Gufei Halachot, First Edition. Personal Copy that Belonged to the Baruch Ta'am with Lengthy Handwritten Glosses

Gufei Halachot, First Edition. Personal Copy that Belonged to the Baruch Ta'am with Lengthy Handwritten Glosses

לתקן בכל מקום שנכתבו שיש הגהות, יש רק הגהה אחת

"May Hashem grant that the novellae by my late father-in-law be found, as they have been lost, much to his great sorrow" (the Divrei Chaim of Sanz)

Sefer Gufei Halachot - Talmudic rules arranged alphabetically by the great zealot of his generation, the sacred gaon Rabbi Shlomo Algazi, av beit din of Jerusalem. Izmir, 1675. First edition. Personal copy that belonged to the gadol hador, the gaon Rabbi Baruch Frankel-Teomim, author of Baruch Ta'am - father-in-law of the Divrei Chaim of Sanz and his teacher in the revealed Torah. A lengthy gloss [17 words] appears along the leaves of the sefer in the Baruch Ta'am's script.

The Baruch Ta'am's glosses, written in the margins of the sheets of his sefarim, have been accepted as lessons for the generations due to their depth and the many insights contained in them. Many of these glosses were printed over the years and they have been quoted extensively in sefarim by leading Acharonim and poskim through our own times. The Baruch Ta'am wrote his glosses on all types of sefarim in his large library, from the foundational sefarim such as chumashim, mishnayot and Talmud Bavli through sifrei Acharonim written by his contemporaries. His glosses on Ketzot HaChoshen, Shev Shemaiteta, the Shulchan Aruch, Sha"s and more are especially well-known. His grandson, Rabbi Pinchas Aryeh Leibush Teomim, attests about his grandfather: "My grandfather, the gaon, the author of Baruch Ta'am, would write his glosses directly on the sheets of all his sefarim ..." (Ohel Baruch 35).

This copy belonged to several chachamim across different periods who left their signatures and glosses:

* "Bought with my own funds, with Hashem's help, the youth Chaim Nathan of Kraków, son of the sage, the naggid, Yekutiel Zalman Dembitzer ..." This is the gaon Rabbi Chaim Nathan Dembitzer, av beit din of Kraków.

* "The youth Moshe Kahane" There are several sages with this name known over the generations, one of whom was the author of Kikayon D'Yonah's brother-in-law.

* "Belongs to the wondrous and expert rabbi Nachum son of the rabbi, the naggid and Katzin Rabbi Chaim ... of the Kraków region ..."

* "Yekutiel Zalman Graubert av beit din of Bendin" - the gaon Yekutiel Zalman Graubert, av beit din of Bendin, his father's successor, and then a rabbi in the United States.

Refer to the Hebrew catalog text for brief biographies of the author, Rabbi Shlomo Algazi,  the writer of the glosses, the sacred gaon Rabbi Baruch Teomim-Frankel and the gaon Rabbi Chaim Nathan Dembitzer.

150 leaf, lacking leaves 49-52. 21 cm. High-quality paper. Rare sefer. [7] glosses appear along the length of the sefer by different writers. One of these has been positively identified as being in the script of the Baruch Ta'am.

Fine condition. Owners' notations. Aging stains. Several worming perforations in the first leaves. Tears in the margins of several leaves, some restored, and most without damage to the text.