Second edition. [12] ff., octavo, 170:95 mm., wide margins, usual light age staining. A very good copy not bound.

 

First part of Naphtali Herz Wessely’s Divrei Shalom ve-Emet. This important work of haskalah literature was first published in four parts between 1782 and 1785. The title page states it is for the Kahal Adat Yisrael, who dwell in the lands of the domain of Joseph II. The text is comprised of eight chapters in a single column in rabbinic type, excepting headers and initial words. The fourth chapter is bound out of place at the end of the volume. Divrei Shalom ve-Emet is a series of letters written in support of the edict of Tolerance by Emperor Joseph II of Austria. This, the first letter, calls on the Jewish community of Austria to comply willingly with the Edict of Tolerance. It advocates modernizing Jewish education, the study of secular subjects by Jews, and opening schools for Jewish children in which German would be taught. This letter provoked considerable protest from traditional elements in the Jewish community, among them from R. Ezekiel Landau (Noda bi-Yehudah, 1713–1793).

 

Naphtali Herz Wessely (Hartwig; 1725–1805), important member of the German Haskalah. Wessely's ancestors had fled Poland during the Chmielnicki pogroms and settled in Wesel on the Rhine from where the family took its name. Born in Hamburg, Wessely spent his childhood in Copenhagen where his father was a purveyor to the king of Denmark. He received his religious education at the yeshivah of Jonathan Eybeschuetz, who influenced him greatly, and read literature and scientific works in a number of European languages, Associated with the Feitel Bank, Wessely's business affairs took him to Amsterdam and Berlin. In Berlin he met Moses Mendelssohn and contributed a commentary on Leviticus (Berlin, 1782) to the Biur.

 

Hebrew Description