The most influential introduction to the Kabbalah of the Ari z"l.

Ets Hayyim is one of the most influen💃tial and authoritative introductions to the Lurianic Kabbalah, the complex Kabbalistic system taught by the revered Kabbalist Isaac Luria (1534-1572). It was composed by Luria’s primary disciple Hayyim Vital based on his oral teachings and was subsequently edited by the Polish Kabbalist Meir Poppers (d. 1662). The manuscript contains numerous marginal notes including 🔥some marking variants from the printed version of the work. At the end of the codex is an index.

Sotheby’s is grateful to E🐻lly Moseson for cataloguing this manuscript.

Provenance

Contains the signature of the rabbi and preacher Don Judah Benveniste of Izmir (d. c. 1840). It later came into the possession of the nineteenth-century Jewish philanthropist Ezekiel Reuben (Abu Menashi) who apparently donated it to the Midrash Bet Zilkha, a renowned institution of higher learning that he founded in Baghdad. A note with his name and a statement prohibiting its removal from the Midrash appears at the top of the first page. Other signatures are of Menasseh Mazliah and Hakham Dav🎉id Sassoon. David Solomon Sassoon purchased the manuscript on November 11, 1910, i꧅n Baghdad. (No. 165)

Description

894 pages, plus 2 blank leaves (between pages 736-737 and between ༒pages 796-797.

(8 ¼ x 6 ¼ in,; 210 x 160 mm) He♛brew pagination beginning on page 15. Pages 191-192 (Heb. 151r-v) out of order and belongs between pages 320-321. Copied in an Oriental cursive hand. 

Bibliography

Joseph Avivi, Kabalat ha-Ari. 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi instit𒀰ute, 2008) [Hebrew].

Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and his Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford: Staford University Press, 2003).