Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection

Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 26. MAHARIL (ASHKENAZIC CUSTUMAL), RABBI ZALMAN OF SANKT GOAR, SABBIONETA: TOBIAS FOA, 1556.

MAHARIL (ASHKENAZIC CUSTUMAL), RABBI ZALMAN OF SANKT GOAR, SABBIONETA: TOBIAS FOA, 1556

Auction Closed

November 20, 08:47 PM GMT

Estimate

12,000 - 18,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

MAHARIL (ASHKENAZIC CUSTUMAL), RABBI ZALMAN OF SANKT GOAR, SABBIONETA: TOBIAS FOA, 1556


116 folios (7 3/4 x 4 7/8 in.; 195 x 125 mm) on blue paper. Decorative woodcut letters used for title; table of contents on ff. 115v-116r; printer’s device on f. 116v. Dampstaining; scattered thumbing and staining (see esp. f. 55v); some gutters strengthened and/or repaired; upper margin of f. [1] lacking; remnants of library stamp on f. [1]; small hole in upper margin of f. [2]; minor worming in upper edges of ff. 54-55, 66-68 and in lower margins of ff. 77-81; light damage to upper and outer edges of ff. 57-60; individual words and lines expurgated intermittently throughout (story of the immaculate conception of Ben Sira expurgated on f. 110r); censor’s signature (?) on f. 42r. Modern elaborately blind-tooled blue calf; spine in five compartments with raised bands; title, place, and date lettered in gilt on spine; modern marbled paper flyleaves and pastedowns. Housed in a matching blue calf slipcase.

An extremely rare copy of the first edition of this classical compendium of Ashkenazic custom, printed on blue paper.


Rabbi Jacob ha-Levi Moellin (Maharil; ca. 1360-1427) was widely recognized as the foremost Talmudist of his day. In his native Mainz, he founded a yeshiva that, with time, would train the leading Ashkenazic rabbis of the next generation. He also exerted political influence on behalf of Ashkenazic Jewry during the Hussite Wars of the 1420s. Following Moellin’s passing, his devoted student Rabbi Eleazar ben Jacob (known as Zalman of Sankt Goar; ca. 1390-ca. 1472), who closely observed his master’s behaviors and faithfully recorded his teachings, compiled a collection of Ashkenazic customs and halakhic practices pertaining to daily life, dietary law, liturgy, and lifecycle events that came, with time, to be known as Minhagei maharil. The work incorporates summaries of Moellin’s lectures and sermons, his customs, and the customs of two of his own teachers, Rabbis Shalom ben Isaac Seckel of Wiener Neustadt and Abraham Klausner (d. ca. 1410; see lot 33). Minhagei maharil achieved great popularity, serving as a major source for Rabbi Moses Isserles’ (1525/1530-1572) glosses on Shulhan arukh. The present, first, uncensored edition was followed quickly by a second in 1558 and a third in 1565, both issued in Cremona, as well as a fourth in 1590, printed in Lublin (see lot 170).


Literature

Meir Benayahu, Ha-defus ha-ivri bi-cremona (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute; Mossad Harav Kook, 1971), 43.


Yedidya Alter Dinari, Hakhmei ashkenaz be-shilhei yemei-ha-beinayim: darkheihem ve-kitveihem ba-halakhah (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1984), 271-286.


Marvin J. Heller, The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus, vol. 1 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), 426-427.


Israel Mordechai Peles and Shlomo Spitzer, Sefer mavo ve-hosafot le-sifrei maharil (Jerusalem: Mekhon Yerushalayim, 2016), 284, 339-340, 365-393.


Shlomo Spitzer, “Ha-im avar sefer maharil tsenzurah?” Tsefunot 1,2 (1988-1989): 83-85.


Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, Sifrei yesod: sifrei ha-yesod shel ha-sifriyyah ha-yehudit ha-toranit (n.p.: Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, 2019), 76 (no. 253).


Vinograd, Sabbioneta 34


Avraham Yaari, “Ha-madpisim benei foa,” in Mehkerei sefer: perakim be-toledot ha-sefer ha-ivri (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1958), 323-419, at pp. 361-362 (no. 16).