[Rabbinic law]. Annonymous

KOL BO

Gershom Soncino

Rimini

1525

Title with prominent printers mark depicting the Tower of Rimini on title (Yaari no. 6). Initial letters of opening word within white-on-black decorative vignettes surrounded by historiated engraved border.

Vinograd Rimini 7; St. Cat. Bodl. col. 3561; Haberman Ha-madfisim Bnei Soncino no. 79

The Kol Bo was written at the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century. The Kol Bo, (literally, “everything is within it’) contains almost 150 sections pertaining to: blessings, prayer, the synagogue, Sabbath, holidays, marriage, monetry matters, forbidden foods, visiting the sick, mourning etc. Included is also one of the earliest commentaries on the text of the Passover Hagadah. Still unknown to scholars is the identity of the author and the relation of the work to R. Aaron Hakohen of Lunel's Orchoth Chaim, whose contents overlap the material in the Kol Bo. It is possible that the Kol Bo is by the same author - but an earlier draft of the Orchoth Chaim. Kol Bo draws on the works of many halachic authorities, be they R. Eliezer b. Nathan, R. Peretz of Corbeil, or R. Baruch b. Isaac, author of Sepher ha-Terumah. See Prof. S.Z. Havlin, EJ, Vol. X, cols. 1159-60 Because of the pernicious activity of the Dominicans, the printer, Soncino had been forced to leave Pesaro. The City of Rimini offered him hospitaity and enabled him to resume printing there. In gratitude, “he adopted as his bookmark the Tower of Rimini, flanking it with a motto from Proverbs “A Tower of Strength is the Lord; in it shall Run the Righteous and be Saved” - thus, the first Hebrew printer’s mark in Italy. See D. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy p.130