View Auction Listing - Hovot ha-Levavot (Duties of the Hearts)

05:57:31

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Bidding Information
Lot #		18117
Auction End Date		6/12/2007 10:58:30 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)

Title Information

Title (English)

Hovot ha-Levavot (Duties of the Hearts)

Title (Hebrew)

חובת הלבבות

Author

[Holocaust] R. Bahya b. Joseph ibn Paquda

City

(Diessen) - Montevideo

Publisher

(Jos. C. Huber)

Publication Date

1946

Collection Information

Independent Item

This listing is an independent item not part of any collection

Description Information

Physical
Description

312, [1]; 286 pp., quarto, 202:136 mm., usual age staining, crisp margins, inscription on front fly. A very good copy bound in the original cloth boards, rubbed.

Paragraph 1

Inscribed by Emil H. Lehmann on behalf of the Montevideo Hevra Kadisha on fly.

Detailed
Description

In the introduction to this work R. Bahya divides the obligations incumbent upon the religious man into duties of the members of the body (hovot ha-evarim), those obligations which involve overt actions; and duties of the hearts (hovot ha-levavot), those obligations which involve not man's actions, but his inner life. The first division includes the various ritual and ethical observances commanded by the Torah, e.g., the observance of the Sabbath, prayer, and the giving of charity, while the second consists of beliefs, e.g., the belief in the existence and unity of G-d, and attitudes or spiritual traits, e.g., trust in G-d, love and fear of H-im, and repentance. The prohibitions against bearing a grudge and taking revenge are also examples of duties of the hearts. R. Bahya explains that he wrote this work because the duties of man's inner life had been sorely neglected by his predecessors and contemporaries whose writings had concentrated on religious observances, that is, the duties of the members of the body. To remedy this deficiency Bahya wrote his work, which may be considered a kind of counterpart to the halakhic compendia of his predecessors and contemporaries. Just as their halakhic compendia contained directions for the actions of the religious man, so Bahya's work contained directions for his inner life.

Hovot ha-Levavot was translated into Hebrew by R. Judah ibn Tibbon in 1161, and it became popular and has had a profound influence on all subsequent Jewish pietistic literature. Several abridgments were made of the Hebrew translation, and the work was translated into Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Yiddish. In more recent times it has been translated into English (1962), German (1856), and French (1950).

Paragraph 2

הובא לדפוס ע"י נפתלי בנימן עקשטיין. עם פירוש מרפא לנפש ותרגום עברי-טייטש.

Reference
Description

CD-EPI 0105834; EJ

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