Nekudoth ha-Keseph ["Studs of Silvers": commentary to Song of Songs]

LANIADO, ABRAHAM BEN ISAAC

Pietro and Lorenzo Bragadin (i.e. Giovanni Caleoni for the House of Bragadini

Venice

1619

FIRST EDITION. Text of Song of Songs, Aramaic Targum and Judeo-Espanol translation all in square Hebrew characters vocalized. Rashi's commentary in Rashi script. Title within architectural arch. On title, signature of former owner, "Solomon of Dubna"

Vinograd, Venice 1115; Yaari, Ladino 14; Roest, Anhang no. 1367

The author, Abraham Laniado, a native of Aleppo, Syria, studied in his youth in the yeshivah of R. Joseph Karo in Safed. Upon his return to Aleppo, he married the daughter of his uncle, Samuel Laniado, author of the Keli Yakar, a commentary on the Prophets. Abraham Laniado traveled to Venice to oversee the publication of his father in-law’s works, as well as his own collection of sermons, Magen Avraham (Venice 1603). The title of the present work, Nekudoth ha-Keseph, derives from the verse in Song of Songs 1:11: “We will make you circlets of gold with studs of silver.” The Ladino or Judeo-Espanol translation was accomplished by the author's son-in-law R. Moses Laniado. This particular copy is complete with f.11, missing from most copies. Although this folio is numbered as f. 11, in reality it is f. 17 with a slightly different typographical layout. (For this reason, it would have been removed from most copies.) See D. Sutton, Aleppo: City of Scholars (2005), p. 247, no. 345. The Bible scholar Solomon Dubno (1738-1813) was associated with Moses Mendelssohn's Bi'ur commentary, but later went his own way following R. Zalman of Volozhin’s encouragment to abandon a maskilic or modernist agenda. See EJ, Vol. VI, cols. 251-252