Chumash Bereshit, with the Rashi commentary, Baal HaTurim and the Panim Yafot commentary by the Gaon Rabbi Pinchas HaLevi Horowitz Rabbi of Frankfurt am Main, a disciple of the Maggid of Mezeritch.
Ostroh, 1825. First edition. With the approbations of the Ohev Yisrael of Apta.
A complete and perfect copy with both title pages in magnificent condition!
This sefer was published two decades after the passing of the author. The sefer consists of commentaries on the Torah, following various approaches – the basic meaning, pilpul, derush, remez, ethics, kabbalah and chassidut. The sefer was compiled and brought to press by the mechutan of the author, the Gaon Rabbi Efraim Zalman of Brody, who also composed a lengthy, detailed and interesting foreword, printed at the beginning of the volume. R. Efraim also added at the end of the volume his own commentary to Rashi, named Shem Efraim.
Some copies do not include the Shem Ephraim commentary. But present volume does.
Rabbi Akiva Eiger (in his approbation to part 2, not present) writes about the importance and merit of acquiring this sefer: "Fortunate is the righteous one who grasps his way, which shall be called the holy way, to take this Torah sefer into his house and within his walls, and the house shall be filled with light like the steady dawn at its rising."
Additionally, Part 2 includes approbations from the Chatam Sofer, Rabbi Yaakov of Lissa, and the Baruch Ta’am.
The title page states: "Panim Yafot… part III of the Haflaa composition". The first parts of the Haflaa: Ketubah on Tractate Ketubot (Offenbach 1787) and HaMikneh on Tractate Kiddushin (Offenbach 1801).
[4], 106, 83-122, [3] leaves (special haftarahs), 7 leaves (the ‘Shem Ephraim’ commentary). Mispaginated. 20.3 Cm.
Stefansky, Chassidut 220.
Beautiful condition, thick greenish-blush pages, very few stains, luxurious new brown leather binding with owners name.
The Holy Gaon Rabbi Pinchas HaLevi Ish Horowitz, rabbi of Frankfurt am Main, author of the Haflaa (1731-1805), served in his youth as rabbi of Witkowo and Lachovice. On 26th Tevet 1772, he was appointed rabbi and dean of Frankfurt am Main, which at that time was the largest Torah center in Germany. He held this position for over thirty-three years, until his passing. He edified many disciples in his yeshiva, the most prominent of them being his close disciple the Chatam Sofer. He led the battles against Haskalah and the reform movement. R. Pinchas and his Torah novellae were held in high regard by all the Torah leaders of his generation, both Chassidim and Mitnagdim.
At the end of 1771, shortly before he arrived in Frankfurt, R. Pinchas spent several weeks together with his brother Rebbe Shmelke Rabbi of Nikolsburg, by the Maggid of Mezeritch, where they absorbed the secrets of Torah and worship of G-d from the Maggid and his leading disciples (the Mitteler Rebbe of Lubavitch relates to this in his famous foreword to Shulchan Aruch HaRav, first printed in 1814). The Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch defines R. Pinchas as a disciple of the Maggid (Likutei Torah, Bamidbar, Zhitomir 1848, p. 29b, in a gloss on the words of his grandfather the Baal HaTanya). In his book Panim Yafot, the Haflaa brings several principles from the teachings of the Maggid of Mezeritch (see: Erkei HaHaflaa, Jerusalem 2006, I, pp. 40-41), although he only mentions him explicitly in one place, in Parashat Beshalach (p. 57b), in the commentary to "Vayavo\'u Marata" (some claim that the omission of the name of the Maggid from the sefer Panim Yafot is the fault of the copyists of the manuscript.
In his foreword, the publisher Rabbi Efraim Zalman Margolies states that the sefer was not printed based on the author\'s own manuscript, but from a copying produced by one of the grandsons of the author, "based on a copying of the book produced by various scribes", meaning that the sefer was printed based on a third hand copy. This claims still does not explain the fact that the name of the Maggid of Mezeritch is not mentioned in any of the seforim published by the Haflaa in his lifetime, even when the source of the ideas quoted is from the teachings of the Maggid).
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Lot #190