Levushim [elucidations and novellea to the Shulchan Aruch].

JAFFE, MORDECHAI.

Moses ben Bezalel Katz

Prague

1609

Complete: Four parts in two volumes. * Levush HaButz Ve’Argaman (Even Ha’Ezer). ff. 116. * Levush Ir Shushan (Choshen Mishpat). ff. 210. * Levush HaTecheleth (Orach Chaim). ff. 247. * Levush Atereth Zahav (Yoreh De’ah). ff. 192. Titles within architectural arches. Printer’s devices. Marginal notes. Censored.

Vinograd, Prague 172, 173, 174, 192.

Mordechai Jaffe (c.1535-1612), a native of Prague, studied in his youth in Poland under the greatest scholars of the day, R. Shlomo Luria (Maharsha”l) and R. Mohe 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. Yehudah Löw (Mahara”l) as Av Beth Din. In most of Europe, the “Levush” was studied as a supplement to R. Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch and the Rama’s Mappah. It was useful because of its lengthier, broad-based explanations as opposed to the terse statements of the two mentioned Codes. In Prague, however, it was studied as the most fundamental, authoritative text of the halacha and remains to this day one of the mainstays of the Halacha - especially the Aschkenazic tradition. “R. Jaffe’s commentaries on the classics of philosophy, astronomy and Kabbalah included alongside his Halakhic Code…are perhaps the finest and most balanced expression of a general cultural pattern of Polish Jewry in the 16th century…In the work of R. Jaffe, the rabbinic culture of Poland-Lithuania…achieves a certain breadth and integrity that even at this distance cannot fail to impress." See L. Kaplan, Rabbi Mordekhai Jaffe and the Evolution of Jewish Culture in Poland in the Sixteenth Century in: B. Cooperman (ed.) Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1983) pp. 266-82.