Sefer Toldot Ya'akov Yosef - Medzhybizh, 1817

Sefer Toldot Ya'akov Yosef - Medzhybizh, 1817
Toldot Ya'akov Yosef. [Medzhybizh, 1817]. Second edition. Approbation of the rabbi of the city of Medzhybizh, R. Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apta, dated Sivan 1816.
Toldot Ya'akov Yosef, one of the earliest Chassidic books, was authored by the kabbalist R. Ya'akov Yosef HaCohen of Polonne, a senior disciple of the Ba'al Shem Tov, who is often mentioned in this book with the words "I have heard from my teacher". In this edition these words are highlighted throughout the volume. Chassidic leaders are especially fond of this book. R. Pinchas of Korets asserted that while not all new books are aligned with the truth, the books of the rabbi of Polonne contain "the Torah of Paradise", and his citations of the Baal Shem Tov have the power to resurrect the dead. The Saba Kaddisha of Shpola would advise placing this holy book under the head of an ill person (LaYesharim Tehilla). Upon his aliya to Eretz Israel, R. Mendel of Vitebsk met R. Pinchas of Korets who told him: "Why did the Polonne Rebbe print 1000 books and set their price at one gold piece per book. He should rather have printed only one book and I would have paid 1000 gold pieces for it…".
Page 1a contains an ownership inscription of R. "Natan David ben Simcha Reischer".
[1], 3, 5-89, [2], 3-59 leaves. 32 cm. Blue paper. Fair condition. Many stains. Worming with damage to text, repaired with paper (more significant damage towards the end of the volume). Wear to the title page and the final pages, repaired with paper. New binding.
Stefansky Chassidut, no. 606. Some copies of the Medzhybizh edition are dated 1780 on the title page. A commonly accepted story is that the Medzhybizh edition of the book printed in 1780 was entirely burned by the Mitnagdim (opponents of chassidut). However, bibliographers reached the conclusion that the book was never printed in Medzhybizh in 1780, but rather that this 1817 edition had two different title pages. The first title page mistakenly stated the year as 1780 (like the first edition printed in Korets), while the second correctly stated the year as 1817. This led to the fictitious account of the book burning. [See: Meir Wunder, "The first decade of Chassidic book Printing", Tagim - A Torah-Science Bibliographic Anthology, I, 1969, pp. 34-35; essay by Yitzchak Yudlov, Areshet 6, p. 110].