First edition. [7], 44 pp., 218:134 mm., wide margins, light age and damp staining. A very good copy bound in contemporary boards, rubbed.

Seven small tractates of the Jerusalem Talmud published from manuscript and edited by Raphael Kirchheim (1804–1889), German scholar and author. Kirchheim was born in Frankfort. He served as shohet in Frankfort and later became a partner in a banking house, which allowed him to devote most of his time to scholarly pursuits. He was at first an opponent of Reform and severely criticized the radicalism of the 1845 rabbinical assemblies of Brunswick and Frankfort, as in his edition of S. J. Rapoport, Tokhahat Megullah (Heb. and Ger., 1845) and his open letter to A. J. Adler of Worms (1845). Under the influence of Abraham Geiger, however, he became a proponent of Reform. Kirchheim edited Geiger's Hebrew writings under the title Kevuzat Ma'amarim (1877). Among Kirchheim's published works are the annotations to the section "Va'ad la-Hakhamim" and a biography of R. H. J. D. Azulai in the annotated edition of R. Azulai's biobibliographical lexicon Shem ha-Gedolim prepared by Kirchheim in association with A. Fuld and others (1847); Karmei Shomron (1851), a study of the history, religion, and literature of the Samaritans; an edition with commentary of the seven minor Palestinian tractates, Sheva Massekhtot Ketannot Yerushalmiyyot (1851, repr. 1966); an edition of Eliezer Ashkenazi's Ta'am Zekenim (1854); an edition of Perush al Divrei ha-Yamim, a tenth-century commentary on Chronicles (1874); the introduction to B. Goldberg's 1856 edition of Ibn Janah's Sefer ha-Rikmah; and a number of other introductions. In his Neue Exegetenschule (1867) he severely criticized S. R. Hirsch's Pentateuch commentary, particularly his extravagant etymologies. Kirchheim's library passed to the Religious School of the Frankfort community and later to the National and University Library, Jerusalem.

Hebrew Description

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