Yoseph Lekach [commentary to the Book of Esther, with text]

ASCHKENAZI, ELIEZER BEN ELIJAH THE PHYSICIAN.

Christopher Draconi

Cremona

1576

SECOND EDITION. Title within historiated woodcut architecural arch. On front flyleaf (laid down), Hebrew inscription of former owner:Yitzchak Foa of Moncalvo. The Jewish community of Moncalvo, a small town in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy, belonged to a group of three communities known as Apam (=Asti, Fossano, Moncalvo) with a unique liturgy of French origin. See EJ, Vol. XII, cols. 240-41

Vinograd, Cremona 47; Benayahu, Cremona 45

Eliezer Aschkenazi (1513-1586) held influential positions in widely scattered Jewish communites from Egypt, Cyprus and Italy to the major 16th-century centers in Poland. Recent scholarship (R. Shlomo Brevda - an expert in the writings of Elijah, Gaon of Vilna), encouraged a re-issue of Yoseph Lekach, observing that many of the Vilna Gaon’s comments on the Scroll of Esther were reminiscent of Aschkenazi’s. The present edition of Yosef Lekach, was the last Hebrew book printed in Cremona, which for a little over twenty years was a center of Jewish learning and printing - despite the rigid censorship of the Church. See D. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy (1963) pp. 306-19. Bibliographers note two variants of this Cremona 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 variances between the two, see M. Benayahu, HaDephus Ha’Ivri BeCremona (1971) pp. 232-33.