TUR (HALAKHIC CODE) WITH BAYIT HADASH (NEW HOUSE) COMMENTARY OF RABBI JOEL SIRKES, KRAKOW: MENAHEM NAHUM BEN MOSES MEISELS, 1631-1640

The first edition of a critical and comprehensive commentary on Rabbi Jacob ben Asher’s Arba‘ah turim.

Rabbi Joel Sirkes (1561-1640) was born in Lublin and would serve a number of communities in Eastern Europe before settling in Krakow, where he was appointed head of the rabbinic court and yeshivah in 1619. As opposed to Rabbi Joseph Caro’s (1488-1575) Beit yosef commentary on the Tur, which uses the Tur as a springboard to discuss at great length the development of halakhah through the generations, Sirkes’ Bayit hadash (Bah) is more concerned with the words and sources of the Tur itself. Sirkes also had occasion in the Bah to critique the Beit yosef, as well as Rabbi Joshua ben Alexander ha-Kohen Falk’s (ca. 1555-1614) Me’irat einayim (Prague, 1614) and Beit yisra’el (Lublin, 1635) commentaries. Sadly, Sirkes passed away before the printing of Orah hayyim (the last volume to be published) was completed, occasioning the insertion of an elegy mourning his death into that tome.