Levush ha-Butz ve-Argaman [commentary on Even ha-Ezer]. * BOUND WITH: Levush ‘Ir Shushan [commentary on Choshen Mishpat]

JAFFE, MORDECHAI

Moses ben Joseph Bezalel Katz

Prague

1609 and 1610

Title-pages with printer’s mark of Mordechai Cohen (Yaari, Hebrew Printers’ Marks, p. 24, no. 37). On final page, printer’s mark “Mishpachath ha-Gershuni” (Yaari, Hebrew Printers’ Marks, p. 27, no. 43)

Vinograd, Prague 172 and 192

Mordechai Jaffe (c.1535-1612), a native of Prague, studied in his youth in Poland under the greatest scholars of the day, R. Solomon Luria (Maharsha”l) and R. Moses Isserles (Ram”a). In subsequent years, he would sojourn in Italy and once again in Poland before finally returning to his native Prague in 1592, at which time he succeeded the famed R. Judah Löw (Mahara”l) as av-beith-din, or chief justice. In a sense, Jaffe’s multi-volume halachic code, the “Levush,” was superannuated both by Karo’s Shulchan Aruch and by Isserles’ Mappah, and thus was deprived of the audience it might otherwise have received. Be that as it may, the “Levush” remains to this day one of the mainstays of the Halacha - especially the Aschkenazic tradition. *** This Lot Accompanied By: Another Copy of Levush ‘Ir Shushan. Lacking final four leaves of indices. [Vinograd, Prague 192]. (Prague: Moses ben Joseph Bezalel Katz, 1610)