Auction 1 - Rare Hebrew Books, Manuscripts & Rabbinic Letters
Lot 28:
Description
The first edition of R. Immanuel Hai Ricchi’s celebrated kabbalistic commentary on Tehillim, issued under tragic circumstances that have made it one of the most poignant productions of the eighteenth-century Hebrew press.
Scholar, kabbalist, physician, and among the foremost Italian rabbinic figures of his generation, Ricchi is best remembered as the author of Mishnat Chassidim, a classic exposition of Lurianic Kabbalah. His influence extended beyond Italy to the Holy Land, where he founded a Jerusalem yeshivah that later counted R. Chaim ibn Attar, the Or HaChaim, among its students. His commentary to Tehillim reflects the breadth of his scholarship, combining peshat, derash, and kabbalistic interpretation in a distinctly Italian style. The lengthy autobiographical introduction, in which Ricchi recounts his travels, teachers, and intellectual development, ranks among the more engaging personal prefaces in early Hebrew printing.
The circumstances surrounding the publication lend the volume exceptional historical interest. While the work was passing through the press in Livorno, Ricchi was killed during a fundraising journey in northern Italy. Publication was completed by his son, who transformed the concluding leaves of the volume into a memorial for his father, appending an account of his death together with a moving elegy composed in his honor. Among these additions is a remarkable passage copied from Ricchi’s own siddur, describing a dream in which he believed he had been forewarned that he might merit death al Kiddush Hashem, identifying himself with the soul of R. Yehudah ben Bava. Strikingly, the commentary itself concludes with a discussion of the Asarah Harugei Malchut, including R. Yehudah ben Bava—a juxtaposition that later readers found especially poignant.
An especially appealing provenance copy, bearing ownership stamps of R. Shmuel Halperin (d. 1959), first as Rabbi of the Orthodox community in Amsterdam, and later as the first Rabbi of Zikhron Meir, the Bnei Brak neighborhood founded by his brother, R. Yaakov Halperin, in memory of R. Meir Shapiro, founder of the Daf Yomi movement. The two distinct stamps preserved in the present volume document the book’s journey together with one of the rabbinic figures linking pre-war European Orthodoxy with the emerging Torah centers of Eretz Israel. An additional early ownership inscription, apparently reading “גם בזה חנני ה׳ הק׳ יוסף רובענס”, appears on the opening leaves.
Page Count: 138, [2] leaves. Condition: Complete attractive copy. Paper-covered boards, Two free front endpapers. Fol. 5 with upper corner slightly oversized; fol. 6 retaining an original printer’s fold. Small tear to the corner of p. 112. Crease to the lower margin of p. 96 with slight loss affecting several words. Small marginal hole on p. 77.
Provenance: The collection of Abraham Lieberman, Flatbush, Brooklyn NY
Opening price: $1000
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