Levush Ohr Yekaroth [commentary to the Pentateuch].

JAFFE, MORDECHAI

Kalonymus ben Mordechai Jaffe

Lublin

1594

* Levush Adar HaYakar [commentary to the Laws of Sanctification of the New Month]. * Biurei Yafeh [commentary to “Tzurath Eretz” by Abraham B”R Hiya]. * Levush Pinath Yekarith [additional commentary to Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed] FIRST EDITION. Four parts in one volume. Title within woodcut architectural border. Three divisional titles. Numerous woodcut astrological diagrams. With signature of Issachar Ber Jeitles on title pages with marginalia (see p. 4b of second work).

Vinograd, Lublin 53 (recording only the first part); Mehlman 829.

The last three “Garments” (Levushim) which comprise Jaffe’s monumental Levush Malchuth, including commentaries on classic meta-Halachic works. As a whole “the Levush Malchuth is thus not only a code of law which sums up the Halachic scholarship of the day, but rather an entire summa of rabbinic Judaism both Halachic and non-Halachic.” See L. Kaplan, Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1983) p. 274. The author himself stated that although the works of R. Joseph Karo and R. Moses Isserles (RaM”A) preceded his own, there was still room for his Levush Malchuth, intentionally composed to be more concise than the lengthy Beith Yosef, and more expansive than the compact Shulchan Aruch and Mapah. R. Mordechai Jaffe (c. 1535-1612) a native of Prague, studied in his youth in Poland under the greatest Rabbinic scholars of the day: R. Solomon Luria (Maharsha”l) and R. Moses Isserles (RaM”A). In subsequent years, he would sojourn in Italy and once again in Poland before finally returning to his native Prague in 1592, at which time he succeeded the famed R. Judah Loew (Mahara”l) as Av Beth Din.