SEFER MIKHLOL (GRAMMATICAL TREATISE), RABBI DAVID KIMHI, CONSTANTINOPLE: GERSHOM AND ELIEZER SONCINO, 1533-1534

A beautiful copy of this seminal work on Hebrew grammar.

Rabbi David Kimhi (Radak; ca. 1160-ca. 1235) was perhaps the most influential Hebrew grammarian of the Middle Ages. A master anthologist, he compiled Sefer mikhlol (The Book of Totality) in an effort to organize and popularize the scholarship of his predecessors, particularly his father Joseph and older brother Moses. Around 1530, Gershom Soncino published the first edition of the grammatical portion of Sefer mikhlol (under its original title, Helek ha-dikduk) in Constantinople. Demand for this book was apparently so high that Soncino reprinted it only three years later in two different formats: folio and octavo. On the title page of the present folio edition, Soncino waxes eloquent about his efforts to publish a wide range of Hebrew works, including twenty-three Talmud tractates that he claims were plagiarized by “the printers of Venice” (i.e., Daniel Bomberg), and prays that God sustain him in his old age, remembering his efforts to save the conversos of Spain and Portugal and bring them back into the Jewish fold. Unfortunately, according to the book’s colophon, Soncino did not live to see the finished product, and so his son Eliezer had to take over the operation, completing the project in 1534.