Bidspirit auction | Toldot Yitzhak. Riva di Trento,

Toldot Yitzhak. Riva di Trento, 1558 - Toldot Yitzhak. Riva di Trento, 1558. Second edition. An impressive copy in an original wooden binding, covered with leather, with clasps. Toldot Yitzhak is a collection of sermons and commentaries on the Five Books of the Torah by Rabbi Isaac Karo, uncle and teacher of Maran Rabbi Joseph Karo, author of the Shulchan Aruch. Printed in Riva di Trento in 1558, this is the second edition, and among the very first books printed in that city—according to some sources, the first or second work ever issued there. The author, Rabbi Isaac Karo (c. 1480–1535), was one of the foremost sages of Spanish Jewry at the time of the Expulsion, and served as head of a yeshiva in Portugal. In his introduction he recounts the events of the expulsion and his subsequent wanderings. After the expulsion from Portugal, he settled in Turkey, where he raised in his home his nephew, Maran Rabbi Joseph Karo, who absorbed from his great uncle an abundance of Torah scholarship and fear of Heaven. Rabbi Joseph Karo refers to him several times in Beit Yosef (Orach Chaim §§31, 382, 391), calling him “my teacher, my uncle.” On the title page appears a handwritten ownership inscription: “Mine it is, having fallen to me from the inheritance of my honored father of blessed memory, says Ephraim son of Eliezer, of blessed memory, man of …” [2], 115 leaves (the second leaf is extremely rare and appears only in some copies). Size: 21 cm. Condition: Good. High-quality paper. An especially fine and ornate old brown leather binding over wooden boards, with clasps (upper clasp lacking). Leaves somewhat loose. Defects to the final two leaves.