Yosef Lekach [commentary to the Book of Esther]

ASCHKENAZI, ELIEZER BEN ELIJAH HA’ROPHÈ

Christopher Draconi

Cremona

1576

FIRST EDITION. Unvocalized text in square Hebrew characters followed by commentary in Rabbinic letters. Title within historiated woodcut architectural arch. On title, signature of former owner Menachem Raphael Foa. An attractive, wide-margined copy

Vinograd, Cremona 47; Benayahu, Cremona 44; Adams B-1335

Eliezer Aschkenazi held influential positions in widely scattered Jewish communites from Egypt, Cyprus and Italy to the major 16th-century centers in Poland, where he died. His Biblical exegesis is permeated with the contemporary rationalistic spirit. This edition of Yosef Lekach, was the last Hebrew book printed in Cremona, which for twenty years was a center of Jewish learning and printing, amidst the rigid censorship of the Inquisition. See D. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy (1963), pp. 306-319. Bibliographers note two variants of this edition, distinguished by an extra blank and a change of spelling of the name of the printer at the end of the introduction. For an analysis of typographical variants see M. Benayahu, HaDephus Ha’Ivri BeCremona (1971), pp. 232-33