Shailoth Uteshuvoth [responsa]

ALASHKAR, MOSES

Cornelio Adelkind for Tobias Foa

Sabbionetta

1554

FIRST EDITION. Title within ornamental border. Printer’s device on last leaf (Yaari Printer’s Marks no.20). The Tzvi Hirsch Berlin Copy.

Vinograd, Sabbioneta 25; Habermann, Adelkind 118; not in Adams

A classical work of responsa on various interesting topics. (Case no.1): Whether a young woman who converted during the Inquisition is permitted to wed a Priest (Kohain) as she is deemed to have had improper sexual relations. Interestingly, the censor exhumed the word “shmad” and other terms referring to conversion. (Case no.81): During an argument one says “I am not a bastard” does this infer that his protagonist is a bastard. (Case no.101): Whether one may sell the merit gained from observing precepts, such as fasting Monday and Thursday. Appended are a number of interesting liturgical and penitential poems. The final prayer (p. 198b) refers to the Author’s expulsion from Spain and his travails in North Africa when he was saved from the “depths of the sea” and rescued from the “prisoners pit “ while in captivity. This copy with marginal notations initialed by Tzvi Hirsch Berlin. Of particular interest, his note on f.154r, makes reference to the manuscript of Isaac of Vienna’s Halachic work, Or Zarua which belonged to his son, Saul Berlin(er). That work was first published in 1862, and yet Alashkar makes reference to it some 300 years earlier.