Sepher Ha’emunoth [“Book of Beliefs:”]

SHEM TOV IBN SHEM TOV.

Abraham ibn Usque

Ferrara

1556

FIRST EDITION. Title set within woodcut architectural arch with the printer’s device of an armillary sphere resting on a scroll a verse from Psalm 130:5 (Yaari no. 22). Device repeated at end. Previous owners' signatures on title including: Jonah Bondi and Wolf Heidenheim, plus R. Tevele Scheuer on f. 5a. Scattered marginalia, final flyleaf contains notes and comments apparently in the hand of Heidenheim concerning the scholars and Kabbalists cited in the work

Vinograd, Ferrara 37; not in Adams

A work that opposes the philosophy of Jewish rationalists such as Abraham ibn Ezra, Levi b. Gershom (RaLBa’G) and Isaac Albalag - but especially that of Maimonides. A witness to the persecutions and conversions of late 14th- and early 15th-century Spain, the Author believed that the philosophical approach was fundamentally incompatible with religious tradition. He viewed Maimonidean intellectualism to be responsible for facilitating apostasy. This anti-Maimonidean polemic was vehemently attacked by Moses Alashkar in his work Hassagoth (1557). See EJ, VIII, col.1198 and Carmilly-Weinberger, p.44. Sepher Ha’emunoth is important for the study of early Kabbalah and Zohar. It contains explanations of many Kabbalistic concepts including the inner world of the sephiroth. Shem Tov restores the demons (shedim) to the universe after Maimonides denied their existence (Part V); he also puts forth the argument for reincarnation (gilgul) (Part VII). An interesting association copy. R. Tevele Scheuer (1711-83) served as a Dayan in Frankfurt and later Rabbi of Bamberg and Mainz. (See M. Horovitz, Frankfurter Rabbinen (1972), pp. 322-23; N.Z. Friedmann, Otzar Harabanim no. 5136). R. Jonah Bondi was also the Rabbi of Mainz, who married R. Tevele Scheuer's granddaughter. Wolf Heidenheim (1757-1832), a student of R. Nathan Adler in Frankfurt, was a most diligent and punctilious Masoretic scholar, grammarian as well as Hebrew printer