AARON OF PESARO

AARON OF PESARO (d. 1563), Italian lay scholar and bibliophile. A wealthy businessman of Novellara in northern Italy (not Nicolara, as in some works of reference), he later extended his interests to Gonzaga in the duchy of Mantua, where he was authorized to open a loan-bank in 1557. From a manuscript in his rich library the Mirkevet ha-Mishneh of Isaac Abrabanel was published in Sabionetta in 1551, the first Hebrew book printed there. His only known work is Toledot Aharon, a concordance of biblical passages cited in the Babylonian Talmud, arranged in the order of the Bible. After his death, his three sons, who succeeded him in his business, sent the manuscript of the work to the wandering Hebrew printer, Israel Ẓifroni, who published it at Freiburg in 1583–84, and Venice in 1591–92. jacob sasportas appended to the work references from the Jerusalem Talmud (Toledot Ya'akov, Amsterdam, 1652) while Aaron b. Samuel added references from other rabbinic and kabbalistic works (Beit Aharon, Frankfurt on the Oder, 1690–91). Toledot Aharon is printed in abbreviated form in most editions of the rabbinic Bible. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: E. Castelli, Banchi feneratizi ebraici nel Mantovano (1959), 207; N. Ben-Menahem, Be-Sha'arei Sefer (1967), 17; A. Carlebach, in: Sinai, 62 (1967/68), 75 ff. (Alexander Carlebach)