Hanhagat ha-Hayyim (Conduct of Life) together with Yedei Moshe (The Hands of Moses), Moses Almosnino, Salonika: Joseph Jabez, 1564; 1571

Hanhagat ha-Hayyim: 138 of [168] leaves (7 x 5½ in.; 178 x 140 mm) complete save for only the appendix on dreams and the glossary of Ladino words; title soiled and stained, mostly marginal damp-stains in first half, wormtrack in fore-margin of first few quires. Seventeenth-century calf, blind-tooled in a panel design with a stamped central arabesque medallion; rebacked, worm-holes and scuffmarks, edges rubbed.



Yedei Moshe: 246 leaves (7 7/8 x 5 3/8 in.; 200 x 136 mm). Occasional soiling spotting and dampstaining, dampstains heavier in the last few leaves; owners' inscriptions on title and front flyleaf. Cream cloth.

Hanhagat Hayyim: Mehlman 1497; Vinograd, Salonika 64. Yedei Moshe, Mehlman 631; Unknown to Vinograd

This lot comprises two works by Moses Almosnino: Yedei Moshe: 246 leaves (7 7/8 x 5 3/8 in.; 200 x 136 mm). Occasional soiling spotting and dampstaining, dampstains heavier in the last few leaves; owners' inscriptions on title and front flyleaf. Cream cloth. Hanhagat ha-Hayyim: 138 of [168] leaves (7 x 5½ in.; 178 x 140 mm) complete save for only the appendix on dreams and the glossary of Ladino words; title soiled and stained, mostly marginal damp-stains in first half, wormtrack in fore-margin of first few quires. Seventeenth-century calf, blind-tooled in a panel design with a stamped central arabesque medallion; rebacked, worm-holes and scuffmarks, edges rubbed.
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This lot comprises two works by Moses Almosnino (c.1515–c. 1580). Almosnino's works in Hebrew include a supercommentary on Abraham ibn Ezra; a commentary on Avot (Pirkei Moshe 1562) and comments on the Pentateuch and prayer book (Tefillah le-Moshe, 1563). While in Constantinople, Almosnino compiled in Ladino a description of Constantinople which was published under the title Extremos y Grandezas de Constantinopla. It is one of the rarest works of Spanish Jewish literature and an important historical source. In Salonika in 1564 he published, also in Ladino, an ethical work, Hanhagat ha-Hayyim, referred to frequently by its Spanish title Il Regimiento de la Vida, and offered here as the first work in the present lot.

Addressed to his nephew, Moshe Garcon, Almosnino divides Hanhagat ha-Hayyim into three parts, each prescribing behaviors, activities, and attitudes proper to a given stage in an individual's physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth, and each correlating with what Almosnino terms one of the three worlds or "times of the soul." In content and plan, Hanhagat ha-Hayyim is a rabbinic interpretation of Aristotle's Ethics, and relies on other ethical, medical, philosophical, and religious authorities, especially Avicenna's Canon, as well as on biblical and rabbinical writings such as Maimonides' Hilkhot De'ot (Laws of Character Traits) Shemoneh Perakim, (Eight Chapters), and Moreh Nevukhim (Guide for the Perplexed.)  The popularity of this Ladino work, is further evidenced by the fact that in Amsterdam in 1729, Hanhagat ha-Hayyim was reprinted in Latin characters.

In addition to Hanhagat ha-Hayyim, Almosnino wrote a series of commentaries on the Five Scrolls, published in 1571 under the title, Yedei Moshe. The introductions and colophons to each of his commentaries provide us with the order in which Almosnino composed them. After finishing his commentary on Esther in April of 1564, Almosnino rapidly completed his commentaries on Ruth and Lamentations in three months. It would be more than five years however before he began his commentary on the Solomonic scrolls, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, both completed in 1570. They appear here however, not in the order in which he completed them but rather, in the traditional masoretic order of the bible.

In addition to maintaining his prolific literary productivity, Almosnino served as preacher to the Salonika Neveh Shalom congregation and later at Livyat Hen, the synagogue founded by Doña Gracia Nasi. In an extraordinary example of vertical marketing, the printer of Yedei Moshe, Joseph Jabez, devoted more than half of the title page to an appeal to the "important residents of our city" to exert their efforts to help bring about the printing of Me'ammez Ko'ah, a collection of Almosnino's sermons.  Jabez succeeded in printing Me'ammez Ko'ah, albeit in Constantinople, not Salonika and more than a decade later in 1582. Still, the sermons of Almosnino provided a remarkable demonstration of the extensive knowledge of science, philosophy, history, and rhetoric of this Salonikan rabbi, scholar, and preacher.