Pesaro, Aaron Di of Italy

Pesaro, Aaron di Of Italy a celebrated rabbi of the 16th century, undertook and accomplished the hereulean task of furnishing a sort of concordance to every passage of Scripture quoted or commented upon in the Babylonian Talmud, and called it after his own name, תּוֹלדוֹת אִהֲרֹן, "the Offering of Aaron." It was first published at Freiburg and Basle in 1581, in folio. Of such importance did the great Buxtorf consider the work that he published the whole of it as an Appendix to the first edition of his Chaldaic, Talmudical, and Rabbinical Lexicon, in 1639, with the following Latin paraphrase of its title-page: "Index locupletissimus omnium locorum in toto Talmudico opere de sacris Bibliis eompraehensorum, summo studio et fidelitate collectus" (which, however, is not reprinted in the new edition of Buxtorf's Lexicon by Fischer, Leipsic, 1869-1874). In 1590 an enlarged edition, including references to the Zohar, Baal Akeda, or Isaac Arama's philosophical work, entitled עֲקֵדִת יַצחָק, and Ikkarim of Joseph Albo, was published at Vienna. Between sixty and seventy years afterwards the then famous rabbi Jacob Sasportas, whom subsequent Hebrew writers described as "most distinguished in the law and crowned with humility," a native of Oran, in North Africa-who was successively chief rabbi of the Sephardim congregations at Leghorn, Hamburg, and Amsterdam- supplemented the work of Pesaro by a concordance of the passages of Scripture quoted and treated in the Jerusalem Talmud. This supplement the author called after his own name, תולדות יעקב, "the Offering of Jacob." The twofold work, as a whole, was first published at Amsterdam in 1652, then at Berlin in 1705. The Rev. Dr. Margoliouth, of London, has recently announced an English translation. with editorial annotations and illustrations, in two volumes, of both Pesaro's and Sasportas's work. See Furst, Bibl. Jud. 3:79; De Rossi, Dizionario storico degli autori Ebrei, p. 262 (Germ. transl. by Hamburger); Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. 1:128 sq.; 3:80 sq. (B. P.)