Sepher HaChassidim [pietism].

JUDAH THE CHASSID.

Company of the Silk Weavers

Bologna

1538

First Edition. The AVRAHAM JOSEPH SOLOMON GRAZIANO (“Ish Ger”) COPY, with his signatures and notes. Many other inscriptions and censors’ notes.

Vinograd, Bologna 10.

Many of the passages in Sepher HaChassidim are homiletic and exegetic, explaining the philosophical or mystical meanings of Biblical verses and Talmudic sayings - nonetheless, it is primarily a masterwork of ethical instruction: Enjoining how to resist temptation and avoid sin; how to dress, speak, pray and work; how to choose a wife and select companions; how to harmonize the necessities of existence with the requirements of religious life, along with many other subjects. No other Hebrew work of ethics devotes such close attention to such detail, rendering it an important historical source for the study of everyday Jewish life in medieval Germany. This first edition contains material not included in later editions. Rabbi Abraham Joseph Solomon Graziano “Ish-Ger” (d. 1684) of Modena, was a noted halachic scholar, bibliophile and poet. See A. J. Karp, From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress, pp. 155-6.