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

ASCHKENAZI, ELIEZER BEN ELIJAH HAROFÈ

Christopher Draconi

Cremona

1576

FIRST EDITION. Title within historiated woodcut architectural arch. Wide margins

Vinograd, Cremona 47; Benayahu, Cremona 44.

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 of rabbinical scholarship. This 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, amidst the rigid censorship of the Inquisition. See D. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy (1963) pp. 306-19. Recent scholarship (R. Shlomo Brevda - an expert in the writings of Elijah, Gaon of Vilna), encouraged a reprint of Yoseph Lekach, observing that many of the Vilna Gaon’s comments on the Book of Esther were reminiscent of Aschkenazi’s. 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 variances between the two variants see, M. Benayahu, HaDephus Ha’Ivri Be’Cremona (1971) pp. 232-33.