ORDEN DE LAS ORACIONES COTIDIANAS (DAILY PRAYER BOOK IN JUDEO-SPANISH), AMSTERDAM: DAVID DE CASTRO TARTAS, 1669, WITH CALENDARIO DE ROS HODES FIE[S]TAS Y AYUNOS (TWENTY-YEAR JEWISH CALENDAR), AMSTERDAM: DAVID TARTAS, [1688]

ORDEN DE LAS ORACIONES COTIDIANAS (DAILY PRAYER BOOK IN JUDEO-SPANISH), AMSTERDAM: DAVID DE CASTRO TARTAS, 1669, WITH CALENDARIO DE ROS HODES FIE[S]TAS Y AYUNOS (TWENTY-YEAR JEWISH CALENDAR), AMSTERDAM: DAVID TARTAS, [1688]

2 books in 1 volume: 640 pages (6 x 3 5/8 in.; 173 x 102 mm) on paper (pagination: 616, [24]). Architectural title page; tapering text on 1:406, 443, 483, 497, 541, 576; decorative device on 1:615; table of contents on 1:[616]; tables of times for accepting the Sabbath in Amsterdam and of noteworthy years in Jewish history on 2:[24]. Eighteenth-century (?) blind-tooled leather, slightly bumped, scratched, and warped; spine in five compartments with raised bands; title lettered in gilt on spine; remnants of gilding of paper edges still visible; eighteenth-century (?) marbled paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

A well-preserved copy of a rare Sephardic liturgy.

Like a Pentateuch with haftarot (see previous lot), a prayer book is an indispensable text for those wishing to join in the communal worship of the synagogue. It therefore comes as little surprise that one of the first products of the Judeo-Spanish press established at Ferrara in the mid-sixteenth century was a daily siddur, issued in 1552. This edition was followed by numerous reprints and revisions, especially once Judeo-Spanish publishing took off in Amsterdam in the first decades of the seventeenth century. These liturgical works were intended not only for local consumption but for distribution throughout the Western Sephardic diaspora, to cities like Bayonne, Hamburg, and eventually London. With a vernacular prayer book in hand, a congregant ignorant of Hebrew could still follow the service. Toward the same end, such siddurim often transliterated into Latin characters key Hebrew passages generally said out loud, for instance, Kaddish, Barekhu, the first verse of the Shema, the blessings recited when reading from the Torah, and the songs Lekhah dodi and Yigdal.

The present lot is a copy of the Judeo-Spanish siddur printed in 1669 by David de Castro Tartas, who, like Menasseh Ben Israel, was the son of Portuguese conversos who had immigrated to Amsterdam. De Castro Tartas began his printing career working at the Ben Israel press in 1647, and in 1662, he opened his own firm, which specialized in the production of small-format prayer books. Some of the more intriguing features of this siddur include the variations in the text of Barukh she-amar depending on whether it was being recited on a weekday, Sabbath, or festival; the blessing formulation “to read the Hallel” prescribed for New Moons; the abridgment of the Aleinu prayer to the first paragraph only; and the replacement of the line she-hem mishtahavvim with three dots arranged in an inverted triangular formation.

Appended to the rear of the volume is a twenty-year calendar (5448-5468 [1687-1707]) displaying the days of the week and the corresponding secular dates on which various Jewish feasts and fasts would fall. In this context, it is interesting to note an important difference between the siddur, printed in 1669, and the calendar, issued eighteen years later: in the former, the date given for the beginning of the recitation of Barekh aleinu, the (Sephardic-rite) request for rain in the Amidah, is November 22 at night, while in the latter, it is either December 2 or 3 by day (before 1700) or December 3 or 4 by day (1700 and later). The reason for the variation is that the process of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the Netherlands was gradual; different provinces accepted it either in 1582-1583 or in 1700-1701. Before its adoption, the start date for Barekh aleinu was either November 22 or 23 at night; afterward, this shifted ten days forward to either December 1 or 2 at night. And with the advent of the eighteenth century, the date moved one more day up, to either December 2 or 3 at night. These tracts are thus period pieces that shed much light on the religious and social life of Dutch Sephardim in their ascendancy.

Provenance

“Moses Toledano / His Book” (flyleaf of lower board)

Literature

Harm den Boer, “Libros religiosos castellanos impresos en Amsterdam: Primera muestra de una bibliografía de los impresos castellanos y portugueses de Holanda de (±) 1600-1800,” in José Simón Díaz (ed.), Censo de escritores al servicio de los Austrias y otros estudios bibliográficos (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1983), 50-51 (no. 38).

Harm den Boer, “Spanish and Portuguese Editions from the Northern Netherlands in Madrid and Lisbon Public Collections: Towards a Bibliography of Spanish and Portuguese Editions from the Northern Netherlands (±1580-±1820),” Studia Rosenthaliana 22,2 (Autumn 1988): 97-143, at p. 118 (no. 34).

Eleazar Gutwirth, “Fragmentos de siddurim españoles en la Guenizá,” Sefarad 40,3 (1980): 389-401.

Aron di Leone Leoni, “Il Sedur de Oraciones de mes di Yom Tob Atias (Ferrara 1552),” Sefarad 63 (2003): 89-117.