Obj. ID: 37855  Toldot Ya'akov by Ya'akov Castro, Jerusalem, 1865

This text was prepared by William Gross:

Novellae on Tractate Bei'eh by R. Jacob Castro, rabbinical authority; lived in Egypt; died there in 1610. He was a nephew, not a son, of the master of the mint, Abraham de Castro. On a pilgrimage to Safed he was the guest of R. Joseph Caro, by whom he was highly esteemed. De Castro corresponded among other of his contemporaries with R. Samuel de Medina, and was the author of several works, which were published after his death.
Yisrael ben Avraham Bak was born in in1797 in Berdichev, Ukraine. In 1815, he founded a printing press in Berdichev where he published 30 books until the press closed. Finally in 1831 he made Aliyah to the Holy Land and settled in Safed where the following year began Hebrew printing for the first time after 245 years. His press was damaged in both the peasant revolt of 1834 and the earthquake of 1837. The final destruction came with the Druze revolt of 1838, after which Bak left Safed and went to Jerusalem. In 1841 he once again established for the third time a Hebrew press in a different city. This was the first Hebrew press ever in the Holy city of Jerusalem. For 33 year Bak continued to print in Jerusalem, some 130 volumes in all and many single sheet publications, until his death in 1874. In addition to the importance of his printing activity, Bak was also a leader of the Chasidic community and with his son Nisan established the Tiferet Israel synagogue in Jerusalem for Chasidim.
First edition. [4], 96 ff., quarto