Obj. ID: 38939
Jewish printed books  Derech Emunah by Meir ben Yechezkiel ibn Gabai, Padua, 1563

This text was prepared by William Gross:

Sefer Derech Emunah, “The Way of Repentance in the Way of the Kabbalah” by Rabbi Meir Ben Gabbay [author of Avodat Hakodesh and Tola’at Yakov]. Padua, 1562. Printed by Lorenzo Pasquato and Partners.
On the reverse side of the title page introduction of “Samuel of Moravia Shatz of Padua Proofreader”. On leaf 2 there are ten questions which the student Rabbi Joseph Halevi asked the author. The work is a reply to these questions. First Hebrew book printed in Padua, and one of the few Hebrew books printed there in the 16th century.
The first book published in Padua, Derech Emunah was written in 1539 by the prominent kabbalist R. Meir Ben Ezekiel ibn Gabbai (1480 – ca. 1540). The work contains answers to questions on the ten sefirot, and is arranged in a format of ten questions and answers. Little is known about the author, save that he was among the exiles from Spain, likely lived in Turkey, and may have died in Eretz Israel.
This Padua edition was long believed to be the first edition of this work, until the discovery of two surviving leaves from a slightly earlier Constantinople edition (equally unknown to the publisher at Padua). From the first edition survive only the title page and the introduction from Shneur ben Judah Falcon, the author’s son-in-law, who brought the book to press.
This volume marks the first venture into the Hebrew market of Lorenzo Pasquato, an experienced printer of Latin and Italian books, whose Hebrew works were published by R. Samuel Boehm. Pasquato (and R. Boehm) issued only one other Hebrew book, Derashot ha-Torah (1567, see GFC B.1568). These two are the only Hebrew books issued in Padua during the 16th century, despite the city’s fame as a seat of rabbinic learning and the presence of Jews from across Europe in its medical faculty.
Title page with woodcut architectural portal. At bottom, a pensive child holds a branch in his right hand, resting his head on the other, and his elbow on a tree stump. The frame was introduced by Bomberg and Soncino earlier in the century, and remained a convention in Hebrew printing until modern times.