Shevet Yehudah [historiography]

IBN VERGA, SOLOMON.

Immanuel Benveniste

Amsterdam

1655

Printer’s mark on title (see Ya’ari nos. 60-1)

Vinograd, Amsterdam 223; Fuks, Amsterdam 242.

“One of the outstanding achievements of the Hebrew literature of the Renaissance.” (EJ, VIII col. 1204). A chronicle of Jewish persecution from the destruction of the Second Temple until the author’s own day, including an account of the Expulsion from Spain. Within ibn Verga’s account, lies a melancholy tone in his critique of his fellow Jews and the place secular society has created for the Jew. The final leaves of this edition (ff. 85r.-88v.) contain ‘Megilath Eifah’ a detailed eyewitness account of the latest Jewish travail, the infamous Chmielnicki Massacres in the Ukraine, as recorded by R. Shabtai Cohen of Vilna, author of Sifthei Cohen (Sha”ch). “Of all the historical works of the sixteenth century, ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah was to enjoy the widest popularity.” See Y.H. Yerushalmi, Clio and the Jews: Reflections on Jewish Historiography in the Sixteenth Century in: American Academy of Jewish Research, Jubilee Volume (1980) pp. 607-38 and reprinted in: D.B. Ruderman (Ed.) Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (1992) pp. 191-218. See also idem, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the Shebet Yehudah, Hebrew Union College Annual, Supplement No. 1 (1976).