Obj. ID: 39007
Jewish printed books She'arit Yehudah by Shmuel ben Shelomo Taitazak, Thessaloniki (Salonika), 1600
This text was prepared by William Gross:
Halakhic novellae and annotations on the Beit Yosef on Tur Yoreh De’ah of R. Joseph Caro. This is the only edition of this work, and the only work known by R. Sameul Taitazak.
Title page with floral typographic border.
R. Samuel b. Solomon Taitazak (c.1465-1487/88 – c.1548) served as a rabbi in Magnesia, Turkey. He was the great-nephew of R. Joseph Taitazak, author of Porat Yosef and Lehem Setarim. R. Samuel died prematurely at the age of 39. His brother, R. Judah Taitazak, published She’arit Yehudah.
The history of Hebrew printing in Salonica began in the early 16th and lasted some 400 years, being brought to an end only with the Nazi conquest. The first Hebrew press was established in Salonica in 1512 by a Portuguese printer and émigré, Ibn Gedalya. By the 1560’s, with the mass influx of former Marranos from the Iberian Peninsula, printing activity in Salonica flourished.
The printer Sabbatai Mattathias Bath-Sheba (Basevi in Italian), accompanied by his with Fioretta and his two sons, Abraham Joseph (or Joseph Abraham) and Abraham, established a print-shop in Salonika in 1592. They had been recruited by the wealthy scholar and prominent philanthropist, R. Moses de Medina. The Bath-Sheba press would print about forty titles from 1592-1605.