Synagoga Judaica Noviter Restaurata: Das ist: Erneuerte Jüdische Synagog, oder Jüden-Schül [New Edition of the Jewish Synagogue]

BUXTORF, JOHANNES.

Johann Paul Krautzen

Frankfurt a/Main & Leipzig

1738

Second edition. Double-page engraved frontispiece of synagogue interior. 22 additional exquisite illustrations of rites and customs. (On p. 350 we have an additional plate of Baking Passover Matzoth, not listed in Rubens for Buxtorf, but identical with Rubens 543 from Paul Christian Kirchner's Jüdisches Ceremoniel, Nuremberg 1734.) Double-page title in red and black. Headpieces and tailpieces. On pp. 408-9 marginalia in Latin and Hebrew

Rubens 255-276, 543; Fürst, I, p.138

Important illustrations depicting the ceremonies and life-cycle observances of the Jews of 18th-Century Germany. Johannes Buxtorf I (1564-1629), Christian Hebraist and Bible scholar, served as Professor of Hebrew at the University of Basle. Though certainly knowledgeable of Judaism, Buxtorf takes a dim view of the religion in his work Synagoga Judaica / Jüden Schül. The present "New Edition" of Synagoga Judaica was compiled by the author's son, Johannes Buxtorf II (1599-1664), who succeeded his father in the chair of Bible and Hebrew Studies at the University of Basle. First published in 1661, it incorporates part of Leon da Modena's book on Jewish ceremonies, Historia de' Riti Ebraici (1637). See A. Rubens, A Jewish Iconography (1981), p. xiii; EJ, Vol. IV, col. 1543