Sefer Keritut, Samson ben Isaac of Chinon, Constantinople: [Joseph Kazabi], 1515

64 leaves (6 5/8 x 4 3/8 in.; 168 x 111 mm). Title soiled and stained, with several owners' inscriptions and a removed library stamp, worm hole and mend in gutter margin; lightly browned throughout with some marginal dampstains, last leaf mended in upper margin. Nineteenth-century half-calf over glazed paper boards, worn.

Jacob Bernays (1824-1881)—his signature and note on title page

Vinograd, Constantinople 79; Yaari, Constantinople 47

64 leaves (6 5/8 x 4 3/8 in.; 168 x 111 mm). Title soiled and stained, with several owners' inscriptions and a removed library stamp, worm hole and mend in gutter margin; lightly browned throughout with some marginal dampstains, last leaf mended in upper margin. Nineteenth-century half-calf over glazed paper boards, worn.
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Sefer Keritut is a comprehensive work on talmudic methodology by the French Tosafist, Samson ben Isaac of Chinon (c.1260-c.1330). After the expulsion of the Jews from France in 1306, Samson resettled in Marseille. Well known by the leading rabbis of the period, Samson was a correspondent of Solomon ibn Adret and was referred to by Perez ha-Kohen as the greatest rabbinical authority of his time. Sefer Keritut, written at the close of the Tosafist period, deals with methodological principles and hermeneutic rules of Talmud study used in the Tosafot.  An important work, Sefer Keritut has been republished several times and is the basis for later works on talmudic methodology.

Born in Hamburg, Jacob Bernays (1824–1881) was a philologist and classicist who helped to found the Breslau Rabbinical Seminary in 1853. Jacob arranged the curriculum and taught classics, German literature, Hebrew poetry, and Jewish philosophy. In 1866 Jacob finally overcame the prejudices at Bonn University and was appointed assistant professor and chief librarian, but still maintained an interest in the seminary at Breslau. His scholastic versatility is attested two by two separate inscriptions placed within this volume, one in Hebrew and one in Greek. The former refers to the responsa of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg and the latter is a quotation from Aristotle's Ethics.