Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Niddah, Venice: Daniel Bomberg, [1544-1549]

Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Niddah, Venice: Daniel Bomberg, [1544-1549]

Niddah (Menstruant), the seventh tractate in the order Tohorot, explores, in ten chapters, the laws governing the ritual impurity caused by various discharges from women’s bodies, including during menses, after childbirth or miscarriage, etc. Along the way, it treats the development of children from the embryo stage through age 20. Because of the prohibition against intercourse with a niddah, the treatise remains of practical relevance even in a post-Temple era, when most of the other laws of ritual impurity have fallen into desuetude. Indeed, the last page of the volume (f. 89r) features a short guide to the laws women nowadays should be careful to observe. 

The present exemplar was expurgated in Italy, most likely by a Jewish owner anticipating a Christian censor’s changes. This hand crossed out words like goy and Talmud, replacing them with nokhri and Shas (or various derived forms), respectively. It later came into the possession of Jacob Samuel ben Simeon Schwabach of Fürth, son-in-law of Rabbi David Dispeck (author of Pardes david [Sulzbach, 1786]), who served as the rabbi of Nordstetten and, later, of Burgpreppach around the end of the eighteenth century/beginning of the nineteenth century.

A note on the publication date:

Scholars have shown that Bomberg’s press occasionally backdated volumes from his third edition (1543-1549) by “forging” the title page to look like an authentic first- (1519/20-1523) or second- (1526-1539) edition imprint. Such is the case with the present volume, which actually comes from the third edition even though its title page bears the misleading date 5290 (1530). Because the Roman numerals “i” in the signature line are dotted, it must be that this tractate was published sometime between the middle of 5304 (1544), when the Bomberg press introduced the tittle into the signatures of its Hebrew imprints, and the end of that edition five years later.

Provenance

Daniel (ff. [1r], 26r, 65r, 81r)

Rosenheim (f. 2r)

Enrico (ff. 9r, 33r, 49r, 50r, 73r, 81r)

Zalman Bensheim, a.k.a. Zalman N[ord]s[tetten] (ff. 13r, 89v)

Cristoforo di Bartolo (ff. 17r, 25r, 41r, 57r, 81r)

Jacob Samuel ben Simeon Schwabach of Fürth, a resident of N[ord]s[tetten] in the Schwarz[wald] district, from the officer Jonah Segal of Nordstetten (ff. [1r], 88v)

Physical Description

89 folios (12 7/8 x 9 1/4 in.; 326 x 234 mm) (collation: i-x8, xi9) on paper. Initial word panel composed of four enlarged letters framed with scrollwork on f. 2r; manuscript corrections, underlines, and expurgation throughout; name of tractate in Latin characters (“Nidah”) frequently added to signature line; quire number in signature line frequently crossed out and replaced with a letter; Masoret ha-shas and Torah or marginalia inserted in manuscript; numbering in pen in upper edge often shaved; alphabetic collation given on f. 89r. Scattered staining; two small worm tracks affecting individual letters throughout the tractate; trace lines in margins and across width of pages intermittently throughout; small wormhole affecting individual letters on ff. 1-8; tape repairs throughout f. [1], in upper edge and outer margin of f. 2, in inner margin at head of f. 20, and in outer margin of f. 61; remnants of eliminated library stamps on ff. [1], 63, 89; f. 20 misbound between ff. 10-11; small tear in lower edge of f. 31; slight worming in upper-outer corners of ff. 37-46; outer margins (Rashi and Tosafot) of f. 59v excised but then pasted back together, with resulting loss of text and replacement of some missing text in manuscript; textblock of f. 89 mounted on premodern (nineteenth-century?) paper. Modern elaborately blind-tooled leather over board; spine in six compartments with raised bands; title, place, and “forged” date lettered in gilt in second compartment; modern marbled paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

Literature

A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis daniyyel bombirgi u-reshimat sifrei beit defuso (Safed: The Museum of Printing Art, 1978), 65 (no. 137).

Samuel Mayer, “Geschichte der Israeliten in Hohenzollern-Hechingen,” Literaturblatt des Orients: Berichte, Studien und Kritiken 33 (August 13, 1844): 521-524, at pp. 523-524.

Avraham Rosenthal, “Daniel Bomberg and His Talmud Editions,” in Gaetano Cozzi (ed.), Gli Ebrei e Venezia secoli XIV-XVIII (Milan: Comunità, 1987), 375-416, at pp. 391-392, 395, 403.

Vinograd, Venice 196