Beschreibung:

A near-complete copy of an important edition of Maimonides’ magnum opus.
Rabbi Moses Maimonides (Rambam; 1038-1204) began writing the Mishneh torah in about 1170 in response to the persecutions visited upon Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere and the resulting decline in halakhic knowledge. The work set out to organize all the halakhic material scattered throughout the Mishnah, Tosefta, midrashim, and Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds into fourteen synthetic books (emphatically not commentaries), which were then subdivided into eighty-three treatises comprising a total of one thousand chapters. This included even those laws no longer applicable in the post-Temple era, as well as those observed only in the Land of Israel—a major innovation when compared with previous halakhic compendia. Rambam titled his project Mishneh torah (lit., Repetition of the Torah), “because a person will first read the Written Torah [Bible] and later read this, and in that way he will know the entire Oral Torah without having to consult any other book in between.” Following its initial publication ca. 1180, the Mishneh torah would go on to exercise enormous influence on Jewish thought and practice, especially after Rabbis Jacob ben Asher (ca. 1270-1340) and Joseph Caro (1488-1575) elected to use it as one of the pillars upon which they structured their own vastly important halakhic codes, the Arba‘ah turim and Shulhan arukh, respectively.
The Mishneh torah was first printed ca. 1473-1475 in Italy (probably Rome), then in other cities in Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and Turkey. In 1524, the master Venetian printer Daniel Bomberg produced a beautiful, well-edited Mishneh torah in two large volumes as part of his entrepreneurial program to issue new editions of some of the most important Jewish texts: the Rabbinic Bible, the two Talmuds, and the halakhic compendia of Rabbis Isaac Alfasi, Moses of Coucy, Jacob ben Asher, and, of course, Maimonides. He intended to repeat the feat starting in 1546, but due in part to fierce competition from a rival Venetian printer, Marco Antonio Giustiniani, his hopes were frustrated and his publishing house closed in 1549.
In 1550, the new printing firm established by Alvise Bragadini came out with a Mishneh torah to which Maimonides’ treatise enumerating the 613 biblical commandments, known as Sefer ha-mitsvot, was appended for the first time (based on the Constantinople, ca. 1510-1525 edition). The Mishneh torah text largely mirrored, page-by-page, that of the aforementioned 1524 edition but was further edited and glossed by one of the most prominent Ashkenazic rabbis living in Italy at the time, Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen (Maharam of Padua; 1482-1565), and his son, Rabbi Samuel Judah (1521-1597). Giustiniani’s workers apparently got wind of the production of the Bragadini edition and, not to be upstaged, quickly printed their own (better edited) Sefer ha-mitsvot-cum-Mishneh torah, with a pirated version of some of Maharam of Padua’s glosses tacked on at the end. Strongly-worded introductions in Giustiniani’s two volumes cast aspersions on Maharam’s editorial work and scholarship, while a response by Bragadini toward the end of his second volume (f. 767v) defended Maharam and his son and accused Giustiniani of trying to put him out of business and capture the market.
It seems that Maharam had made a significant investment in the Bragadini edition, and so he turned to his relative, the great halakhist Rabbi Moses Isserles (Rema; ca. 1520/1530-1572), seeking an injunction against the distribution of Giustiniani’s Mishneh torah. Rema famously ruled in Maharam’s favor, using the opportunity to compose one of the first extensive treatments of the topic of copyright in halakhic literature. Rema concluded his responsum, dated 4 Elul [5]310 (August 16, 1550), with a severe set of curses and bans against anyone “in our country” who would buy Giustiniani’s Mishneh torah instead of Bragadini’s. While it is unclear whether this particular dispute between the publishers led directly to the burning of the Talmud in Rome three years later, in early September 1553, it is not unlikely that their mutual animosity over the printing of the Mishneh torah set the stage for a future quarrel that did in fact precipitate that infamous event and its disastrous aftermath.
The present lot is a well-preserved copy of Bragadini’s Mishneh torah, here appearing without the Sefer ha-mitsvot (as is also the case with the copies at The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the New York Public Library). Significantly, it was owned by Faraj Hayyim ben Abdallah Joseph, a resident of Basra who later moved to Calcutta and, like his great-grandson David Solomon Sassoon after him, amassed a major collection of manuscripts and important first editions, some of which eventually made their way into Sassoon’s library. Also of interest is the fact that the first volume is extensively glossed by a certain Jacob.
ProvenanceFaraj Hayyim Abdallah Joseph (1:[1r], 88r, 94r)
Hayyim Moses (1:[1v])
Shalom ben Saadia al-Levi (1:9v)
Maharits Library, Shivat Tsiyyon Synagogue, Kiryat Ono (1:[1r], 6r, 34r, 130r, 138r, 151r, 262r, 288r, 348r, 368r)
CensorshipDomenico Jerosolimitano 16? (2:767r)
Gio[vanni] Domenico Carretto 1617 (2:767v)
Physical Description2 volumes: 
Vol. 1 (Sefer madda-Sefer kedushah): 389 of 390 folios (14 1/4 x 9 1/2 in.; 362 x 240 mm) (collation: i-xlviii8, xlix5 [xlix6 lacking]) on paper. Elaborate, enlarged initial word panels on ff. 36v, 77r, 229r; smaller initial word panels on ff. 2r, 10r, 315v; drawings in pen on ff. 103r, 186r-187r; extensive marginalia, at times shaved; intermittent corrections in pen. Lacking f. [390] (containing the printer’s mark and date of publication); scattered staining and damp staining; minor tape repairs intermittently in lower edges; corners rounded; f. [1] damaged and remargined; slight loss of text in lower-outer corner of f. [2]; small wormhole in lower quadrant of ff. [1]-72 affecting individual letters; minor worming in gutter at foot of ff. [1]-34; damage in outer margins of ff. 39, 80, 371-373, 377, 381-384, 389; repairs in upper margin of f. 103 and in outer margin of f. 171; small hole in middle of ff. 196, 224, 303, larger hole in middle of f. 265; puncture in middle of ff. 219-221; long tape repair obscuring words on f. 361r-v; crude tape repairs on ff. 382-385 obscuring some words; minor worming in lower margins of ff. 383-389. 
Vol. 2 (Sefer hafla’ah-Sefer shofetim): 376 folios (16 1/4 x 10 5/8 in.; 413 x 269 mm) (collation: l-xcvi8) on paper. Elaborate, enlarged initial word panel on f. 394r; smaller initial word panels on ff. 421v, 452v, 479v, 491v, 534v, 586v, 655r, 733v. Slight scattered staining and damp staining; foxing; episodic short tears in lower edges; small wormhole near lower edge on ff. [393]-400; expurgation (sometimes resulting in damage to text) on ff. 395, 491, 512, 541, 564, 579-580, 582-583, 642, 648-649, 672, 713, 728, 746, 750, 762-763; slight worming in lower quadrant of ff. 705-[768] affecting some text and in upper quadrant of ff. 705-[768] not affecting text; tape repair in outer edge of f. [768].
Both volumes bound in modern blind-tooled leather over board, scuffed and worn around edges; spine in six compartments with raised bands; title, author, place, and date lettered in gilt on spine; modern paper flyleaves and pastedowns.
LiteratureMeir Benayahu, Haskamah u-reshut bi-defusei venetsi’ah: ha-sefer ha-ivri me-et hava’ato li-defus ve-ad tseto le-or (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute; Mossad Harav Kook, 1971), 21-27.
Jacob I. Dienstag, “Mishneh torah le-ha-rambam: bibliyyogerafyah shel hotsa’ot,” in Charles Berlin (ed.), Studies in Jewish Bibliography[,] History and Literature in honor of I. Edward Kiev (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1971), 21-108, at pp. 32-35 (no. 8).
A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis cornelio adel kind u-beno daniyyel u-reshimat ha-sefarim she-nidpesu al yedeihem (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1980), 59-60.
Marvin J. Heller, “Sibling Rivalry: Simultaneous Editions of Hebrew Books,” Quntres 2,1 (Winter 2011): 22-36, at pp. 22-27.
Moses Isserles, She’elot u-teshuvot (Krakow: Menahem Nahum Meisels, 1640), [18a]-22a (no. 10).
Moses Lutzki, “Reshimah shel ha-hotsa’ot ha-shelemot shel sefer mishneh torah le-ha-rambam zal she-nidpesu be-artsot shonot me-reshit yemei melekhet ha-defus be-yisra’el (be-erekh shenat 235) ad yameinu elleh,” in Perakim mi-sefer mishneh torah she-nikhtevu be-etsem yad kodsho shel rabbeinu ha-mehabber zal (New York: Am-Hai, 1947), 7-14, at p. 8 (no. 9).
Neil W. Netanel, From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 71-116.
Neil W. Netanel, “Maharam of Padua v. Giustiniani: The Sixteenth-Century Origins of the Jewish Law of Copyright,” Houston Law Review 44,4 (2007): 821-870.
Isaiah Sonne, “Tiyyulim be-historiyyah u-bibliyyogerafyah,” in Saul Lieberman (ed.), Sefer ha-yovel li-kevod alexander marx li-melot lo shiv‘im shanah (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), 209-236 (Hebrew section), at pp. 211-216.
Yaakov S. Spiegel, “Mashehu al mishneh torah la-rambam mahadurot bragadin ve-yustinian,” Kiryat sefer 47,3 (June 1972): 493-501.
https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH990013343330205171/NLI?volumeItem=1