Rare Hebrew Books,
Including Six Incunabula
From the Collection of the late
Dr. Michael D. Paul of
St. John’s, Newfoundland.
* With a Fine Isidor Kaufmann Portrait Painting.
Montreal born Dr. Michael David Paul (1954-2024) was a respected professor of medicine specializing in nephrology who devoted himself to the citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador for more than forty years.
Alongside his teaching and medical practice, Dr. Paul served as the long-time President of the small Jewish community of St. John’s. His many interests included travel, philanthropy, but especially book-collecting - alongside related study and research.
Of all the many clients I have been privileged to know in my forty year book career, Dr. Paul was among the most learned and certainly the most interesting.
May his soul receive its eternal reward and may his memory forever be blessed.
DEK
Spring, 2025.
* Most of the books offered here from Dr. Paul’s library, contain his small embossed stamp, generally affixed to the title-page.
|
LOT 16:
ANAV, YECHIEL BEN YEKUTHIEL.
more...
|
|
|
Sold for: $750
Price including buyer’s premium and sales tax:
$
1,020.70
Start price:
$
600
Estimate :
$1,000 - $1,500
Buyer's Premium: 25%
sales tax: 8.875%
On the lot's price and buyer's premium
|
ANAV, YECHIEL BEN YEKUTHIEL.
Ma’aloth HaMidoth.
Second edition - first with this title. With marginal notes and manuscript corrections, seemingly comparing this Cremona edition with an earlier text.
f. 83. Repaired worming affecting letters at times, light stains in places, signatures. Modern vellum. 4to.
Vinograd, Cremona 1; Mehlman 977.
Cremona, V. Conti, 1556.
THE FIRST HEBREW BOOK PRINTED IN CREMONA.
Ma’aloth HaMidoth is renowned for its ethical insights and enumeration of the twenty-four steps necessary for character development. Later Rabbinic luminaries such as R. Ya’akov Emden highly regarded the work - evident from the fact that he included entire chapters of it in his own Migdal Oz.
Ma’aloth HaMidoth was particularly venerated by the adherents of the Mussar movement of Novardok and it was republished many times. It should be noted that when it first appeared (Constantinople, 1511) the work was known as Beith Midoth.
There are many significant textual changes between the first and second editions. As Weiner's Koheleth Moshe notes (no. 1332), the author's introduction first appeared in the second edition and it seems apparent, each printer worked from a different manuscript. See S.H. Kook, Iyunim U'Mechkarim Vol. II, pp. 268-9.
