17 August 2018

A year or two ago we moved from Hills Road, Homerton College to the other side of the railway line, to the small industrial estate named Restwell House, where our books found a space next to Belfast Bed Superstore, St Barnabas Press, Jack's Gelato, Deliveroo kitchens and the home of Steak and Honour burger vans (just past the Cambridge Computer Museum) We did bring some of the green spirit from our previous location, but it will take a few years until we complete the transformation of this industrial site into a park.

Three or four years since our move here, it is high time indeed to have a party. Tables and chairs will come out into the parking lot, and Plurabelle Books requests the pleasure of your company on 17 August 2018 after 6 pm.

Almost five years at our new location, the bookseller is waiting for his guests. The Victorian china will be unwrapped, and with the help of our local suppliers we shall put on a little spread. Come and have a look how we do book recycling and precision shelving, because Plurabelle is the better better better better world books for all you librarians with surplus stock. And for those who like to adopt a book or two, our book adoption center is open and always looking for new book parents.

If you arrive with a bicycle, the recommended path is taking the bike and pedestrian bridge from the Beehive Centre over the railway line: Then double back on yourself through two traffic lights and past Edmundsons Electricals, Topps Tiles and Reza's Tiles, down Coldhams Road.

If you plan to arrive with a car, be aware that our tables are occupying some of the parking lot and space to park may be limited. We are in the process of arranging additional car parking at the Cambridge Snooker Center further down the road.

Yes, there will be food. And there will be people, strangers mostly, but we also have plenty bookish corners where you can just commune with old books, quietly. A presto!

RSVP books@plurabelle.co.uk. Rain cancels. Analphabets, unicyclists and children are welcome. Stock disposal authorities especially welcome. Donald Brexit closure celebration included (as applicable)

Sigmund Freud, Otto Pfister, Rudolph Brandt

"John Nomland Booksellers" - the plural of the sales personnel is plain exquisite. And fake. It shuts you up nicely right away. Booksellers who?  The hidden beauty of "booksellers" is "booksseller" - sells many books. Many books indeed. As previously reported, "John Nomland Booksellers" placed his poetry safely with Hugh Miller in 1977. His Spanish material is awaiting dispersal now. A further book "density" from his warehouse, a book knot perhaps, goes back to Otto Pfister, an early Swiss psychoanalyst. Or Rudolph Brandt, a student who is known as the author of The Origins of Psychoanalysis, A Propaedeutics, a MA dissertation from Ottawa dated 1955.

The beauty of such book knots is the history embedded in their compilation. Rarely do you have the 13 linear feet of archival material to tell the story how the collection has come together. Once the dispersal starts, all the evidence that occurs when books are together disappears.

Lets see what we got:

The Otto Pfister Row

This is the Otto Pfister Row. Uniform bindings, library strength binding. Let's get a bit closer:

Reprints. The volume contains a collection of offprints, "Separata". Some authorial corrections and notes are present. But the word on the spine is not a word that is found on these titles. They may be called Separata, but the spine lettering "Reprints" indicates the work of a English speaking binding workshop, or an intended audience of that tongue. 

The binder did splendid work. He has the umlaut for Schönheit, he spells Psychanalyse, just as it must be in the early days of Freud, and he places the quotations marks properly in the German way. But the missing Umlaut in Religiosität again indicates a bookbinder working outside of Pfister's Switzerland.

On the other hand, the books do clearly have an authorial provenance. 

Another copy is inscribed "Leihexemplar.  O. Pfister, Pfr" [Pfarrer], designating it  for the use of friends or visitors who may want to borrow the author's work.

Other traces found among these books are biographical: Pfister's academic diploma from 1897 and the original certificate for his membership in the Verein für Psychatrie und Neurologie in Wien, issued in 1921, was also inserted among the books. 

Pfister is mostly known for the correspondence with Freud which has been published in 1963. The copy in our collection is inscribed "Rudy Brandt" and contains a few annotations in ink, including some dates in ink between printed letters that may indicate letters that have not been not published.

Included in the lot were also multiple photocopies of the original of the first letter by Freud to Pfister, dated 1901. At the bottom of the letter a note in ink has been added in an aged and somewhat insecure hand: "Geht mit wärmsten Grüssen als Andenken an Herrn Prof Dr Rudolf Brandt in Ottawa, Canada - Zürich den 16 Nov 1955, Dr Oskar Pfister, Pfarrer" - "With heartfelt greetings a memento for Professor Dr Rudolf Brandt."

Pfister passes on Freud, scan from photocopy

The original letter by Freud was passed on to Brandt. Pfister valued the collection of letters greatly, in the correspondence with Freud he mentions that for a long period the box which contained all these letters was presumed lost or stolen, and his great joy when it was found again (31/7/1930). The introduction to the volume of letters, edited by Heinrich Meng, mentions the "sehr anregende Freundschaft mit dem heute in Los Angeles lebenden Professor R J Brandt, der die Publikation der Briefe, - auch für Amerika, sehr begrüsst."

The "sehr anregende Freundschaft" involved the present of a Freud letter, the collection of Pfister books which were then uniformly bound by Brandt in North America, and the academic certificates. Pfister died in 1956, 83 years old. The friendship continued with his widow Martha, and we have a letter from her dated 1963, addressed to Brandt in Los Angeles, at the Linde Medical Center.

Brandt is also listed as a member of the Society for Projective Techniques and Research in 1951 and 1954.

Books, what to do with them? I guess Brandt had the idea donate Pfister's books to a library, and proceeded to have them bound to library standards. Apparently he never got around to complete this intention. So they fell into the hands of booksellers, Nomland etc, who make it their mission to find a home for them. Perhaps this time around a safe place will be found for this collection.

John Nomland sold his modern poetry collection to Hugh Miller in 1977. The lot was said to comprise of 30.000 titles. It was packed in 652 boxes and was duly delivered to the premises in New Haven Ct. Sixty boxes were found dented upon arrival, but no damage to report. John Nomland was a librarian and bookseller, also the son and brother of Kemper Nomland, modernist architect father and son team. In his correspondence, safely housed at special collections at UCLA, he presents himself as a weekend bookseller and a weekday librarian for the Los Angeles City College, today known as Los Angeles Community College.

Librarianship may have been in crisis there. There were disputes if the Encyclopedia Britannica would be appropriate for the library, or if their students would better be served by the less demanding World Encyclopedia. Somehow this inner city college library gave its librarian enough time to venture into bookselling. Big time.

The bookseller's archive at UCLA  is substantial: 26 boxes (13 linear ft.) of archival material. About his work for the library we know very little. Just imagine the conflicts of interest that are bound to occur when librarian and bookseller is the same person. Imagine you deal with a publisher in your official capacity, and then you add a PS in your private capacity. That earns you a great discount right from the start. Imagine you want to sell to another library and you can do so with colleague and librarianship credentials. No end of temptations, it seems. Well, it's nice if you can get it.

Nomland did have some issues. He disliked the smell of deceit. Some UK publishers would issue lists with prices in £ and $. Currency rates being what they are, he was keen to buy in £, even if he resided in Los Angeles, and that led to some cancellations and returns, if UK publishers would not play ball. The correspondence include disputes about discounts, anger about rogue booksellers taking advantage of him, and the memorable "I guess I just had my second unfortunate experience with you," addressed to a colleague, George Milkey - "but I do not intend to be victimized." Rogues all over!

 "I guess I just had my second unfortunate experience with you..."

Our Nomland also wrote a book on the Teatro Mexicano Contemporáneo: 1900 - 1950 (1967). It was based on his 1957 UCLA dissertation, which was written in English. He was travelling often across the California border for his book expeditions. Here is one of his Mexican additions.

Buying Books in Mexico City

His business letterhead and the library letterhead alternate in the archive, but the matter is always the commerce of printed matter:

In 1977 Hugh Miller took on the entire collection of his poetry and small press books. Adding up the books must have been quite a challenge, as we can see from the calculations here.

29,901 books counted

Shortly afterwards, Hugh Miller announced his haul in the American Bookman

But what happened to the rest of his collection? A colleague and friend reports that his estate was well ordered, after his death in 1988. The widow apparently had detailed instructions about what each book was worth. My friend was unable to buy from the front rooms with shelves of high expectations. So he asked to see the garden shed. There he found a collection of Spanish language material, mostly poetry, but also political and local history. He got that lot and sold some of it in Los Angeles. I think he was a little intimidated by the material, so he put it into the side room, closed the door, and showed it only to the occasional visitor. Occasionally.

Then came Rexford Elegant Appartments LLC. His bookstore faced closure because the shop premises are being developed. I helped him with this Wunderkammer, and the Spanish language material is now available at this link.

Language Reform: ffep sl mrkd VG+ ex lib

Mail order bookselling, just to remind us, used to be a paper-based business. Every month or two you would crank out a list of books, copy it, mimeograph it on the Gestetner and send it out to your band of trusted clients which made up your mailing list.

That kind of paper business has its own economy: There was the question of postage: How many pages can you squeeze into this envelope and still get away with the lower postage rate. Did you weigh the staple, and did you allow for the weight of the stamp itself? Most importantly: How many books can you get onto one page without insulting the eyes of your buyers?

The solution, over many years, was abbreviations. Some catalogues would explain them, most would presume you knew what they were talking about. There was VG for “very good”, 4to for a larger format, and pb for a paperback. Ex lib would denote a book which has served time in a library, and “good”, oh dear, “good” would designate a book that was mostly for reading only.

A whole culture of abbreviations grew around the book trade. This secret language gave us some professional status, and it also gave the collector a certain sense of being on the inside. The author of Driff's Guide to all the Secondhand & Antiquarian Bookshops in Britain caught the importance (and the absurdity) of abbreviating when he coined lots of new abbreviations for his guide to bookshops: BSN = Bibliographically subnormal, ETGOW = Easy to get on with, FARTS = Follows you around recommending the stock, GOB =Grand old bore, KEENON = Keen on stocking if they could get it, etc.

Then the price for bandwidth went down and the price for postage went up, and bookselling migrated to the net. Lo and behold, the economy of paper, which once made abbreviations necessary, fell away. But the book trade took a long time to notice this. Today, Google carries the descriptions of our books into the farthest corners of the web. We can no longer count on the insider knowledge of the band of collectors who know the lingo. We need to be understood even by the person who has never before bought a book. Language Reform!

Updating the language of our book descriptions is now almost completed.  tp, sl, sm, pb, hb, VG, ex lib, 4to, dj, ed, engr, eps, fep, ffep and such are on their way out. We put the cards on the table and call our books no longer “ex lib”, but advertise them as “from a Cambridge college library”. It was surely an interesting experience to go through more than 50.000 records and recognize the various dialects our helpers have used in the past. Luckily, there was some consistency in the akwardnesses of wording and abbreviating. Once you understood the linguistic patterns, search and replace would run its magic.

Hopefully, this has produced more transparent descriptions for our books. It does not call for serious prose when you try to make the buyer aware of the benefits and shortcomings of a certain book, but there are some moments of hilarity and insight, as when the shortcomings of a book are defined as “not detracting from the enjoyment of the book” or when our cataloguer would describe the precise location of an ink stamp in the book. Plurabelle marches forward into the bright light of unabbreviated bookselling.

Shelf Conversations: Error. Crises.

It's the appropriate place for an error, one would think. They give you something to erase the pencil marks. Much easier. The lessons continue later and later. They don't give you anything though. The classes are ever more difficult to comprehend.

The Coup says nothing, observing the passing day.

The enthusiasm of his neighbour is grating ever so slightly.

"Would you like to borrow an eraser?" asks the Errors in School.

After an awkward silence comes the rather abrupt reply.

"Should I make a mistake I will be sure to let you know."

.

Shelf Conversations: Addiction and a Certain British Upper Lip

"The powder was dissolved in alcohol." the Eater explained. "All relatively dismal in hindsight."

"Quite" came the sharp reply from the left. "Would you excuse me I'm trying to rest my eyes. That time of day you see."

The Eater continued "Yes, that time of day indeed. Everybody has a vice, Old Chap."

A quick response again "Rest is not a vice. You cannot dissolve it in anything."

It Isn't done.

Shelf Conversations: Economics and Eden

"Not much space here I'm afraid." whispered Eden "What is it that you do exactly?"

"I balance" the Economics bellowed. "And yourself?"

Eden paused and had to think.

"Something nice, maybe, I'm on my way somewhere" Eden beamed.

"You seem to be relatively still, do you know where you're going?" Economics asked furrowing and feigning.

"Somewhere." replied Eden. "Somewhere."

Shelf Conversations: Dispute and Invention

A draft, design, an independent throne. Where did the modern start? Has this already been done once before. One really couldn't tell.

Modern Rome exclaimed "The aqueduct! The aqueduct!"

"And water makes the Modern capable" replied the Heaps "We know the aqueduct well enough."

Shelf Conversation: Simple Things and Hope

The Peripheral in red gazed longingly at his neighbour. 

"Some simple things becoming precious." he smiled. "Soon enough one might wonder at your name"

Utopia replied."The simple things, the complexity, and everything in between. A fiction and yet a hope. My name is everywhere."

Shelf Conversation: Thermodynamic Fiction

Liaisons leaned away. His red clothed friend remained upright and alert.

"It's really rather hot here. I'm not sure that they should have sat us here." A sigh. "I may asked the conductor if I might move."

Shelf Conversation: Difficulties and Device

Two pressed together by relativity and religion. One on the left, reserved and waiting for the other to speak first. The other to the right so confident and well rehearsed. A rather fitting match then.

Device begins, quickly offering a thought about the steady weather and assistance should the Faculties feel a chill.

Faculties is not one for words today and with a sigh contends "The temperature is fine enough, I'm not sure that you have a blanket to offer."

Shelf Conversation: The Language in Bloom

Whispering, remembering a quiet path. Two friends might walk and share a word or two. Further down the path, a nettle maybe catching at the skin. The pain is just enough to demonstrate the consequence of a daydream, wandering, not watching where you tread. Wild justice for the petals that we tread beneath or feet.

"The buzzing bee, the breeze, I'm sure they find humour in each other and speak when human steps depart." Said the left.

"The breeze will take a summer hat and send it tumbling ahead. Then the bees and flowers laugh at these strange visitors." Said the right.

Shelf Conversation: Nietzsche and Baudelaire

A quiet conversation about decadence.The Idols and the Le Spleen. There is much to agree upon here.  The fine fabric of Paris is a veil, the struggle to identify a truth and somewhere in our pages we find each other. And yet the philosopher is not gentle in his persuasion. 

"A cold sarcasm against beautiful words", said the Nietzsche to the left. 

"The faint notes of an exquisite taste" said Baudelaire to the right, gazing across the aisle.

Yet each have enough consideration for humanity to lend a few words.

Blumfield Township Library

Blumfield, our Blumfield, the one with the Township Library, is located in Michigan. It is not to be confused with Bloomfield where my Australian cousin Barbara lives, who is just over for a short visit from her Northern Queensland Bloomfield, not too far from Cooktown, her Bloomfield having two "O"s and crocodiles and is, so she tells us, generally wet and warm and tropical. But the confusing similarity of Blum and Bloom made our find in Panorama City so exciting and so intriguing.

Blumfield Township (Michigan) was a small community of German emigrants who left their fatherland after the failure of the March Revolution in 1848. They have been called the Forty-Eighters and some say they had a certain influence on the development of the American Civil war and the Anti-Slavery movement.

"Bibliothek des Township Blumfield / Dieses Buch ist an den Director des Schul districts zurueckzuliefern am letzten Samstag eines jeden Monats. Der Empfaenger ist verantwortlich fuer jeden dem Buche zugefuegten Schaden waehrend er es in seinem besitze hat." 

Some Forty-Eighters made Blumfield their new home. Books furnish a home, libraries furnish a community. Those who founded a township in Michigan and gave it a German name, they would not leave their books behind. Because a community without a library is nothing, and a German community without German books is even less. The director of the school district serves as librarian, this makes it comparable to a school library. The books are intended to educate their children. They brought them to what was to become Blumfield and created a library. Today, nothing is left of this library except a few books which display this bookplate. A pretty strict regime of care and return transpires from the wording:

Library of the Township Blumfield / This book is to be returned to the director of the school district on the last Saturday of each month. The recipient is responsible for any damage done to the book while it is in his possession.

The German wording (Spechen Sie deutsch?) produces some anxiety, because the language already shows clear traces of Englification, it is already a little rusty and musty, not least because the printer works without Umlaute, there is talk of district and Township. On the other hand, the bookbinder in Detroit, who attaches his own label to the inside back cover, prints some English that has, to my ear, a distinct German ring: Bookbindery == Buchbinderei. (Buchbinder Saenger (Sanger) is listed in Detroit address books for 1855 and 1876)

Bookbindery by Ernst C Saenger, No 120 Fort Street, between Antoine and Hasting Str. All Orders Prompty Executed 

Library labels and bookbinder tickets are sweet little fellows. I was drawn to this book by the bright yellow labels. I considered removing them from this book and insert them into an album of similar ephemera. But a closer look taught me better: This book and its labels belong together and tell a story of emigration, of political and philosophical culture, of radical education and "bookbindery" in Michigan around 1860. In its pages the book provides a famous academic polemic about Christianity and science. Köhlerglaube und Wissenschaft. Eine Streitschrift gegen Hofrath Rudolph Wagner in Göttingen. Carl Vogt, scientists and politician who engaged with Marx and Darwin, presents in its pages a radical materialist vision, according to which the brain excretes thoughts in much the same way in which the kidneys excrete urine. You would be hard pressed to find a book more incompatible with the tradition of Christian education decorated with library marking which points to a scholastic use. Materialist double strength poison approaching a school library somewhere in rural Michigan, that seems pretty remarkable. The book, with all its labels, which document its travels and the hopes which were placed in it a long time ago, is for sale on our website and offers a rare opportunity to hold in your hands the original object that once brought German radical thinking to the shores of Lake Huron and further afield.

Farewell E-Reader

A consideration appeared in the Cambridge Evening News this week. Falling sales of the E-Reader, rising sales of the book. We were asked our thoughts and gladly answered.

Bicycles and Gramophones

Sometimes over the weekend Laura meets one of those shellac records, those stiff fellows which need a proper gramophone to do their thing. And some of these come properly dressed in an old printed sleeve. And sometimes this sleeve becomes a source of puzzlement and wonder.

See what she found last month: Two distributors of records in the Leeds area who also advertise their bicycle business.

The Cycle Shop. Proprietor G Whiteley, Agent for Gilbert Gramophones. All the latest Records in Stock. Pedestal Gramophones. Table Grands. Motor Cycles, Cycles, Oils Accessories, Camping Outfits, Sports Good, Etc. 8 Well Street, Farsley, Leeds.

Arthur Marshall, Broadcast, Radio, Winner, Regal, Columbia, Zonophone, Parlophone, and Piccadilly Records. Electrical Engineers and Contractor. Gramophone and Cycle Dealer. 240, Town Street, Bramley, Leeds.


It seemed very strange to us that records and bicycles should get so close. Are these not very different kettles of fish? How come that the borderlines in the commercial universe are drawn so strangely?

The Gramophone Department of Exeter Cycle Works (www.peterice.com/exeter_nostalgia.htm)

Well, both are rotary objects, somehow. Could that be the reason?

After a little research it appears that the association of bicycles and gramophones is quite characteristic for the structure of the retail trade in advanced technologies around 1920. For instance, in 1910 Carlton Service issued a series of publications to assist the shopkeeper in advertising his business. One of these was entitled: Twelve Months Advertising for a Cycle-Dealer, including Gramophones, Baby Carriages, etc.

A little earlier, H G Wells in "The War in the Air" presents the fictional firm of Grubb & Smallways with a small fleet of bikes for hire, acting as agents for an obscure bicycle manufacturer, also offering repairs, a line of cheap gramophones, and a few musical boxes. In 1916, the US Commerce Report includes an inquiry from "a man in Siberia" interested to receive offers of bicycles, typewriters, gramophones, etc. And on 16 March 1921, Maurice Goldberg (27), a Gramophone & Cycle Dealer and the son of Abraham Goldberg, Cycle Dealer, marries the daughter of Rabbi Jacob Server at Brentnall Street Synagogue in Middlesbrough. Thank you Mr Google!

Norman Field's research into record labels in the period provides excellent examples for this close association of two rotary technologies. He documents how the Raleigh Cycle Co. of Nottingham acts as record publisher, issuing a record under their own imprint: Harry Fay renders, yes, A Cyclists Song. I should look forward to hearing this on Youtube...

Harry Fay, A Cyclist's Song

The best explanation for the surprising association of bicycles and gramophones comes via Norman Field from Frank Andrews, for whom Curry's Records "illustrate a largely forgotten aspect of the early British Gramophone Trade: viz., the 'Gramophone and Bicycle Shop'. They made excellent partners, for both trades were very seasonable. Those who could afford to do so, purchased bicycles in the summer, and phonographs, gramophones and records in the winter months." Curry's was probably the first 'chain' of these combined retail shops; they already had "Depots in Many Towns" as early as 1910. A century later, the nationwide chain of Curry's Discount Warehouses stand in the forefront, as the "UK's Foremost Electrical Retailer" is their byline.

Curry's Cycle Co and Curry's Gramophone Records as one. (http://www.normanfield.com/labelsr.htm)

But why would the bookseller worry? Perhaps the ease which which two new-fangled technologies shared the same showroom strikes us as we worry about the structure of the retail trade for a declining technology: books. As we worry about declining sales of real books, we at least take pleasure in understanding how tradespeople a hundred years ago dealt with their fickle public.

Rabbinic Bible

Rabbinic Bible or Mikraot Gedolot : These are the "Great Scriptures" of the Jewish religion, published together in a uniform format for the first time in early 16th century. Based on the first edition by Ben Hayyim, published by Bomberg in Venice in 1525, there have been a number of improved or enlarged editions through the ages. The nineteenth century saw one major project from Warsaw, where Yoel Levenzohn produced an edition in 12 Volumes between 1860 and 1866. (Wikipedia)

Our set is uniformly bound in 5 large and very nicely bound volumes. The binding is in excellent condition, somewhat overspecified perhaps, especially when compared with the more humble quality of paper and printing, produced in Poland, under difficult circumstances no doubt. The set proudly displays the arms of Cambridge University to front and spine.

Each volume also has a donation bookplate, which states that the set has been given, more than 100 years ago, to a Cambridge college by the widow of John Sharpe. John Sharpe was a fellow of the college, also Rector of Gissing, a small village in Norfolk, and a contributor to the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Christian Antiquities and the Dictionary of Christian Biography.

Apart from these mild library traces (also a blind-stamp to the endpaper, see below), the work has apparently never been used and is in superb condition.

Below are some views of the varied typography.

Blind-stamp to endpaper

Yes, we are looking for a new home for this set. The international book-trade does not seem to offer this edition at the moment, except for a single odd volume, in a very poor state, priced at £450 / $700. The title is very rare in the trade. Ingrid Oey of Antiquariaat Rashi in Amsterdam wrote to us that she never had this edition in stock. The high quality of our binding is also indicative of the rarity of the title. Because of this rarity, a reprint was published in Jerusalem In 1960. There are no auction records for the original edition, but the single volume currently for sale, with all its faults, offers some guidance. We can find approx 30 copies in US libraries, only one in Germany (StaBi), the Polish National Library only seems to hold a part volume.
Disclaimer: We are not in a position to read Hebrew text or to offer a bibliographical collation for this title. One library catalogue mentions defects like duplicate and missing pages. Our pricing shall try to account for this possibility. Our full listing is here.

The Warsaw Rabbinic Bible
The latest Biblia Rabbinica, with thirty-two commentaries, is that published at Warsaw by Levensohn (1860–68, 12 vols., small fol.). It contains, besides the original Hebrew, the Targums Onḳelos and Yerushalmi on the Pentateuch, the Targum Jonathan on the Prophets, and Targums to the Hagiographa, including the Targum Sheni on Esther. Of commentaries it contains that of Rashi on the whole Bible; Aaron Pesaro's "Toledot Aharon"; Asheri's commentary and Norzi's notes on the Bible; Ibn Ezra on the Pentateuch, the Five Megillot, the Minor Prophets, the Psalms, Job, and Daniel; Moses Ḳimḥi on the Proverbs; Naḥmanides on the Pentateuch; Obadiah Sforno on the Pentateuch, the Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes; Elijah Wilna on the Pentateuch, Joshua, Isaiah, and Ezekiel; S. E. Lenczyz and S. Edels on the Pentateuch; J. H. Altschuler on the Prophets and Hagiographa; David Ḳimḥi on the Later Prophets; Levi ben Gershon on Joshua, Kings, Proverbs, and Job; Isaiah di Trani on Judges and Samuel; S. Oceda on Ruth and Lamentations; Eliezer ben Elijah Ashkenazi on Esther; Saadia on Daniel. It also contains the Masorah Magna and Parva, tracts on the vowels and accents, the various readings of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, and the introduction of Jacob ben Ḥayyim of Tunis. (Wikipedia)