Bidspirit auction | Five Books of the Torah,

Five Books of the Torah, with Targum and Five Megillot – Venice, 1546 – Original Elaborate Leather Binding – Rare - Shaar Beit Hashem HeChadash, Five Books of the Torah, with Targum Onkelos, Five Megillot and year-round haftarot, following Ashkenazic and Sephardic customs. Venice: Marco Antonio Giustiniani, 1546. Medium format, sized to be easy to carry to the synagogue (as noted on the title page, see below). Printed concurrently with the large-format Mikraot Gedolot edition which was not intended to be portable. Title frame decorated with fine woodcut. Original leather-coated wooden binding. Each board of binding decorated symmetrically and identically, with four brass corner decorations and another central decoration. The text of the Torah and the Targum are printed on facing pages. Five Megillot printed at end of Chumash (leaves 385-408), followed by haftarot (67 leaves). The title page reads: ”…As the obligation, merit and reward of studying the Torah portions along with the community, the Torah twice with the Targum once, is well-known to every Jew, and as we saw the great burden of carrying a large Bible with Targum, we decided to bring merit to the public and lighten the burden… printing a Chumash with Targum… slight in quantity, with chapter numbers, Keri and Ketiv, emended properly…”. Colophon on last leaf: ”The Chumash with Targum, Five Megillot and year-round Ashkenazic and Sephardic haftarot has been completed with G-d's help, Cheshvan [1546]… As He granted us the merit to begin and finish this Chumash, so may He grant us the merit of completing the Talmud we have begun, the small Bible with Talmudic references, and innumerable other books…”. Handwritten marginal inscriptions indicate the Aliyot. Early ownership inscriptions on title page: ”I, Yitzchak…”; ”I, Moshe son of R. Yitzchak Shalit…”; ”…R. Yehonatan”, and other inscriptions deleted with ink on title page and last leaf. Handwritten glosses on pp. 65b and 72b. Further inscriptions inside binding (Yiddish): ”This Chumash belongs to R. Wolf…”; ”Leib son of R. Wolf Apfe—[?] in Heidelberg”. Ownership inscription of German zoologist and author David Friedrich Weinland (1829-1915) on endpaper, attesting that the book came from the library of his father, August Johann Friedrich Weinland, who served as a priest in Grabenstetten. 408; 67 leaves. 15 cm. Most leaves in good condition. Stains, including dark dampstains. Worming, affecting text, mostly repaired with paper filling. Marginal tears to several leaves. Early wood and leather binding, contemporaneous with printing. Worming, wear and defects to binding. Rare. Recorded in Bibliography of the Hebrew Book based on a copy from the Bodleian Library and British Library; not recorded in NLI catalogue (the Bodleian collection has two copies, one incomplete, the other complete one containing [8] leaves before the title page with a lengthy introduction by Yaakov ibn Adoniyahu and contents of haftarot; this section does not appear in the present copy).