Elijah Ha’Adeni. Seder Azharoth [piyutim for the holiday of Shemini Atzereth].

(INDIA).

Uri b. Aaron Halevi

Amsterdam

1688

Only edition. According to the rite of Cochin. Vignette of ship on last page representing the new links between the Jews of Amsterdam and of far-off India.

Vinograd, Amsterdam 547 (not in the JNUL); Davidson, Thesaurus of Medieval Hebrew Poetry, Vol. I p. xxvi (with erroneous date of publication).

A rare copy of the first Hebrew book published for the use of the Jews of Cochin. Following the advent of Dutch rule in India, the Sephardic community of Amsterdam sent a delegation led by Moses Pereira de Paiva to visit their religious compatriots in Cochin, situated along the southern Malabar coast. Torah Scrolls and other such necessities were provided and after de Paiva learnt of the special liturgical customs and rituals the Cochini Jews preserved in manuscript, he arranged that this particular home-grown collection of Festival poems be published back in Amsterdam. Only one other copy of this work is known; presently located in the Bodleian Library, Oxford - yet it lacks the title-page. Therefore neither Steinschneider (Cat. Bodl. no. 4938.2) nor Fuks (Amsterdam no. 375) recorded a complete description. Unknown entirely to Yaari (viz. Hebrew Printing in the East (1940) p. 91 note 3). See M.J. Heller, The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book, Vol. II (2011) pp. 1132-33.