GERONDI, JONAH.

Rare First Edition of Sha’arei Teshuvah - A Classic Ethical Treatise. This highly significant treatise on repentance by Rabbeinu Yonah (c.1200-1263) was the earliest work of ethical literature. It is divided into four portals: The first is devoted to a definition of repentance; the second to a description of the various ways by which a man should arouse himself to penitence; the third, a classification of the precepts and the punishments meted out for their transgression; and the fourth, a discussion of the conditions of forgiveness. See A.T. Shrock, Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham of Gerona: His Life and Ethical Works (1948), pp. 95-105. The second work, Musar Haskel by Hai ben Sherira Gaon (939-1038), the last of the great Ge’onim of Babylon, is a long didactic poem of 189 double verses in the Arabic meter “rajaz." See H. Brody, Piyyutim ve-Shirei Tehillah me-Rav Hai (1937); Meyer Waxman, History of Jewish Literature I (1938), p. 216; JE, Vol. VI, pp. 153-55; EJ, Vol. VII, cols. 1130-32