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Bidding Information
Lot #    9828
Auction End Date    3/22/2005 1:48:00 PM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Menorat ha-Ma'or
Title (Hebrew)    îðåøú äîàåø
Author    [Ms.] R. Isaac Aboab
City    Yemen
Publication Date    1730
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description
   [356] ff., 154:102 mm., lacks inital 4 ff., light age and use staining, wide margins, rounded corners, ink on heavy paper, 36 lines per page, neat Yemenite rashi-script letters, dated by scibe, bound in contemporary calf boards, rubbed.
          
Paragraph 1   
          
Detailed
Description
   Menorat ha-Ma'or, (“Candlestick of Light”), one of the most popular works of religious edification among the Jews in the Middle Ages. Written “for the ignorant and the learned, the foolish and the wise, the young and the old, for men and for women,” the work has had over 70 editions and printings (1st ed. Constantinople, 1514; Jerusalem, 1961) and has been translated into Spanish, Ladino, Yiddish, and German. Moses b. Simeon Frankfort of Amsterdam, who translated the work into Yiddish and wrote a commentary on it (Nefesh Yehudah, Amsterdam, 1701 and many subsequent eds.), also edited a shorter version under the title of Sheva Petilot (“Seven Wicks,” Amsterdam, 1721; Sudzilkow, 1836). The book became a handbook for preachers and served for public reading in synagogues when no preacher was available.

R. Isaac Aboab (end of the 14th century), rabbinic author and preacher; probably lived in Spain. His father seems to have been called Abraham and may have been the R. Abraham Aboab to whom R. Judah b. Asher of Toledo (d. 1349) addressed responsa (Zikhron Yehudah, 53a and 60a). After devoting most of his life to secular affairs Isaac turned to writing and preaching.

For hundreds of years the Yemenite Jewish communities followed their traditional ways of secular and religious life, not being influenced by external trends and currents. Some customs in the Yemenite prayer rites go back to the prayer book of R. Saadiah Ga'on. From the 16th century on the Kabbalah and especially later its Lurianic school and system found its way to Yemen and influenced Jewish literary production in the areas of commentaries to the Bible, prayers, and liturgic poetry. All of this rich history is reflected in this work.

          
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Listing Classification
Period
  
18th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Other:    Yemen
  
Subject
Other:    Ethics
  
Characteristic
Language:    Hebrew
  
Manuscript Type
Other:    Book
  
Kind of Judaica