Printed during the author’s lifetime!

Rare edition of the Levush, by R. Mordechai Yaffe. 

...

Printed during the author’s lifetime!

Rare edition of the Levush, by R. Mordechai Yaffe. 

R. Mordechai Yaffe (1530-1612), known as The Levush, was born in Prague and learned under R. Shlomo Luria (Ma’HaRSHaL) in Lublin and the Rema in Cracow. After his marriage he settled in Prague, where he established a Yeshiva. Following the expulsion of the Jews from Prague in 1557, he settled in Italy. He later served in various important rabbinical positions, including Lublin and Posen. Received with enormous acclaim, the Levush is one of the most fundamental Halachic works.

Stefansky Hebrew Classics (159).

JAFFE, MORDECHAI. Levushim [elucidations and novellea to the Shulchan Aruch].

Complete: Four parts in two volumes. <] BOTH LOTS  SEE LOT BEFORE [<*>> Levush HaButz Ve'Argaman (Even Ha'Ezer). ff. 116. <<*>> Levush Ir Shushan (Choshen Mishpat). ff. 210. <<*>> Levush HaTecheleth (Orach Chaim). ff. 247. <<*>> Levush Atereth Zahav (Yoreh De'ah). ff. 192. Titles within architectural arches. Printer's devices. Marginal notes. Censored. Heavily browned in places, few leaves laid to size. Modern calf-backed marbled boards. Folio. Vinograd, Prague 172, 173, 174, 192. Prague, Moses ben Bezalel Katz, 1609

    Mordechai Jaffe (c.1535-1612), a native of Prague, studied in his youth in Poland under the greatest scholars of the day, R. Shlomo Luria (Maharsha"l) and R. Mohe Isserles (Ram"a). In subsequent years, he would sojourn in Italy and once again in Poland before finally returning to his native Prague in 1592, at which time he succeeded the famed R. Yehudah Loew (Mahara"l) as Av Beth Din.

    In most of Europe, the "Levush" was studied as a supplement to R. Yosef Karo's Shulchan Aruch and the Rama's Mappah. It was useful because of its lengthier, broad-based explanations as opposed to the terse statements of the two mentioned Codes. In Prague, however, it was studied as the most fundamental, authoritative text of the halacha and remains to this day one of the mainstays of the Halacha - especially the Aschkenazic tradition.

    "R. Jaffe's commentaries on the classics of philosophy, astronomy and Kabbalah included alongside his Halakhic Code... are perhaps the finest and most balanced expression of a general cultural pattern of Polish Jewry in the 16th century... In the work of R. Jaffe, the rabbinic culture of Poland-Lithuania... achieves a certain breadth and integrity that even at this distance cannot fail to impress." See L. Kaplan, Rabbi Mordekhai Jaffe and the Evolution of Jewish Culture in Poland in the Sixteenth Century in: B. Cooperman (ed.) Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1983) pp. 266-82.