Drashoth Ha’Torah [sermons on the Pentateuch and on Repentance]

SHEM TOV BEN JOSEPH SHEM TOV

Don Judah Gedaliah

Salonika

1525

FIRST EDITION. Printed without a title-page in Rabbinic type in double-columns. scattered marginalia in an 18th-century Sephardic hand, manuscript register of births on verso of final leaf dated 1532-36

Vinograd, Salonika 33; Mehlman 898; not in Adams

Unknown to Steinschneider. Indeed Zedner’s listing in his Catalogue of the Hebrew Books in the British Museum records “No Other Copy Known.” (p. 697). Spanish writer and philosopher; Shem Tov ben Joseph Shem Tov lived in Segovia and Almazan and flourished in about 1461-89. As a philosopher, he was a follower of Maimonides, even though his grandfather Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov, was one of Maimonides' most uncompromising opponents nor did his father agree with Maimonides on essential points in his philosophy. The present Author’s chief published work is his commentary to Maimonides’ Moreh Nevuchim (Guide for the Perplexed). He authored several other philosophical works, extant only in manuscript. Drashoth Ha’torah, is his only homiletical work. Written in 1489, it was printed three times during the sixteenth century (Salonika, 1525; Venice, 1547; Padua, 1567). It soon, however, fell into comparative oblivion. This first edition is exceedingly scarce