David Pardo. Compendio de Dinim [anthology of Halachic rules from the Shulchan Aruch]

(IBERIAN / SEPHARDIC LITERATURE).

Amsterdam

1689

FIRST SPANISH EDITION Bookplates of D. Cazes.

Kayserling 84; (cf. Heb. ed. Fuks, Amsterdam 362)

In the introduction, David Pardo explains that he found the text of this work among the manuscripts of his deceased father. He promptly published it in Hebrew in 1686 and then prepared the present translation into Spanish, a language with which the prospective Sephardic readership were better acquainted. Joseph Pardo served as Hazzan of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in London, a post to which his son David, succeeded him. According to Hyamson; “The two Pardos were the most scholarly occupants of the office until the time of David de Sola…The younger Pardo was…a remarkably accurate reader of the prayers, and throughout the twenty years of his tenure of office, there is no record of his having been fined for errors for which members of the congregation were always on the watch.” A. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England (1951) pp. 78-9; see also I. Solomons, David Nieto and some of his Contemporaries, in JHSET, Vol. XII pp. 88-90.