ABSTRACT
In 1627 an arithmetic book in Hebrew, written by the mathematician-astronomer Menahem Zion (Emanuel) Porto Kohen Rappa, was published in Venice: Sefer Over la-Soher, meaning “Book Passing to the Merchant” or “A book on agreed and legal means of payment”. Printing books in Hebrew in northern Italy, and in Venice in particular, in those times was not unusual. Beginning in the middle of the 15th century, many Hebrew printing houses were established in Italy in various places, and there were even Christian-owned printing houses that printed books in Hebrew. However, the number of books in Hebrew that dealt with mathematics was minimal (a few percent).
Menachem Zion’s book is the first arithmetic book printed in Italy and the second overall. He was preceded only by Eliyahu Mizrahi’s books which were printed in Constantinople and Basel at the beginning of the 16th century.
This paper will present: the author’s goals for writing the book, its mathematical content, its sources, and comparisons with other texts on the same subject in Hebrew and other languages. Moreover, this is an attempt to answer the question of why Hebrew arithmetic books were so rare in this period while describing the cultural environment of the Jews of Northern Italy (characteristics of studies in Jewish society at different ages, the place of mathematics studies among the other subjects studied, important figures in the Jewish community in Northern Italy during this period, etc.).
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