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Commentary on the laws of mourning in the Kizzur Shulhan Arukh of R. Solomon Ben Joseph Ganzfried by R. Moses Kalin. The text of the Kizzur Shulhan Arukh is given at the top of the page in square unvocalized letters, and below, in rabbinic letters, is the commentary. The title page describes R. Kalin as a descendent of the Vilna Gaon and as Rav of Po’al Zedek in אראדעא. Va-Yakhel Moshe begins with an introduction from R. Kalin.
R. Solomon Ben Joseph Ganzfried (1804–1886) the author of the Kizzur Shulhan Arukh, which is the basic text and the subject of R. Kalin’s commentary, was born in Ungvar, Hungary, where he also died. Orphaned in his childhood, he was brought up in the house of the local rabbi R. Zevi Hirsch Heller, one of the outstanding scholars of his time. From 1830 to 1849 R. Ganzfried served as rabbi of Brezewicz and subsequently as head of the bet din of Ungvar. He was one of the chief speakers for orthodox Jewry at the Jewish congress which took place in Budapest in 1869. He also published a polemic against the Reform movement. His first published work, Keset-ha-Sofer (1835; 1871 with additions by the author), was on the laws of writing a Sefer Torah, and was highly recommended by R. Moses Sofer as a necessary textbook for scribes of Torah scrolls, tefillin, and mezuzot. Ganzfried's fame, however, rests mainly upon his Kizzur Shulhan Arukh ("Abridged Shulhan Arukh," 1864); it achieved great popularity and widespread circulation and was accepted as the main handbook for Ashkenazi Jewry. It encompassed all the laws relating to the mode of life of the ordinary Jew living outside Erez Israel (including such subjects as etiquette, hygiene, etc.), but omitting such details as were common knowledge and practice at that time (see his introduction to ch. 80) or that were not essential knowledge for the ordinary man (see especially the laws of matrimony, ch. 145). The Kizzur Shulhan Arukh is based upon the Shulhan Arukh of R. Joseph Caro with the glosses of R. Moses Isserles. It is written in simple, popular language, with a lively style, and interest is sustained by the ethical maxims with which it is interlaced. Unlike his predecessor R. Abraham Danzig, author of the Hayyei Adam, Ganzfried does not detail and explain the different views but usually gives his decision without the reasoning. The book had already achieved 14 editions during its author's lifetime, and since then it has gone through scores of editions, displacing all previous abridgments of the Shulhan Arukh. It also became a basic work to which many scholars added marginal notes and novellae.
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