View Auction Listing - Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth

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Bidding Information
Lot #		25203
Auction End Date		12/8/2009 10:43:00 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)

Title Information

Title (English)

Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth

Title (Hebrew)

איומה כנדגלות

Author

[First Ed.] R. Isaac b. Samuel Onkeneira

City

Constantinople

Publisher

Joseph b. Isaac Jabez

Publication Date

1577

Collection Information

Independent Item

This listing is an independent item not part of any collection

Description Information

Physical
Description

First edition. 4, 28 ff., 195:140 mm., wide margins, old hands, light age and damp staining, small margin repair to f. 2 & 8 affecting letters. A good copy bound in modern full leather over boards. Ff. 29-36, Ben Porat Yosif not present as in many copies.

Detailed
Description

A poem with riddles and stories. R. Isaac b. Samuel Onkeneira (mid-sixteenth century), from a Salonika family, was a talmudist, poet, and polemicist. He was employed by Don Joseph Nasi as a meturgemam (translator) and director of his yeshiva and synagogue at the palace in Belvedere. R. Onkeneira published a number of manuscripts from Nasi's library, as well as translating and editing the latter's work, Ben Porat Yosif from Portuguese into Hebrew.

The title, Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth, "awesome as an army with banners" (Song of Songs 6:4 and 10), is interpreted in Exodus Rabbah (15:6), Numbers Rabbah (2:5), Song qf Songs Rabbah (6:25), and Midrash Tanhuma (Numbers ch. 12) as enthusiastic praise for the children of Israel. It is dated "Wednesday, Rosh Hodesh Iyyar, in the year '[And Moses called Bezalel and Aholiab, and every wise hearted man, in whose heart the Lord had put wisdom, every one whose heart stirred him up] to come לקרבה
(337 = April 28, 1577) to the work [to do it]'" (Exodus 36:2), "[Like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion;] for there the Lord has commanded the blessing, [life for evermore]" (Psalms 133:3).

Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth is a versified riddle and tales of the war between letters of the alphabet at the time of creation. The book has much ethical, kabbalistic, and social content, as can be seen from the following entries which discuss family and charity:

A man is tempted to appreciate his pedigree when everyone rushes to marry him. They offer their daughters with a rich dowry to his sons and take his daughters for nothing and rise in his presence. All of which may make him arrogant. ... He thus dishonors his ancestors who earned his family their reputation.

He who shuts his eyes to the poor and does not give charity will eventually be caught by the magistrate, officer and governor of the town, ... so that if he does not pay his ransom to the Jewish poor he will give it to the authorities.

Among the contents of Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth are fragments of an otherwise unknown Midrash, Mei ha-Shilo'ah. All references to this Midrash are, according to Saul Kook, derived from Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth. Kook not only surmises that Onkeneira wrote Midrash Mei ha-Shilo'ah, perhaps using an earlier unknown work, Pane'ah Raza, but also that Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth is like a work attributed to the ibn Ezra.

R. Onkeneira also wrote a commentary entitled Zafenat Pa'ne'ah to the Sifer Re'umah (Constantinople, 1566, see above, pp. 578-79) attributed to R. Nahshon bar Zadok, Gaon of Sura. In Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth Onkeneira makes frequent reference to his Sifer Anak, a commentary on the Bible and to a work on the Jews of Spain, but neither work is extant. Ayumah ka-Nidgaloth was printed with Ben Porat Yosif.

Paragraph 2

... חברו... ר' יצחק עונקינירה... חידה (שירה... במלחמת האותיות ... ופתרונה... על דרך הפשט [ועל דרך] הנסתר)...

ה"חידה" (גוף הספר) פותחת: קטטה היתה בבני מלוכה. אוצר השירה והפיוט, ג, עמ' 343, מס' 317. חידה זו היא חיקוי לשירו של ר' שלמה שרביט הזהב, שעונקיניירה מייחסו בטעות לראב"ע, הפותח: מריבה נהיתה בינות חברים. אוצר, שם, עמ' 180, מס' 2403. עיין: ש"ח קוק, קרית ספר, ב, עמ' 267 (ובספרו עיונים ומחקרים, א, ירושלים תשי"ט, עמ' 247), הערה 1. דף ה, ב-ו: "ומצאתי במדרש מי השילוח", יח מאמרים על תיבת "בראשית". "מדרש" זה בדוי מלבו של עונקיניירה. עיין: ש"ח קוק, מדרש מי השילוח, קרית ספר, ב, תרפ"ה-תרפ"ז, עמ' 269-267; שם, יז, ת"ש, עמ' 424 (ובספרו עיונים ומחקרים, שם, עמ' 249-247). דף כט-לו, עם שער מיוחד: ספר בן פרת יוסף, חברו... דון יוסף הנשיא, והוא ויכוח... עם חכם וגדול בנוצרים... על "בן פרת יוסף" עיין: ב' רות, בית נשיא, תל-אביב תשי"ג, עמ' 219, 276. לפי א' יערי, הדפוס העברי בקושטא, ירושלים תשכ"ז, עמ' 128, מס' 193, נכתב הספר פורטוגאלית ותורגם לעברית על-ידי ר' יצחק עונקיניירה. לדעתו של קוק, שם, עונקיניירה הוא גם המחבר.
בטפסים שבבית הספרים הלאומי ובמוזיאום הבריטי מצויים שני הספרים בנפרד.

Reference
Description

Heller, 16th cent Hebrew Book, p. 654-655; CD-EPI 0155598

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