Detailed
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Illustrated work with fold out diagrams on the halalkot of shehitah (ritual slaughter), bedikah ha-re’ah (examination of the lungs), and nikor (removing the veins from the meat). All of this, according to the title page, is according to our minhag, in the Italian language, in order to be accessible to all. It includes, in abridged form, all the laws related to treifus according to all the opinions of the early sages, both old and new, with illustrations of the parts of animals and their names in two languages by each halakha, something that has not appeared previously. The title page is dated with a chronogram from the verse “Then Isaac sowed in that land” (Genesis 26:12) and informs that R. Isaac ben Meir ha-Kohen was a shohet in Leghorn.
Despite the claim that the text is primarily in Italian a considerable amount of the text is in Hebrew. There are Italian and Hebrew introductions, the latter the longer of the two, the Italian text includes many Hebrew terms, vocabulary lists are bi-lingual, and many sections are in Hebrew only. An especially attractive feature of Zivhei Kohen are the fold out diagrams (pictures) accompanying the text. Varying in size, they include numbers relating to the text in which the names of the parts are given. Among the charts are those of the anatomy of a cow, the esophagus and trachea, and a particularly large fold out of the brain and lungs. There is also a depiction of a lion and cow to illustrate the laws of hadrusah, the clawing of an animal, which can be a basic reason for an animal to be unfit for consumption. |
