Levush Ohr Yekaroth [commentary to the Pentateuch].
AUCTION 80 |
Thursday, March 28th,
2019 at 1:00 PM
The Valmadonna Trust Library: Further Selections from the Historic Collection. * Hebrew Printing in America. * Graphic & Ceremonial Art
Lot 56
JAFFE, MORDECHAI
Levush Ohr Yekaroth [commentary to the Pentateuch].
Lublin: Kalonymus ben Mordechai Jaffe 1594
Est: $10,000 - $15,000
PRICE REALIZED $11,000
The last three “Garments” (Levushim) which comprise Jaffe’s monumental Levush Malchuth, including commentaries on classic meta-Halachic works.
As a whole “the Levush Malchuth is thus not only a code of law which sums up the Halachic scholarship of the day, but rather an entire summa of rabbinic Judaism both Halachic and non-Halachic.” See L. Kaplan, Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1983) p. 274.
The author himself stated that although the works of R. Joseph Karo and R. Moses Isserles (RaM”A) preceded his own, there was still room for his Levush Malchuth, intentionally composed to be more concise than the lengthy Beith Yosef, and more expansive than the compact Shulchan Aruch and Mapah.
R. Mordechai Jaffe (c. 1535-1612) a native of Prague, studied in his youth in Poland under the greatest Rabbinic scholars of the day: R. Solomon Luria (Maharsha”l) and R. Moses Isserles (RaM”A). In subsequent years, he would sojourn in Italy and once again in Poland before finally returning to his native Prague in 1592, at which time he succeeded the famed R. Judah Loew (Mahara”l) as Av Beth Din.