Physical Description

12 ff. folio 275:92mm., trimmed margins touching letters, usual light age and damp staining. A good copy bound in modern quarter leather over boards.

Detail Description

SHEKALIM (Heb. שְׁקָלִים), fourth tractate in the order of Mo'ed, which deals, in eight chapters, with the annual half-shekel tax collected for the maintenance of the Temple and its services and with allied subjects. There is no Gemara in the Babylonian Talmud however there is in the Jerusalem Talmud.

The printer, Isaac ben Aaron Prostitz, was born in Prossnitz, Moravia. At an early age his father sent him to Italy to learn the printing trade. Prostitz traveled through Italy and came to reside in Venice where he worked with Giovanni Grypho and met the famous proofreader, Samuel ben Isaac Boem. When the Grypho press closed in 1568, Isaac of Prostitz acquired the press' typographical equipment, including the letters, ornaments, and frames, and brought both the equipment and Boem to Cracow. In the next 60 years Isaac and his successors (sons and nephews) produced some 200 books, of which 73 were in Yiddish. The Babylonian Talmud was printed twice, this edition 1602–08 and again in 1616–20.

Hebrew Description

References