Physical Description

Small folio, 4, 158 ff., 294:195 mm., wide margins, not censored, old hands, several words in manuscript on final f., light age and damp staining. A very good copy bound in modern full leather over boards.

Detail Description
A compilation of precepts and usages which Jews are required to observe year round. An anonymous work containing both halakhic rulings as well as, at times, explanations of halakhot, arranged in accordance with the subject matter. The book was written at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. The identity of its author and its relation to the Orhot Hayyim of R. Aaron b. Jacob ha–Kohen of Lunel are very complicated problems that have not yet been resolved. The fact that both books cover the same material but that the Orhot Hayyim contains additional and more abundant halakhic material than the Kol Bo has given rise to the view that the Kol Bo is a later abridgment of the Orhot Hayyim (thus R. Joseph Caro, R. H. J. D. Azulai, and others). However, the arrangement of the material in the two books does not support this view. The Orhot Hayyim is much more systematic than the Kol Bo and it is difficult to explain the latter's arrangements in its present form; nor can any reasonable explanation be given for the manner of its abridgment, if it is indeed such. Kol Bo contains 148 sections embracing the following subjects: blessings, prayer, the synagogue, the meal, Sabbath and festivals, marriage, monetary matters, niddah, vows and oaths, halakhot relevant to Erez Israel, forbidden foods and issur ve-hetter, mezuzah, the redemption of the first-born son and the firstborn of an ass, visiting the sick, mourning, the takkanot of R. Gershom and others. Included in this anthology were also collections of laws from various works such as the Even ha-Roshah of R. Eliezer b. Nathan; laws from the Tashbez of R. Simeon b. Zemah Duran; from the Sefer Mitzvot Katan of R. Isaac b. Joseph of Corbeil; from R. Perez b. Elijah of Corbeil; R. Isaac, author of the Sefer ha-Menahel; R. Baruch b. Isaac of Worms, author of the Sefer ha-Terumah; and various responsa. The book is chiefly based upon Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, combined with and having additions from the rulings of the scholars of Germany, France, and Provence. Few of the rulings of Spanish scholars are cited (as against the Orhot Hayyim which adds many statements of such Spanish scholars as Nahmanides, R. Solomon b. Abraham Adret, R. Yom Tov b. Abraham Ishbili, and others). The anthology contains much material from various books, not all of which are extant today.

Marco Antonio Giustiniani was a Christian printer of Hebrew books in Venice in the 16th century. His master printer Cornelius Adelkind printed a fine edition of the Babylonian Talmud (1546–51). Soon, this very active press faced a formidable competitor in the house of Bragadini which issued Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, with the notes of R. Meir Katzenellenbogen. Giustiniani then printed the full text of that code without R. Meir's notes. The mutual recriminations that the rivals engaged in at the Papal Court ultimately resulted in the confiscation and burning of all Hebrew books (1553).
 
 

References:
EJ; Bibliography of the Hebrew Book 1470-1960 #000141236; Azulai, 1 (1852), 9 no. 130; 2 (1852), 33 no. 14; Benjacob, Ozar, 51 no. 984, 239 no. 118; S. D. Luzzatto, in: Meged Yerahim, 1 (1855), 5–10; D W. Amram, Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy (1909)