Levush Ohr Yekaroth [commentary to Chumash].

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 Avraham b’r Hiya]. * Levush Pinath Yekarith [additional commentary to Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed]. FIRST EDITION. Four parts in one volume. Various owner’s marks and early marginal notations (extensive in places), including signatures of R. Yair Chaim Bacharach, and R. Shmuel ben Naphtali Hertz. Title within woodcut architectural border. Three divisional titles. Numerous woodcut astrological diagrams.

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

Two signatures on a singularly important work that collectively spans the Ashkenazic experience over three centuries. The author, 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. The first signatory, R. Yair Chaim Bacharach (1638-1702), was an outstanding Worms-based rabbinic scholar known for his systematic approach to Talmudic literature and Halacha based on his exhaustive knowledge of all branches of Jewish scholarship and the sciences. The second signatory, R. Shmuel ben Naphtali Hertz was the Av Beth Din of Warka, Poland. A colleague of R. Akiva Eiger, he studied Chassidism under the Maggid of Kozhnitz and the Chozeh of Lublin. This work comprises the last three “Atires” (Levushim), for a total of ten, which comprise R. Mordechai 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.