She’erith Yoseph [on the methodology of the Talmud]

Although Mantua was comparatively liberal in its treatments of resident Jews, Hebrew printers were obliged to undertake their work at the presses of Christian printers who had secured a monopoly of the right to issue Hebrew books. (See D. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy, pp. 324-5 and 333). The author, who lived in Turkey, was the son of Solomon ibn Verga, author of the historical chronicle, Shevet Yehudah. On the title-page, the author boasts he assembled many Talmudic principles not included in the earlier works on Talmudic methodology: Sepher Kerithoth by Samson of Chinon and Halichoth Olam by Isaiah Halevi. While study of Talmudic methodology was once much stressed in the Sephardic community, and to a lesser degree in the Aschkenazic community, in contemporary years this area of study has fallen from favor. This fact was bemoaned by the late Rabbi J.D. Epstein (of Mir) in a small self-published essay entitled “Ohr Derachim.”