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Bidding Information
Lot #    15819
Auction End Date    10/24/2006 10:09:00 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Sefer ha-Arukh
Title (Hebrew)    ספר הערוך
Author    R. Nathan b. Jehiel of Rome
City    Pesaro
Publisher    Gershom Soncino
Publication Date    1517
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    2-102, 85-177, [1] ff., 267:188 mm., wide margins, usual light age staining, title in facsimile, ff. 1-10 and final completed in facsimile, bound in modern half leather boards.
          
Paragraph 1    Gershom b. Moses Soncino (d. 1534), also called Menzlein - perhaps for having learned the art of printing in Mainz - became one of the most successful and prolific printers of his time - and one of the finest of all times-printing from 1489 to 1534, not only in Hebrew (and Judeo-German?), but also in Latin, Greek, and Italian and using for non-Hebrew literature the names Hieronymus, Geronimo, or Girolamo. During his extensive travels, to France in particular, he obtained valuable manuscripts for publication, e.g., the tosafot of R. Eliezer of Touques which he was the first to publish. He was also the first to use woodcut illustrations in a Hebrew work (Isaac ibn Sahula's Meshal ha-Kadmoni, Brescia, c. 1491), and to produce secular Hebrew literature (Immanuel of Rome's Mahberot, Brescia, 1492). Soncino also printed in small, pocket-size format, assembling an expert staff of literary advisers, typesetters, and proofreaders. His letters were cut by Francesco Griffo da Bologna, who also worked for the well-known Aldus Manutius.

Apart from Soncino and Casalmaggiore, Soncino also printed in Brescia, Barco, Fano, Pesaro, Ortona, Rimini, Ancona, and Cesena; both his Hebrew and non-Hebrew productions exceeded 100 volumes each, of which about 20 were Hebrew incunabula (before 1500). His constant wanderings were due as much to the chicaneries of the local overlords as to fierce and perhaps unfair competition, though in the decade 1494–1504 (with an interval from 1499 to 1502) he was the world's only Hebrew printer. Eventually Soncino had to leave Italy for Turkey, where he continued to print in Salonika (1527) and Istanbul (from 1530), assisted by his son Eliezer (d. 1547). Gershom Soncino exerted himself in bringing relief to the victims of the Spanish and Portuguese expulsions of 1492 and 1497.
          
Detailed
Description		    Arukh with reference notations by R. Smauel Archevolti. R. Nathan b. Jehiel of Rome (1035–c. 1110), Italian lexicographer, also called Ba'al he-Arukh ("the author of the Arukh") after the title of his lexicon. Few biographical details are known of him. Some state that he belonged to the De Pomis or Delli Mansi family, but the view is widespread that he actually belonged to the famous Anau (Anav) family. He was taught in his youth by his father, a paytan and the head of the yeshivah of Rome, and may as a young man have studied in Sicily under R. Mazli'ah b. Elijah ibn al-Bazak, a pupil of R. Hai Gaon. However, there is reason to believe that the scanty references to Mazli'ah's name in Nathan's work are the addenda of an earlier copyist named Mevorakh, some of whose marginal notes, in which he also mentions that he was Al-Bazak's pupil, were later incorporated in the text of the Arukh. R. Nathan also studied under R. Moses ha-Darshan of Narbonne, as well as, in the view of some scholars, under R. Moses Kalfo of Bari and R. Moses of Pavia. When his father died immediately after Nathan's return to Rome about 1070, he and his two brothers Daniel and Abraham succeeded him as the heads of the yeshivah of Rome. With them he wrote responsa to halakhic questions addressed to him by various scholars, among whom was a R. Solomon Yizhaki, identified by some as Rashi. Noted for his charitable acts, Nathan built a magnificent synagogue and a ritual bathhouse for his community. It was while serving as head of the Rome yeshivah that he wrote his classical work (which he completed in 1101) the Arukh, a lexicon of the Talmud and the Midrashim, containing all the talmudic terms in need of explanation; in the course of time various additions were made to it (see below). At the end of the Arukh there is a poem written in particularly difficult language and therefore of somewhat obscure meaning; in it the poet, lamenting his bitter lot, tells of the death of four out of his five sons during his lifetime.
          
Paragraph 2    חברו הרב רבי נתן בר יחיאל (בן... רבנא אברהם) מרומי. באר כל מלה חמורה בתלמוד...

בראש השער אקרוסטיכון של השם ברוך, מורכב מפסוקים בתהלים קיט. קולופון: תם ונשלם... ביום יג לחדש אדר למנין זרע ישראל ע"י צעיר המחוקקים קטון התלמידים מבני שונצי והוא גר-שם פיזר"ו הקריה...

          
Reference
Description		    CD-EPI 0152821; EJ
        
Associated Images
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Listing Classification
Period
16th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Italy:    Checked
  
Subject
Dictionaries & Encyclopedias:    Checked
  
Characteristic
Language:    Hebrew
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica