Sephardic Journeys now open in The David Berg Rare Book
Room

The rare books and artifacts in this exhibit, Sephardic Journeys, reflect a rich
tradition of scholarship and culture shaped by migrations, and they invite, in
turn, reflection upon the physical, emotional and spiritual journeys of Jewish
history.

Item above:

Sefer Tikkun Sofrim u-Mikra Sofrim (ספר תקון סופרים ומקרא סופרים)
Isaac ben Abba Mari, Ya’aḳov Avraham Giron
Nisim Ashkenazi ben Yonah ha-Madpis (Constantinople, 1756)
Hebrew

Isaac ben Abba Mari (1122?-93?), a French
Sephardi Talmudic prodigy, wrote his first book at age seventeen. Shehitah u-Terefot, on the laws of slaughtering
and consuming animals. This work was combined with others—produced over 23
years—to form his magnum opus, the Ittur
Soferim, a near-complete code of Jewish law. Purported to have been
unrivaled in his age in questions of Talmud, whether Yerusalyami (Jerusalem) or Bavli
(Babylonian), Mari was an independent thinker, who unsparingly criticized
revered and aged authorities. The present volume is composed of Ittur excerpts and Rabbi Avraham Giron’s
commentaries purporting to elucidate and elaborate Mari’s work.

Gift
of the Leo Baeck Institute on behalf of the Offen Family

Sephardic Journeys
is on view through June 2015 in The David Berg Rare Book Room. Sephardic Journeys has been supported by
a generous grant from The David Berg Foundation and was created by the Center
for Jewish History with American Sephardi Federation.