Toldoth Yitzchak [novellae to the Pentateuch]

KARO, ISAAC

Ruffinelli

Mantua

1558

Title within woodcut architectural arch, first word of each section within decorative woodcut border piece.

Vinograd, Mantua 58

A concisely written commentary to the Pentateuch which includes literal, homiletical, kabbalistic and philosophical interpretations. The author, Isaac Karo (not to be confused with his celebrated nephew, R. Joseph Karo), was a native of Toledo and a man of very wide culture. Several years before the Spanish Expulsion in 1492, Isaac Karo moved his yeshivah to Portugal, but following the the subsequent expulsion of the Jews from Portugal in 1497, Karo fled to Turkey. He entered the rabbinate of Constantinople, where Toldoth Yitzchak was first published in 1518. Its extreme popularity is evidenced by the fact that two editions were published in Riva di Trento and Mantua in the same year. See EJ, V col. 193.