Rabbi Moshe ibn Habib (1654-1696) was born in Thessalonika, his father Shlomo ibn Habib being from a prominent Spanish-Jewish family who were expelled from Spain as a result of the Alhambra Decree. At the age of 15 he travelled to Jerusalem to study and was noted for his talent, knowledge of the Torah and his wisdom. He specialised in Jewish marital law and agunot (women who wouldn't be granted a divorce from their husbands) and wrote two books on the subject, the most famous of which is offered here. A Responsa book he wrote was famously lost at sea and only parts of it were published.

Moshe ibn Habib died young, and his books were not published during his lifetime, but were kept as manuscripts until his grandson Rabbi Yaakov Culi edited and published them in Constantinople, as there were no Hebrew printers in the Holy Land at the time.

Get Pashut [A Simple Divorce] deals with halachot gitin [religious divorce laws] considered to be a complicated and touchy subject in Jewish religion. According to Jewish law a woman cannot be divorced, unless granted a divorce by her husband. A husband who leaves his wife or disappears without granting her a divorce leaves her aguna, a state which leaves her unable to remarry. The word originates in the Hebrew word ogen, meaning anchor, and was first used in this context in the Book of Ruth to describe a woman that could not remarry.

First edition; 4to (29 x 20.5 cm); contemporary calf-backed marbled boards, with title in gilt to spine label; some marginal worming and restoration to first and last leaves, occasional browning and staining; ownership inscription in Hebrew to title; [2], 143 ll.

Vinograd, (Const.) 403; Yaari 296, p.167; Stefansky, (Sifrei Yesod) 198.