Physical Description:

86 ff., 202:165 mm., nice margins, lower section worming in few center ff., light age staining. A good copy bound in contemporary boards, rubbed.

Detailed Description:   

Sefer Tam ve-Yashar, is a Yiddish translation of the Sefer ha-Yashar (The Book of Righteousness), an anonymous work, probably written in the 13th century, one of the most popular ethical books in the Middle Ages. The book was published for the first time in Venice, in 1544, and since then has been reprinted many times. It was frequently attributed to R. Tam, the tosafist, who wrote a book by that name (Sefer ha-Yashar le-Rabbenu Tam, Vienna, 1811); his writing, however, is concerned only with halakhic problems. Some manuscripts attribute the book to Zerahiah ha-Yevani, but there is no evidence to bear out the authenticity of such an ascription. Some scholars have suggested that the author might have been R. Jonah Gerondi, one of the foremost writers in the field of ethics in the 13th century; however, the difference between R. Jonah's known views and those expounded in Sefer ha-Yashar would suggest otherwise.