Yihiya Salach. Sepher Sha’arei Kedushah [abridged laws of ritual slaughter].

(INDIA).

Elazar ben Aaron Saadia Iraqi HaKohen

Calcutta

1851

With Hebrew and English stamps of Farajallah Amini of Jerusalem, a Muslim Hebraist. Binding with Hebrew and Arabic inscriptions. Mark on title and final leaf alluding to printer’s priestly heritage. Notes in an Oriental hand throughout, often providing Nikud or the long form of an abbreviation in the text.

Vinograd, Calcutta 31.`.

R. Yahia Salach (1713-1805), known as Mahari’tz, was one of the great Yemenite scholars. Residing in Sana’a, one of his chief contributions was his navigating the tension between the Sephardic practices mandated by the increasingly popular Shulchan Aruch and age-old Yemenite customs more in line with the views of Maimonides. Elazar Iraqi arrived in Calcutta from Cochin sometime before 1816 and established the city’s first Hebrew press in 1841. The nature of the present work is representative of Calcutta’s burgeoning Jewish community (mainly of Iraqi and Syrian extraction); in the space of seven years, Iraqi published five separate works on the subject of ritual slaughter.