[Rabbinic law]. Anonymous.

KOL BO

Gershom Soncino

Rimini

1525

Title with prominent printers mark depicting the Tower of Rimini on title (Yaari no. 6). Initial letters of opening word within white-on-black decorative vignettes surrounded by historiated engraved border. Signatures including S. Sanguinetti and Joseph Chaim (Giuseppe) Jare (see below). Scholarly marginalia. Some censored passages (Hil.Yayin Nesech and Hil. Avodah Zarah)

Vinograd Rimini 7; Habermann, HaMadfisim Benei Soncino no.79

The Kol Bo was written at the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century. The Kol Bo, (literally, “everything is within it’) contains almost 150 sections pertaining to: blessings, prayer, the synagogue, Sabbath, holidays, marriage, monetry matters, forbidden foods, visiting the sick, mourning etc. Also included is one of the earliest commentaries to the text of the Passover Hagadah. The identity of the author is still unknown to scholars, as is the relation of the work to R. Aaron Hakohen of Lunel's Orchoth Chaim, whose contents overlap the material in the Kol Bo. It is possible that the Kol Bo is by the same author - but an earlier draft of the Orchoth Chaim. Kol Bo draws on the works of many halachic authorities, be they R. Eliezer b. Nathan, R. Peretz of Corbeil, or R. Baruch b. Isaac, author of Sepher ha-Terumah. See Prof. S.Z. Havlin, EJ, Vol. X, cols. 1159-60. Because of the pernicious activity of the Dominicans, the printer, Soncino had been forced to leave Pesaro. The City of Rimini offered him hospitaity and enabled him to resume printing there. In gratitude, “he adopted as his bookmark the Tower of Rimini, flanking it with a motto from Proverbs “A Tower of Strength is the Lord; in it shall Run the Righteous and be Saved” - this was the very first Hebrew printer’s mark to appear in Italy. See D. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy p.130. An earlier owner of this copy, Joseph Chaim (Giuseppe) Jare (1840-1915) was a scion of an ancient Italian family of scholars dating back to the 15th-century (Jare or Yare, meaning God fearing). He was a disciple of Samuel David Luzzatto and officiated as a Rabbi in Mantua and Ferrara, where he published studies on Italian Jewish history. See EJ vol. IX, col. 1288 and JE vol. VII, p. 73.