(Ed.) Imrei No’am [Kabbalistic and grammatical super-commentary to Rashi and ibn Ezra on the Pentateuch]

AUCTION 34 | Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 1:00

Exemplary Hebrew Books: The Library of Joseph Gradenwitz, Esq.

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Lot 48

Delasquez, Jacob

(Ed.) Imrei No’am [Kabbalistic and grammatical super-commentary to Rashi and ibn Ezra on the Pentateuch]

FIRST EDITION. On final page, censor’s signature: “Dominico Yerushalmi” in Hebrew characters, and below in Latin characters, “Dominico Irosolimitano, 1612.” (See Wm. Popper, The Censorship of Hebrew Books, pl. III, no. 1). Strikingly modernist crushed morocco binding: in center cartouche front and back, two red obelisks, upright and inverted, surrounded by gold galaxy, against stark black background ff.(42). Trimmed and stained, small neat paper repair to title. Some words struck by censor. Sm. 4to Vinograd, Const.166; Ya’ari, Const. 129; not in Adams

Constantinople: Eliezer ben Gershom Soncino 1540

Est: $5,000 - $7,000

PRICE REALIZED $6,000

Imrei No’am is a collection of comments on the Pentateuch by the medieval French school of Tosaphists. Just as there are several collections of Tosaphoth to the Talmud, so too there are various collections of the Tosaphoth to the Pentateuch: Da’ath Zekeinim, Minchath Yehudah, and Pa’ane’ach Raza, to name but a few. See Ch.J.D. Azulai, Shem ha-Gedolim, II, A-113, D-34. The censor responsible for striking words the Church found to be offensive in this work was the apostate Dominico Irosolimitano, one of very few Church censors wont to sign his name in Hebrew. While Latin inscriptions by the Dominican censors are common, Hebrew signatures are scarce. There exists some confusion between the Church censor and another apostate by that same name, born in Galilee, court physician in Constantinople, and after his conversion to Catholicism, instructor of Hebrew in the College of Neophytes in Rome. See Wm. Poppers, The Censorship of Hebrew Books (1969), p. 61