<<(“The Chacham Tzvi.”)>> Shailoth U’Teshuvoth [responsa].

Auction 94 | Thursday, June 17th, 2021 at 11:00am
Rare & Excellent Hebrew Printed Books: From the Library of Arthur A. Marx

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Lot 30
ASCHKENAZI, TZVI HIRSCH.

<<(“The Chacham Tzvi.”)>> Shailoth U’Teshuvoth [responsa].

<<FIRST EDITION.>> Marginalia. ff. (1), 127. Ex-library, previous owners’ inscriptions, stained in places, title remargined. Modern blind-tooled chestnut calf. Folio. Vinograd, Amsterdam 956.

Amsterdam: Solomon Proops 1712

Est: $1,000 - $1,500
PRICE REALIZED $1,500
R. Tzvi Hirsch Ashkenazi (1656-1718) was a leading rabbi in the early 18th century. Both Ashkenazim and Sephardim turned to him with their questions. Raised in the Ottoman Empire, he studied in the great Sephardic Yeshiva in Salonika and served as rabbi of Sarajevo. After his wife and child were killed during an Austrian invasion (see his introduction to this work), R. Ashkenazi made his way to Western Europe, where he would head the Yeshiva in Altona and become the Ashkenazic rabbi of Amsterdam. Towards the end of his life, he was appointed as rabbi of Lvov. His rabbinic fame is evident from his responsa. The sheer diversity of those writing to him is overwhelming. His command of an uncommonly broad range of rabbinic texts are clearly on display in this work. In addition to the usual gamut of topics found in responsa, he addresses Sabbateanism (no. 13), Spinozism (no. 18), the balance between Kabbalistic and ‘mainstream’ communal practices (no. 36) and irreligious community members (no. 38). The well-known ‘chicken heart debate’, which divided the Central European rabbinate, occupies a fair number of the 170 questions (nos. 74-81). For more on this eminent figure, see Yosie Levine’s doctoral dissertation, Hakham Zevi: An Intellectual Biography of an Early Modern Port Rabbi (New York 2020, unpublished).