Talmud Bavli, im perush Rashi ve-tosafot ve-Rabenu Asher (Babylonian Talmud in Hebrew)

Vienna: L. C. Zamarski & C. Dittmarsch, 1873. The Babylonian Talmud, complete in 24 books bound in 12 volumes. The title page to the first volume is undated but typically dated 1864 in institutional catalogs; the second volume is dated 1866, the last volume is dated 1872, but the last page of the Taharot (Vol. XXIV) is dated 1873. Tall quarto, each volume measuring 14" x 10". Bound in half cloth and paper-covered boards, leather spine labels with gilt lettering. Title pages printed in red, black, yellow, and gilt. Very Good overall lots of edge wear with exposed boards, chipping, toning and wear to spines. Cloth of volume 7 appears to have been inexpertly repaired; binding tape repair to rear hinge. Other than that the bindings are sturdy; contents have a little foxing with age. Occasional marginal notes, presumably from either Ernest or Walter Jacob; a few pages of notes in Hebrew laid in as well. This set has a very distinguished provenance: it came from the estate of Walter Jacob, a significant leader in Reform Judaism in America, author of 43 books, and the chief rabbi at Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh. His father, Ernest Israel Jacob (1899-1974) was district rabbi of Augsburg and was deported to Dachau concentration camp for several months after Kristallnacht in 1938; he eventually emigrated to the US. Walter's grandfather, Benno Jacob, was considered one of the great biblical commentators of liberal Judaism. Ernest Jacob has written a note on the front pastedown of the first volume: "The textual corrections and marginal annotations in this Vienna edition of the Babylonian Talmud are by the late orientalist Samuel Landauer, a great Aramaic scholar, formally librarian of the University library at Strasbourg, Alsace, from whose estate I bought this work. Ernest I. Jacob." A lovely 19th century Hebrew edition of the central text of Rabbinic Judaism, and the source of Jewish law and theology, compiled in the 3rd to 6th centuries in Mesopotamia. International buyers please note: shipping this set outside the United States will require extra charges due to its weight and size. (Inventory #: 140948037)