Tractate Berachot. Controversial Edition. Amsterdam, 1714. Impressive Leather Binding

Tractate Berachot. Controversial Edition. Amsterdam, 1714. Impressive Leather Binding

Tractate Berachot from the Babylonian Talmud, with Mishnayot Seder Zera'im, accompanied by the basic commentaries. Brought to print by Rabbi Aryeh Yehudah Leib son of Rabbi Yosef Shmuel of Kraków, av beit din of Frankfurt am Main, proofread by the renowned dayan Rabbi Moshe Frankfurt. Amsterdam, Shmuel Narkis and Raphael di Polashyosh Press, 1714. Leather-covered wooden binding. Impressive and beautiful. Remnants of buckles. Gilt imprints.

First tractate of this very common important and proofread edition. This edition was printed a short time after the Talmud was printed in Frankfurt am Oder by the gvir Yissachar Berman Segal, to whom the publisher expresses appreciation on the title page of the tractate, for giving him permission to print Sha"s within a short time.

As a result of the printing of this Talmud, the publisher faced opposition from two different printers - Shlomo Proops of Amsterdam, who also began to print Sha"s that year but after a delay due the publisher R' Leib, Proops printed only Tractate Berachot and Mishnayot Zera'im. The second printer who opposed him was R' Michel Guttshlak, who received approbations from the Kaisers of Germany, Poland and Prussia, who forbade other printers to print the Talmud. Due to this prohibition, R' Leib was forced to stop his work, and not finish printing the Talmud in Amsterdam. After several years, likely after some lobbying, he continued his work in Frankfurt am Main.

Aside from the important proofreading work here, an interesting phenomenon was added to this edition: Punctuation in the gemara text, dividing it into sentences. The punctuation marks are present only in the first perek. It is unknown as to whether this had to do with the hard work involved in this for the workers at the printshop, or whether it was due to the different halachic ramifications that could be derived from various possibilities of punctuation, or the rabbis' desire to preserve the text without changes, or possibly other reasons currently unknown to us.

100; 87 leaf. Approximately 36.5 cm. Signature on the title page and leaf 18. Short gloss on leaf 16. Signatures and notations on the protective leaves, not examined.

Fine condition, several leaves in moderate condition. Wear, tears and adhesions in the first leaves. Light tears in the lower margins of dozens of leaves. Usage marks and aging stains. Several leaves are partially detached. Leather-covered wooden binding. Remnants of buckles. Gilt imprints. Antique binding, slightly blemished. With lacks in the spine.