruit, spices, nuts, and wine) – all of which feature in the Passover holiday as observed today. By contrast, Pesah sheni, the following five chapters (ending on f. 99a), discusses in great detail the rules governing the offering of the paschal lamb during the times when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. The final chapter, accompanied in this edition (and subsequent ones) by the commentary of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam; ca. 1080/85-ca. 1174), deals with the ritual of the Seder night. Scholars believe that Pesahim was the first tractate printed by Bomberg, based in part on the absence of a date on the title page. The present copy is housed in an elaborately tooled sixteenth-century (near-contemporary) leather binding. Provenance

The Sons of Levi (f. [1r])

Menahem Cohen (f. [1v])

Kholeif(?) (f. 81r)

Abraham (f. 125r)

Joseph ha-Levi(?) (f. 138v)

Feivel ben Samuel (f. 139v)

Literature

A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis daniyyel bombirgi u-reshimat sifrei beit defuso (Safed: The Museum of Printing Art, 1978), 33 (no. 17).

Vinograd, Venice 30