Akeidath Yitzchak [philosophical and allegorical sermons on the Pentateuch]

ARAMA, ISAAC

Don Judah Gedaliah, Joseph de Crasto & Eliezer de Arles for Solomon ibn Yakar

Salonika

1522

FIRST EDITION. Five parts bound here in two volumes. Issued without a title page. An attractive, clean copy.

Vinograd, Salonika 29; Mehlman 1220 (incomplete).

First edition of a fundamental work of Jewish homiletics. The author, affectionately known as the “Ba’al Akeida,” has been consistently quoted and utilized, especially by Polish and Galician preachers, until the present day. Numerous works interpreting Arama’s philosophy have been issued through the centuries, of particular note is Israel Kitover’s Biurei Ha’midoth (1875). Arama’s great popularity stems from his stylistic combination of the Aschkenazic didactic and moralizing style with the philosophic tendency popular among Spanish and Provencal Jews. The need for this new approach, Arama explains in his introduction, “is especially urgent in this country (i.e. Aragon) where the Christian preachers, many of whom are well learned, expound the doctrines of their faith as well as the words of the Bible in a philosophic and scholarly manner. The Jews who often listen to their preachings, desire that their rabbis should do likewise.”