TORAT HA-HATTAT (TREATISE ON THE LAWS OF KASHRUT), RABBI MOSES ISSERLES, KRAKOW: ISAAC BEN AARON PROSTITZ, 1569

The first edition of an important tract by one of the preeminent Ashkenazic halakhists, including the first parts of his glosses to Shulhan arukh to appear in print.

Hebrew printing in Krakow began in the early 1530s at the press of the brothers Samuel, Asher, and Eliakim Helicz, continuing through about 1540. Starting in 1569, a new press was established by Isaac ben Aaron Prostitz (of Prossnitz; d. 1612), who had received a fifty-year license to print from King Sigismund Augustus. Having trained in Italy, Prostitz brought with him equipment purchased from venerable Venetian presses as well as the scholarly proofreader Samuel Böhm (d. 1588). Over the course of the following sixty years, Isaac and his successors issued approximately two hundred tiles of high quality.

The present work is a classic halakhic treatise by Rabbi Moses Isserles (Rema; 1525/1530-1572). Modeled on the Issur ve-hetter/Sha‘arei dura of the thirteenth-century Rabbi Isaac Dueren (first edition: Krakow, 1534), it includes lengthy discussions of all the laws of kashrut as practiced in Ashkenazic communities at the time. The printers added to this an epitomized version of the section of Rabbi Joseph Caro’s Shulhan arukh treating Hilkhot niddah (the laws of women in menses), together with Rema’s glosses thereto. Rema’s comments on Orah hayyim would not appear until the following year, and his complete glosses to the entire Shulhan arukh would first be published in 1577-1580. The Prostitz firm would go on to print Torat ha-hattat three more times in 1577, 1590, and approximately 1600.