Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi (Known as the Rif; 1013-1103) was a native of northern Algeria who received his education in Kairouan, The Rif resided for much of his life in Fez (hence the surname Alfasi) until about the age of 75, when he was forced to flee to Spain, where he died.
This book, Sefer haHalachos, also known as Hilchos Rav Alfas, is a comprehensive summary and commentary on portions of the Talmud.
This book was first printed in Constantinople in 1509 in two volumes, including the commentaries of Rabbis Nissim Gerondi, Joseph Habiba, Jonathan ha-Kohen of Lunel, and others, together with Rabbi Mordechai ben Hillel’s voluminous halakhic compendium, Sefer Mordechai. A new edition appeared at Daniel Bomberg’s press in Venice in 1521-1522, this time in three volumes and including an edited version of Rashi’s commentary on the Talmud, as well as the text of the Tosefta. Thirty years later, another Venetian publisher, Alvise Bragadini, issued a reprint of the Bomberg edition, adding to it the commentaries of Rabbis Zerahiah ha-Levi and Moses Nahmanides, plus several important indexing tools and a commentary by Rabbi Joshua Boaz Baruch, a sixteenth-century Italian scholar of Catalonian extraction. Importantly, however, Baruch’s name was not associated with these innovations in Bragadini’s edition.
Meanwhile, Tobias ben Eliezer Foa had established a Hebrew press in his home in Sabbioneta in 1551. Following the infamous papal decree condemning the Talmud to the flames and the subsequent cessation of Hebrew printing in Venice, Foa’s publishing house rose to prominence as one of the only Hebrew printshops still functioning in Italy.
in this 1554 edition of Hilchos Rav Alfas, Boaz Baruch is credited with authorship of the indexes called Ein Mishpot and Ner Mitzvah and the commentary Shiftei HaGiborim.
My copy is actually part three, comprised of the Talmudic tractates Baba Kamma and Baba Metziah. Unfortunately it is missing the original first page, but has a photocopy from another copy bound in. It also has an interesting manuscript note, some inscriptions and some handwritten corrections to the text.
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