Language:
English
Year of publication:
2019
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Quarterly Review
Angaben zur Quelle:
109,4 (2019) 534-566
Keywords:
Dreznits, Shelomoh,
;
Abraham ben Eliezer,
;
Jewish hagiography
;
Cabala History
;
Cabala
;
Cabala Manuscripts
Abstract:
IN ONE OF HIS LETTERS sent from Safed to Kraców, Shlomo Shlomel Meinstral presents several episodes related to the life and works of the kabbalist Avraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi Berukhim (1515–93). A native of Dresnitz (Strážnice) in Moravia, Shlomo Shlomel immigrated to the Holy Land in 1602—thirty years after Yitsḥak Luria Ashkenazi (1534–72) had passed away and nine years after Avraham ha-Levi's death. From Safed, he sent several epistles to Eastern Europe, where three of them were compiled and published as Shivḥe ha-Ari. An additional document, to which scholars usually refer as Shlomel's fourth epistle, was not integrated into the hagiographical collections on Luria and his fellowship. While we only know of one version that survived in manuscript, it has nevertheless had a significant impact on Jewish communities over the last four centuries. Its popularity is due to the fact that different sections were included in several highly influential books of the early modern period, among them Naftali Hertz Bakhrakh's Emek ha-melekh (Amsterdam, 1648), the first comprehensive Lurianic work that appeared in print and one of the major sources for Lurianic teachings before the printing of Ets ḥayim in 1782; Tsevi Hirsh Kaidanover's musar classic Kav ha-yashar (Frankfurt, 1705–6), which was issued bilingually and therefore reached both a Hebrew and a Yiddish reading public; Zekharia Simner's charm book Sefer zekhirah ve-'inyane segulah (Hamburg, 1709); and the anonymous, allegedly Sabbatian musar work Ḥemdat yamim (Izmir, 1731–32).
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