Yad Dovid [novellae to Tractate Yevamoth]

SINTZHEIM, JOSEPH DAVID BEN ISAAC.

France

Late 18th century

Autograph Manuscript in Hebrew, written in a cursive Aschkenazic hand on paper. Each page ruled in red ink with the text in the middle, the page numbers of the tractate on one side and occasional marginal notes on the other side.

See Eliakim Carmoly, Revue Orientale, Vol. II, p. 340.

EXTENSIVE AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT - ENTIRELY UNPUBLISHED. Chief Rabbi of Strasbourg, Joseph David Sintzheim (1745-1812) was the senior and most learned member of the Assembly of Notables convened by Napoleon in 1806. Thereafter, Sintzheim was appointed president (Nasi) of the famed Grand Sanhedrin of Paris, a testament to his eminence as a Halachic authority - recognized as such even by Napoleon himself. The author wrote an extensive commentary on almost all of the Talmud, often citing a great many unpublished and today, quite unknown commentaries. His volume on Tractate Berachoth and portions of Seder Moed was published in Offenbach in 1799, however the majority of Sintzheim’s oeuvre remained unpublished for almost two centuries. In 1974 Machon Yerushalayim published Sintzheim’s novellae to Moed, Nashim, Nezikin and Kodoshim. The present manuscript on Yevamoth has not been published to date.