The Great Lulav Debate: A Forgotten Halachic Battle Of Renaissance Venice

This past week, I was privileged to acquire a volume that is not merely a book, but a tangible witness to one of the most fierce, yet forgotten, halachic controversies of the Italian Renaissance. It is a copy of Perush Derech Yemin, authored by the eminent Venetian scholar Rabbi Yosef Samega and printed in Venice in 1606. This extremely brief work was published as the only edition and originally appeared without a title page, a common practice for urgent, polemical booklets printed hot off the press to address an ongoing communal dispute. 

To understand why this booklet was written, one must travel back to the Jewish quarter of Venice in 1605. Rabbi Shmuel Algazi had just published his work, Toldot Adam, outlining a specific methodology for performing the Hakafot and the shaking of the lulav. He managed to secure the backing of the titans of the generation, including the great kabbalist Rabbi Menachem Azariah (the Rama) of Fano, Rabbi Ovadia Sforno, and Rabbi Zion Franzes. However, Rabbi Yosef Samega and a faction of prominent Venetian contemporary scholars vehemently disagreed with Algazi’s kabbalistically influenced geometric choreography. In response, the Rama of Fano and the Sforno quickly fired back by publishing a defensive booklet titled Yemin Hashem Romema (Venice, 1605). Not to be silenced, Rav Samega weaponized his pen and published the volume currently sitting on my desk: Perush Derech Yemin. The Halachic Core: Which Way is Right? At the center of this battle was the interpretation of a famous Talmudic dictum found in Sotah 15b: "All turns that you turn should be only to the right." While it sounds simple in theory, implementing it into the physical space of a synagogue creates practical dilemmas. Does turning to the right mean a continuous clockwise rotation, or does it mean prioritizing the right side of the body when initiating waving? How do we handle multi-directional movements (like the six directions of the lulav canopy) without accidentally making a "leftward" retreat? Rav Samega uses this short treatise to meticulously dissect the mechanics of the lulav wavings. He argues with absolute, brilliant textual fidelity against the innovative practices sweeping through Italy at the time, fighting to preserve the classical, literal interpretation of the Talmudic right-side precedence.

For bibliophiles and collectors of rabbinic history, booklets like Perush Derech Yemin represent the Holy Grail of ephemeral printing. Because they were printed locally, distributed rapidly to community members, and lacked a protective title page, the vast majority of copies were read to pieces, discarded during holiday cleanings, or lost to time. Finding an intact copy from 1606 allows us to peer into a dynamic era when halachic practices were actively being debated, codified, and defended by the greatest minds of the Sephardic and Italian world.