NEYAR, SEFER HA-:

By: Executive Committee of the Editorial Board., Louis Ginzberg

Anonymous compendium of laws; compiled during the first third of the fourteenth century, after 1319, probably by a Provençal. It consists mainly of extracts from the works of French scholars, although the "Halakot Gedolot" and Maimonides' "Mishneh Torah" were consulted. A work of Baruch b. Ḥayyim b. Menahem of (probably Niort in the department of Deux-Sèvres, France), a pupil of Isaac of Corbeil, served as the basis for the "Neyar." The collection includes many legal decisions and extracts from the tosefta which are otherwise well known, especially those of Simon of Sens. Historical narratives of real interest are also to be found in this work.

The "Neyar" was almost wholly unknown to scholars of the Middle Ages as well as to those of more recent times. Joseph b. Solomon Colon and Azulai probably are the only ones who knew the book; De Rossi owned a manuscript of the "Neyar" (De Rossi MSS., No. 400); another is in the library of the Jews' College in London. The "Neyar ha-Keneset," which Mordecai Finzi, an Italian of the fifteenth century, mentions (Steinschneider, in Michael's "Oẓerot Ḥayyim"), is to be distinguished from the "Sefer ha-Neyar"; it contained lists like those found to-day only in Russian synagogues, in which are noted the memorable days in the calendar—Jewish, Christian, and other.

E. C. L. G.