Emeth ve-Emunah [Code of Jewish Law]

Arobas, Chananiah

Ambrosino-Bragadin

Venice

1672

Divisional title (Hilkhoth Yom Tov) within typographic border prior to final section. Text in Hebrew and Italian

Vinograd, Venice 1393

The author, Hananiah Arobas, who despite designating himself himself “Justice and Leader of some Communities of the Maghreb (Morocco),” sought to present the basic texts of Judaism composed by Maimonides and Joseph Karo in both Hebrew and the vernacular for the Jews of Italy. To this end, he gathered in the Emeth ve-Emunah a digest comprising the Thirteen Principles of Faith from Maimonides’ commentary to the Mishnah Sanhedrin; Maimonides’ Sepher Hamizvoth; and a popularized version of Karo’s Shulchan Aruch. Thus the layman is provided with the rudiments of halacha, both dogmatic and practical. The last page has an encomium by the Rabbi of Venice, Solomon Chai Saraval, which trails off on a most enigmatic note:”...that Torah not be forgotten from Israel until the Redeemer comes.” Only if one is aware how mortified Saraval was after learning of pseudo-Messiah Shabbetai Zevi’s conversion to Islam in 1666, will one appreciate this otherwise incomprehensible remark. See Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi (Princeton, 1975), p. 766.