(POLAND)

AUCTION 51 | Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 at 1:00

Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts Graphic & Ceremonial Art Including: The Alfonso Cassuto Collection of Iberian Books, Part II

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Lot 332

(POLAND)

Chaim Nathan Dembitzer. Autograph Manuscript Signed. Responsum discussing the Halachic permissibility of renovations to the historic Synagogue of the RaM’A (R. Moses Isserles), in Cracow. Also discusses the history of many of the synagogues in Cracow over the previous centuries pp. (16)

Cracow: 25th Menachem (Av) 1861

Est: $1,000 - $1,500

PRICE REALIZED $600

The RaM’A Synagogue still stands in the Kazimierz district of Cracow, the citys’ historic Jewish quarter. Having miraculously survived the destruction of World War II, the synagogue, dating back to the 16th-century, is still well in use. It is named after Cracow's Rabbi Moses Isserles (1520-72), who was the preeminent halachic authority of the day, and whose glosses to the Shulchan Aruch of R. Joseph Karo, paved the way for that work's acceptance by Aschkenazic Jewry. Chaim Nathan Dembitzer (1820-92), a native of Cracow, who claimed descent from Rabbi Moses Isserles, was appointed Dayan to his native city in 1856. See JE, Vol. IV pp. 325-29; Vol. VI pp. 678-80 With some variances, this responsum is recorded in Dayan Dembitzer’s Torath Chen (1895) pp. 29-33