SEFER IMREI SHEFER (SUPERCOMMENTARY ON RASHI’S PENTATEUCH COMMENTARY), RABBI NATHAN SHAPIRO, KRAKOW: [ISAAC BEN AARON PROSTITZ?, 1591]; LUBLIN: KALONYMUS BEN MORDECHAI JAFFE, 1597

Rabbi Nathan ben Samson Shapiro (ca. 1490-1577), grandfather of the author of Sefer megalleh amukot (see lot 168), was an important halakhic authority and head of the rabbinic court in Grodno. His Sefer imrei shefer, a supercommentary on Rashi’s Pentateuch commentary, doubles as a defense of Rashi against the questions posed by Rabbi Elijah Mizrahi (ca. 1450-1526), himself the author of a famous supercommentary on Rashi. The book was brought to press by Shapiro’s son Rabbi Isaac, who writes in the introduction that its title was chosen to evoke the family’s surname. He notes that he began printing the work in Krakow and managed to complete it through the end of Exodus but was then called to serve as a rabbinic judge in Lublin, forcing him to suspend printing until finally it was finished in 1597 in his newly-adopted hometown. The younger Shapiro also warns that a similar work published in Venice in 1593 and attributed to his father was in fact a forgery and did not represent his father’s scholarship. The present copy of Sefer imrei shefer bears the signatures of Rabbis Akiva Wertheimer of Breslau (1778-1838) and Michael Sachs of Berlin (1808-1864).