BABYLONIAN TALMUD, TRACTATE TA'ANIT, VENICE: DANIEL BOMBERG, 1521

37 of 38 folios (13 1/2 x 9 1/4 in.; 341 x 235 mm) (collation: i8, ii7 [ii8 = f. 16 lacking], iii-iv8, v6 [final leaf blank]) on paper. Manuscript notes/corrections on ff. 3r, 13r-v. Slight scattered staining; staining and damage (repaired) in lower margin throughout, with some minor (unrepaired) tears remaining at foot, affecting only a few words on ff. 2, 37; stain at center near head on ff. [1r]-2v; small stain in gutter on ff. 6r-32v; slight damage to outer margins of ff. 10r-11v repaired; gutters strengthened on ff. 12-13; small tear in gutter near head of f. 17; spotting on ff. 20v-21r. Modern brown leather over board with blind-tooled decorative borders and corner ornaments; title, place, and date tooled in blind on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

Ta‘anit (Fast Day), the ninth tractate in the order Mo‘ed, discusses, in four chapters, the circumstances (e.g., drought, plague, the advance of foreign armies, etc.) under which public fast days would be decreed, the appropriate prayers for those days, those exempt from fasting, and days when fasts could not be declared. It also treats the laws of birkat kohanim (the priestly benediction), which is recited four times on fast days, and of the fasts of 17 Tammuz and 9 Av, which mourn the destruction of the Temple. The treatise ends on a positive note with a description of the celebrations of 15 Av and Yom Kippur, when young women of marriageable age would dance in the vineyards to attract appropriate suitors. Provenance

Moses Ulma of Fürth, a teacher in Dormitz, Thursday, 16 Elul [5]554 [September 11, 1794] (ff. [1r], [48v])

Literature

A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis daniyyel bombirgi u-reshimat sifrei beit defuso (Safed: The Museum of Printing Art, 1978), 34 (no. 34).

Vinograd, Venice 51