She’erith Yoseph [on the methodology of the Talmud]

JOSEPH IBN VERGA

Moses Elishama Zifroni for Tommaso Ruffinelli

Mantua

1593

Second edition

Vinograd, Mantua 186; not in Adams

Although Mantua was comparatively liberal in its treatments of resident Jews, Hebrew printers were obliged to undertake their work at the presses of Christian printers who had secured a monopoly of the right to issue Hebrew books. (See D. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy, pp. 324-5 and 333). The author, who lived in Turkey, was the son of Solomon ibn Verga, author of the historical chronicle, Shevet Yehudah. On the title-page, the author boasts he assembled many Talmudic principles not included in the earlier works on Talmudic methodology: Sepher Kerithoth by Samson of Chinon and Halichoth Olam by Isaiah Halevi. While study of Talmudic methodology was once much stressed in the Sephardic community, and to a lesser degree in the Aschkenazic community, in contemporary years this area of study has fallen from favor. This fact was bemoaned by the late Rabbi J.D. Epstein (of Mir) in a small self-published essay entitled “Ohr Derachim.”