Bidspirit auction | (MIDRASH).

(MIDRASH). - Midrash Shmuel [Midrashic commentary to the Book of Samuel] FIRST EDITION. Complete as issued, without title-page. A fine, wide-margined copy. ff. 12, (4). Trace wormed at margins expertly repaired, few light stains. Signed by censor Camillo Jagel at end. Bound in -custom blind-tooled maroon crushed morocco, spine in compartments and titled in gilt. Folio. Vinograd, Const. 90; Mehlman 176; Deinard, Atikoth Yehudah, p. 25. Constantinople: (Nahmias?) 1517 Exceptionally rare Midrashic text. The last two leaves of Midrash Shmuel contain the Responses of Sa’adyah Gaon to Ten Questions Concerning the Resurrection of the Dead. Despite Italian dominance over 16th century Hebrew printing, it was the presses of the Sephardic Diaspora (Constantinople and Salonika) that were the first to issue most of the Midrashim published in that century. Sephardic culture had always been receptive of the artistic expression of the Midrash, but especially now, given the trauma of the Iberian Expulsion, its soothing words were greatly needed in the still rootless Sephardic communities of the Ottoman Empire.