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 2. SEFER HA-ROKEAH (HALAKHIC AND ETHICAL TREATISE), RABBI ELEAZAR BEN JUDAH OF WORMS, FANO: [GERSHOM SONCINO], 1505.

SEFER HA-ROKEAH (HALAKHIC AND ETHICAL TREATISE), RABBI ELEAZAR BEN JUDAH OF WORMS, FANO: [GERSHOM SONCINO], 1505

Auction Closed

November 20, 08:47 PM GMT

Estimate

10,000 - 12,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

SEFER HA-ROKEAH (HALAKHIC AND ETHICAL TREATISE), RABBI ELEAZAR BEN JUDAH OF WORMS, FANO: [GERSHOM SONCINO], 1505


109 folios (11 1/2 x 7 3/4 in.; 292 x 195 mm) (collation: []2, i-xvii6, xviii5 [lacking final blank]) on paper; modern foliation in pencil in Arabic numerals in lower margins. Slight scattered staining; several leaves toward front and rear of volume remargined, at times with slight loss of text (generally reproduced in facsimile); many leaves strengthened along gutter. Modern orange vellum, slightly scuffed; title, place, and date lettered on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

The first Hebrew book to be printed with a title page.


Sefer ha-rokeah is a halakhic work which includes customs as well as a considerable amount of ethical material. The author, Rabbi Eleazer ben Judah of Worms (ca. 1165-ca. 1230), was a member of the renowned Kalonymus family and the most prominent disciple of Rabbi Judah he-Hasid of Regensburg (ca. 1150-1217), the leader of the pietist movement known as Hasidut Ashkenaz. R. Eleazer was the last major figure of this social and ideological circle which developed in the Jewish communities along the Rhine during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. His main contribution to the ethical literature of the Hasidei Ashkenaz is contained in the first two chapters of the present bookIn the first, he discusses the central values of the pietists (love and fear of God, prayer, humility, etc.). In the second, he describes in detail the paths to repentance. Although following the tradition of other halakhic works by the Tosafists of northern France and Germany, Sefer ha-rokeah was designed to educate the layperson rather than the scholar. Accordingly, the author eschews lengthy exegetical discourses, preferring to deliver the halakhah in a forthright manner, though still referencing Talmudic sources.


Provenance

Solomon Cohen (f. [1r])


Samuel ben Solomon (f. [1r])


Literature

A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpisim benei soncino: toledoteihem u-reshimat ha-sefarim ha-ivrim she-nidpesu al yedeihem (Vienna: David Fraenkel, 1933), 48 (no. 19).


Marvin J. Heller, The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus, vol. 1 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), 10-11.


Vinograd, Fano 12


Isaac Yudlov and G.J. Ormann, Sefer ginzei yisra’el: sefarim, hoverot, va-alonim me-osef dr. yisra’el mehlman, asher be-beit ha-sefarim ha-le’ummi ve-ha-universita’i (Jerusalem: JNUL, 1984), 158 (no. 954).