Manuscript, Darchei Moshe HaAroch on Yoreh Deah, by R. Moshe Isserles – the Rama. [Lublin], 1608.

Complete manuscript. Especially thick volume. Ashkenazic semi-cursive and cursive scripts, by varying hands, about thirty years after the passing of the author, R. Moshe Isserles – the Rama (d. 1572). The last scribe signs his name at the end: "…Completed with the help of G-d, today, Thursday of [Chayei Sarah] 1608 – so says the scribe Yaakov son of Yosef called Yakev of Lublin". At top of first page: "I begin to write with good luck, my help is from G-d, may He help me to succeed".

Next to the colophon is copied the concluding poem of the work, by the Rama: "Malki VElo-hai…".

The present volume belongs to the class of manuscripts of the work copied shortly after the passing of the Rama by the Torah scholars of that generation, including the disciples of the Rama and their own disciples, which were used by the students of the Cracow and Lublin Batei Midrash in those days. These manuscripts preserved the work for a long time, until it began to be printed at the turn of the 18th century. The first copyist of the work was R. Eliyahu Loans (R. Eliyahu Baal Shem), as he recounts in the introduction to his Aderet Eliyahu: "Darchei Moshe happened to come into my possession… It was the first version, since the righteous author had passed away… and I was the first copyist…" (as thanks, he was given by the Rama's brother, R. Eliezer, a manuscript of the Rama's commentary on the Zohar, as he writes in the same introduction). For many years this work remained in manuscript, and it began to be printed only in 1692 (when the Yoreh Deah section was printed in Sulzbach). The work was printed along with the Tur beginning from the Berlin 1702-1703 edition, but the printers omitted a significant portion of the work, and it was in this abridgement ("Darchei Moshe HaKatzar") that it has been printed in most of the later editions of the Tur.

Although it was not printed until later, the complete work was available to the leading commentators of the Tur and Shulchan Aruch after the Rama in the 16th and 17th centuries, in copies such as the present manuscript. It is cited particularly often by R. Yehoshua Falk HaKohen, the Sema, a disciple of the Rama, whose Derishah and Perishah commentaries are effectively glosses and commentary on the Darchei Moshe. The same is true of R. Yoel Sirkes, the Bach, who cites and discusses the Darchei Moshe in his own work, and of R. Shabtai Kohen, the Shach.

In addition to the various scribes in the present volume, who are unidentified (apart from the last one, who signed his name, as mentioned above), there are glosses in the margins of the pages (most trimmed). Some of these glosses are additions or supplements and corrections to Darchei Moshe, and they also appear in part in parallel manuscripts of Darchei Moshe.

At the same time, some of the present glosses appear to be original glosses by a student. This requires thorough research. On p. 236b appears a gloss with similar wording to the Bach (Bayit Chadash, Yoreh Deah 168/169:15). Similarly, a gloss on p. 416a is substantially similar to the Bach (335:7). One of the glosses (p. 235a) mentions R. Shlomo Luria – the Maharshal: "And my teacher and master the Maharshal wrote… in his responsa, section 52…" (referring to Responsa of the Maharshal, printed in Lublin, 1574-1575).

The present manuscript was not available to the editors of the Shirat Devorah edition published by Machon Yerushalayim, and there are textual variants between the present text and that of the printed edition. Some of the present glosses have not been printed.

[450] leaves (later pencil foliation). 18.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains. Tears to several leaves. Worming. Bottom margins of several leaves trimmed. New binding.