Obj. ID: 37703
Jewish printed books Nachalat Ya'akov by R. Jacob ben Elhanan Heilbronn, Padua, 1623
This text was prepared by William Gross:
Responsa and halakhic novella concerning monetary issues, dietary laws, and commentary on various subjects in Tosafot and Rashi, compiled by R. Jacob ben Elhanan Heilbronn (16th C). A rare instance of a Hebrew title printed in 17th-century Padua.
R. Heilbronn was born in Italy, studied in Prague, and traveled through central Europe and Italy, serving as rabbi in several communities, before finally settling in Padua, Italy. He was a mathematician as well as a highly regarded Talmudic scholar.
Included on folio 2a are the names of rabbis, all distinguished, with whom Heilbronn corresponded, and whose responses make up a substantial portion of Nachalat Ya’akov. Among them are R. Abraham Menahem Kohen Rapa Porto, Judah Katzenellenbogen, Avigdor Cividal, Mordechai Jaffe, and Isaiah Horowitz.
Title page with six-part frame comprised of floral patterns.
Padua has few Hebrew titles to its credit in the seventeenth century (and only two from the 16th C). Nachalat Ya'akov is either the first or second Hebrew book from 17th-century Padua, as Gaspare Crivellari issued both this volume and a Kinot Eikhah in 1622. Only one other Hebrew title is known from Crivellari: a 1640 reprint of R. Leone Modena's Galut Yehudah. Additional Hebrew books were printed in Padua, intermittently in the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, and more frequently in the nineteenth century.