Tzeidah la-Derech [“Provision for the Way”: halachic compendium]

SCHOCKEN COPY OF EXTREMELY RARE FIRST EDITION OF TZEIDAH LA-DERECH Rabbi-physician Menachem ibn Zerach was born in Estella in the northern province of Navarre, Spain, to a family that fled France at the time of the Expulsion of the Jews in 1306. In 1328, upon the death of Charles IV, the French king who ruled over Navarre, anti-Jewish riots erupted. The author’s parents and his four younger brothers perished. The author himself escaped, settling eventually in Toledo, where he studied under Rabbi Judah, son of Rabbi Asher (Ro”Sh). Tzeidah la-Derech was composed for the personal use of ibn Zerach’s benefactor, Don Samuel Abrabanel of Seville. It contains a particularly important introduction with much invaluable material on the developing history of Jewish jurisprudence. Prof. Ephraim Urbach writes this material must be utilized judiciously, stating, “not all the Tosaphoth of Ro”SH are an abbreviation of the Tosaphoth of R. Samson, neither do all of them contain additions of MaHaRa”M [of Rothenburg].” See E.E. Urbach, The Tosaphists: Their History, Writings and Methods (1995), p. 594. R. Aryeh Leib Berlin (1738-1814) was Rabbi of Bamberg, Hesse-Kassel, and, under Jerome Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon), served as Chief Rabbi of the Kingdom of Westphalia. His glosses to Tractate Shavu’oth are published in the Romm-Vilna edition of the Talmud. Other novellae appear as an appendix to his brother’s Atzei Almogim (Sulzbach 1779). R. Aryeh Leib was the younger brother of R. Noah Chaim Tzevi Berlin (1734-1802), Rabbi of Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbeck and author of several important halachic works: Atzei Almogim, Atzei Arazim and Ma’ayan ha-Chochmah (1804). (The last work, on the 613 Commandments, was completed by R. Aryeh Leib.) Their father, Meir, communal leader of Franconia, was the son of R. Samuel Zanvel Halberstadt, a dayan in Berlin (1690). See N. Z. Friedmann, Otzar Harabanim, nos. 3227, 15831, 19533; EJ, Vol. IV, cols. 654-655, 662-3