Sha’ar Bath Rabim [prayers through the year]. Volume II (only, of 2). According to Aschkenazi rite. With commentary Hadrath Kodesh by Isaac Segal of Herlisheim.

(LITURGY).

Bragadin

Venice

1715

Title within magnificent engraved border. Introduction by Isaac Pacifico. Learned rabbinic marginal notations throughout. Signature of R. Elisha Chananel Pontremoli of Ivrea, dated 1845 (f. 2a).

Vinograd, Venice 1596.

This sumptuous and extraordinarily large Machzor was printed for the use of the Chazan at the request of the Aschkenazi Congregations of a number of leading Italian communities: Venice, Padua, Rovigo, Verona, Mantua, Casale Monferrato, and Gorizia. The volume is replete with marginalia, recording various local customs, citing works including the Mahril on f. 67 and Kitzur Shaloh on f. 119b. A particularly lengthy marginalia on ff. 191-92 contains a commentary to the piyut “Ta Shema Marei Alma” entitled Ma’aglei Yosher and Derech Chochma. This commentary was published by Isaiah Romanin in his Melitz Yosher (Venice, 1730). Romanin was a member of Moshe Chaim Luzzatto’s secret circle and indeed the work contains an introductory poem by Luzzatto. - Pontremoli was suitably impressed by the clarity of this commentary and so decided to copy it into the present Machzor. The signatory, R. Elisha Chananel Pontremoli of Ivrea (Torino Province of Piedmont) authored a number of rabbinic works which remain in manuscript and presently located in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. See Ghirondi & Neppi, Toldoth Gedolei Israel U? Ge? onei Italia, p. 41.