Zekher Rav (Philological Work), Rabbi Benjamin Musaphia, Amsterdam: Menasseh Ben Israel, 1635

The rare miniature first edition of a popular Hebrew philological treatise.

Benjamin Musaphia (alias: Dionysius; ca. 1606-1675) was a prominent rabbi, doctor, and alchemist of converso extraction. He studied medicine at the University of Padua, served as physician-in-ordinary to Christian IV of Denmark, and finally became head of a beit midrash in Amsterdam, where he lived out the rest of his life. His published oeuvre includes works on the Hebrew language, medicine, alchemy, and halakhah.

The present title, Musaphia’s first, was penned following the death of his young wife (and first cousin) Sarah Abigail da Silva (b. 1612). In the introduction, the author notes that the two had wed on 13 Sivan 5388 (June 4, 1628) but that she developed a fever and a skin rash and passed away in Hamburg following Shabbat Nahamu 5394 (August 7, 1634). Musaphia buried her in Altona and thereafter composed Zekher rav “so that the generations will know zekher rav tuv shemekh [the memory of the great goodness of your name].”

The book constitutes a retelling of the Creation story that, according to its author, uses each Hebrew root once (unless needed for another purpose or meaning). Musaphia intended that a reader who studied the book every day—it is divided according to the seven days of Creation—would be able to speak and write the language properly before long. To assist the user in discerning the difference between words that look similar to one another, the author added the roots of those words in the margins. The text is also vocalized to aid in comprehension.

Zekher rav achieved great popularity over the centuries, going through nearly twenty printings (including translations into Latin and Yiddish) through 1985. Perhaps due to its small size, however, the present, first edition is today extant in very few known exemplars, all of which are housed in public institutions: the Stadtbibliothek Braunschweig (Brosch. I 9554), British Library (Asia, Pacific & Africa 1980.a.7), and Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana (Ros. 20 D 3). This copy thus represents a rare survival of an important philological tract printed at the press of one of the most celebrated rabbis of the seventeenth century, Menasseh Ben Israel.

Physical Description

39 folios (3 1/2 x 2 5/8 in.; 90 x 65 mm) (collation: i-iv⁸, v⁷) on paper (final folio blank). Title within a border of florets; text vocalized; a few words written in modern pen on title recto and verso. Slight dampstaining throughout, heavier toward rear; minor dogearing; short nicks in outer edges of title; bottom line of f. 9r trimmed; small repair in lower edge of f. 17. Modern blind-tooled leather over board; gilt title on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns. Housed within a marbled paper-covered slipcase.

Literature

Lajb Fuks and Renate G. Fuks-Mansfeld, Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands, 1585-1815, pt. 1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984), 121 (no. 161).

Marvin J. Heller, The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), 532-533.

Marvin J. Heller, “Benjamin ben Immanuel Mussafia: A Study in Contrasts,” in Essays on the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2021), 208-224, at pp. 208-214.

Vinograd, Amsterdam 147

https://cf.uba.uva.nl/en/collections/rosenthaliana/menasseh/20d3/index.html

https://hdl.handle.net/11245/3.38639