(EDITOR). She’eirith Yehudah [“Remnant of Judah”: Halachic comments and corrections pertaining to Karo’s Beith Joseph, mostly based upon the writings of the editor’s brother Samuel]

TAITATSAK, JUDAH

Matithia mi-Geza Bath Sheva

Salonika

1599-1600

FIRST EDITION. Printer’s device on final leaf depicting a crowned lion and eagle with cherubs and mythological figures (Yaari, Hebrew Printers’ Marks, no. 48)

Vinograd, Salonika 159; Mehlman, Genuzoth, pp. 74, 83, no. 65

In addition to comments on Karo’s Shulchan Aruch, She’eirith Yehudah contains responsa by the editor’s brothers Samuel and Joseph, the foremost Halachic scholars of Salonika. These appendices are entitled “Piskei Mar Shmuel” and “Piskei Ha-Gaon Maharit,” respectively. In the afterword, the editor writes about his brother Samuel who died at a tender age, “Samuel studied and toiled in his thirty-nine years more than a seasoned scholar studies in a hundred years.” The older brother, R. Joseph Taitatsak (author She’eloth u-Teshuvoth Maharita”tz) was said not to have slept in a bed for forty years and this asceticism led to such spiritual ascendancy he was visited by a Maggid,” a heavenly teacher or astral guide, similar to that of his younger contemporary Joseph Karo. Mehlman (Genuzoth, p. 74) states that the works published by the family of printers “Mi-Geza Bath Sheva” are most rare. The family originally hailed from the Ashkenazic community of Verona in Italy. R. Matitihia and his sons published a variety of halachic works and biblical commentaries