The National Library of Israel has recently purchased 90 pages of the first printed edition of one of the most important and influential books on Jewish law – Arba'ah Turim by Yaakov ben Asher, the structure of which was later adopted in the canonical Shulchan Aruch.
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Asher, who is estimated to have been born in 1269 and died in 1343, was an influential medieval rabbinic authority. He is often referred to as the Ba'al ha-Turim after his main work.
According to the library, the manuscripts are "incunables," which is a general term that refers to books or pamphlets printed in Europe after the invention of the printing in the mid-15th century press up to the year 1500.
In that time, less than 200 books in Hebrew were printed, some of which did not survive until today. Arba'ah Turim was printed in 1492 by Joshua Soncino, one of the leaders of Hebrew printing in Italy at the time.
No copies of the edition survived in their entirety, only individual pages.
Those acquired by the National Library cover aspects pertinent to the Hebrew calendar, finance, torts, marriage, divorce, and sexual conduct. No such pages are said to be in any other library or private collection in the world.
"Incunables are a rich and unique source for the study of the Hebrew text culture, and they have a museum and bibliographic value as well," Dr. Yoel Finkelman, curator of the Judaica Collection in the National Library, said.
"This is a rare incunable of one of the first printed [Jewish] holy books in the world. And although it did not survive in its entirety, the pages that have been preserved are now safe at the National Library. These pages will be a fertile ground for scholars to learn about one of the most important holy books."
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