161 Abraham Gross GERONA: A SEPHARDIC CRADLE OF ...

Identifying an Alfasi Gloss-Supplement in a Gerona Fragment
directly, without editing, into his Talmud
Novellae.
For example in the Novellae to 33b, after
copying a line from the Alfasi gloss of Isaac of
Narbonne (a line that also appears at the end of
our fragment), Yom Tov Asevilli continues in the
next sentence to refer to Alfasi as the subject of
the article. So too in a few other articles.
There are also some articles in which without
warning, Yom Tov Asevilli relates to extratalmudic
material found in Hilkhot Alfasi. Unfortunately,
these references and articles are not
in the scope of our fragment, which ranges from
9b-32b in the Bavli. So we have no source that
refers directly to the text in our ms., as Yom Tov
Asevilli’s composition on Hilkhot Alfasi. Yet we
can deduce that his Alfasi work was composed
before his parallel Talmud work.
It’s tempting to imagine that as a young
novice, Yom Tov Asevilli studied Halakha and
composed this work to facilitate colleagues in this
popular field. Only later when he graduated to
the level of Talmudic study, did he produce
Novellae for the few colleagues who participated
in this, more esoteric, field. Many of the glosses
and comments that appear here in our ms. serve
as the starting point of the dialectic articles in
Asevilli’s Novellae.
In comparison to Yom Tov’s composition
on Hilkhot Alfasi Ta‘anit, we see the same style
and sources that we find here.
So to do we see the same dependence of
Nissim Gerondi on Hilkhot Alfasi Ta‘anit on
Asevilli. In Alfasi Ta‘anit, Asevilli defines the
agenda of debatable issues for Nissim Gerondi
there, in the same manner that we have found
here.
But neither of these points defines our ms.
to be exclusively Yom Tov Asevilli, as they could
be just as possible in the work of any other composer
of this genre and from this school. The rigidly
defined function of this genre creates a rigidly
defined structure of style and sources accepted
by all the Alfasi gloss-supplements. It is
therefore difficult to identify a particular author,
since virtually all the composers employ an identical
format, structure and style.
We have mentioned the similarity between
our manuscript and the Moscow ms. on
Kiddushin, in terms of sources, style and its pattern
of recension in Nissim Gerondi.
Bezalel Ashkenazi, the author of 16 th century
Shita Miqubexet, after copying an article
found in that Moscow ms, signs:
.
We have no way of knowing how educated
this guess is, and why Rabbi Bezalel would attribute
this work to Yom Tov Asevilli’s son and
not to Yom Tov Asevilli himself.
We know of one such work authored by
Yom Tov Asevilli’s son Abraham ben Yom Tov,
as is signed in the colophon to the composition
on Berakhot, (erroneously attributed in the
printed editions to Yom Tov Asevilli). This work
is based heavily on Yom Tov to that tractate,
from what we know of it in references in other
books and from his summary Hilkhot
Berakhot.
Perhaps the son’s composition can even be
conceived as a final edition of that of his father
Yom Tov Asevilli. A peculiarity of Abraham’s
Novellae, when compared to that of his father’s
is that Shelomoh ibn Aderet is practically never
used. The same goes for the unidentified ms. from
Moscow on Kiddushin, which bears only a scant
trace of Shelomoh ibn Aderet. This unusual
source structure may be part of what’s behind
Rabbi Bezalel’s suggestion.
We know of at least three more whole mss.
and sources of Alfasi Gloss-supplements that were
composed by unnamed students of Shelomoh ibn
Aderet. All of these refer to their master as
or .
On page 11 of our fragmentary manuscript
we find a citation of a paraphrase from Shelomoh
ibn Aderet’s Novellae, (one which is also quoted
by name in Yom Tov Asevilli’s Novellae on Talmud).
Shelomoh ibn Aderet is referred to as
. This is precisely the way in which
only Yom Tov Asevilli cites Shelomoh ibn Aderet,
not only here, but everywhere else as well (68
times in his Novellae), because the title
is already occupied by his primary mentor Aaron
ha-Levi Denaclara. The title: is also occupied,
inferring the subject of the composition,
Alfasi, as is found in Asevilli on Hilkhot Alfasi
Ta‘anit.
Once we are relying on indicative nomenclature
here’s another Yom Tov Asevilli exclusive,
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