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

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Lot 56
JAFFE, MORDECHAI

Levush Ohr Yekaroth [commentary to the Pentateuch].

<<*>> Levush Adar HaYakar [commentary to the Laws of Sanctification of the New Month]. <<*>> Biurei Yafeh [commentary to “Tzurath Eretz” by Abraham B”R Hiya]. <<*>> Levush Pinath Yekarith [additional commentary to Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed] FIRST EDITION. Four parts in one volume. Title within woodcut architectural border. Three divisional titles. Numerous woodcut astrological diagrams. With signature of Issachar Ber Jeitles on title pages with marginalia (see p. 4b of second work). ff. (2), 189; 30; 5,(1); 30. Lightly browned and dampstained in places, previous owner’s inscription on title, second unnumbered leaf loose. Contemporary blind-stamped vellum over wooden boards, remnants of clasps and hinges. Folio. Vinograd, Lublin 53 (recording only the first part); Mehlman 829.

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.