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Tiferet Yisrael (1835); Derash al ha Torah (1836); by R. Judah ben Bezalel Loew (Maharal) printed separately but bound together. The first title is Tiferet Yisrael, on the excellence of the Torah and the commandments. It addresses question of the relationship between Israel and G-d, with the Torah serving as mediator between them, and the problem of the galut, the reasons for it, and the manner of its termination. It has one of two title pages, with a wreath. It is set in rabbinic type, excepting headers and initial words. Tiferet Yisrael is divided into seventy chapters. The second work is Derash al ha Torah ve-al ha-Mizvot. It is the famed discourse delivered by Maharal on that subject. It two has two title pages, the first with the same frame as Tiferet Yisrael.
Maharal is among the preeminent rabbinic figures of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. An original and profound thinker, his varied interests, in addition to vast rabbinic scholarship, encompassed kabbalistic, scientific, and mathematical studies. Little is known of Maharal’s personal life, as he was reticent to include such material in his works. However, he is the subject of numerous miraculous tales, concerning his birth, marriage, and later life. Born in Posen, Maharal served as Landesrabbiner of Moravia in Nikolsburg from 1553 to 1573 prior to moving to Prague to head the Klaus yeshiva. Maharal left Prague in 1583-1584 for Posen, returning in 1588-1589. He again left Prague for Posen in 1592, returning in 1597 to succeed R. Mordecai ben Abraham Jaffe (Levush), as Chief Rabbi. Although Maharal is known as Chief Rabbi of Prague he was elected to that position late in life, due to opposition to him for his independent positions, among them his disdain for the current educational curriculum and the pilpul method of Talmud study. His works in the fields of ethics, philosophy, and homiletics are all based on the same homiletical system: exegetical and homiletical interpretation of the sayings of the rabbis of the Talmud.
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