Bircat Avraham. First Edition. Bragadine Press, Venice, 1696 – Rare Approbation from the Chacham Tzvi!

Bircat Avraham. First Edition. Bragadine Press, Venice, 1696 – Rare Approbation from the Chacham Tzvi!
Bircat Avraham, by Rabbi Avraham Brodo. Venice, 1696. First edition. Rare. With rare approbation by the Chacham Tzvi.

Sefer Bircat Avraham, Drushim on Sefer Bereshit, by Rabbi Avraham Brodo. Bragadine Press, Venice, 1696. First edition. Rare. Noble exemplar with glosses.

With approbations by the rabbis of Prague and Hamburg, and dignitaries of Venice. On the title page is a signature of Rabbi Avraham sagari. Additional ownership signature on the last page. With [5] glosses in Sephardic handwriting on margins.

In his preface, the author writes that he composed the Sefer when he spent a winter in Amsterdam and had no access to his Seforim. In it he collected whatever he remembered from his sermons on Sefer Bereshit over fifty years in Constantinople and Adrianople.

We have here one of the Chacham Tzvi’s extremely rare approbations. In the approbation, he writes why he agreed to give it, despite his custom to never give approbations on new Seforim: “Never has anyone prevailed over me to tear down my own fence, which I have put up to never join with other sages of the generation in approving new SEforim… but now… the great light, the renowned Rabbi Avraham Brodo… unique among the Rabbis of Constantinople… and he commanded me to sign, and I was obligated to fulfil the commands of the Rabbi”.

Please see the Hebrew listing for biographical information on Rabbi Avraham Sagari, owner of this exemplar.

[6], 103pp. Simple binding with pastings. Stains, moth holes., small damages and wear on the edges of several of the first and last pages. Fair-good condition.

Measurement:

21 cm