In today’s age of digitization and free access to endless libraries and collections, it is rare to find an important work of a notable author that remained unknown and unpublished. This past week I was delighted to be offered and acquired one such volume, which sat in a private collection for many decades, unpublished and unknown to the greater world. The volume was a 1593 Venice edition of the Shulchan Aruch, the sections of Yoreh De’ah and Choshen Mishpat, with the handwritten marginalia of Rabbi Yair Chayim Bacharach (1639 – 1702), also known by his work Chavot Yair, one of the leading poskim of the 17th century.
On the free-end of the Shulchan Aruch appears an inscription, by Samuel ben Aaron Bacharach, dated 1614, stating that he bought this volume in Frankfurt. Presumably this was the same R. Samuel, the grandfather of the Chavot Yair, who was married to Chava, the granddaughter of the Maharal. A year following this inscription, on Good Friday, 1615, R. Samuel was murdered in a pogrom in the city of Worms, where he served as rabbi, passing away at the young age of 40. Chava was known far and wide as a righteous woman. Following her husband’s passing, the famed Shelah Hakadosh sought her hand in marriage, though she declined and raised her children on her own. In 1651, Chava undertook a pilgrimage to Eretz Yisrael, but tragically passed away en route. Her legacy was preserved in the name of R. Yair Bacharach’s most famous work, the Chavot Yair, a combination of his name and that of his grandmother.
R. Bacharach wrote extensively, including a 46-volume encyclopedia on many subjects, named Yair Netiv, which remains unpublished. He was known as a great posek, but was also known as an expert in the sciences, music and history, as well as poetry. His commentary on Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim was withdrawn by the author once the commentaries of the Taz and Magen Avraham were published, as he felt his work needed to be rewritten to address their comments. For centuries, this work was feared lost, until in the last decades a condensed version of this extensive work was discovered and published in 1982, under the title Mekor Chaim. The present volume which I acquired has extensive marginalia on the first 55 simanim of Choshen Mishpat, with only sparse comments after that, perhaps also as a result of his feeling that his work was superfluous once other major commentaries were published
