The first edition of the earliest extant Hebrew text of systematic speculative thought, including the rare illustrated folding leaf at the rear.

Sefer yetsirah was written anonymously in antiquity, most likely in the Holy Land in the third to sixth centuries CE by a devout Jew with leanings toward mysticism of the speculative and magical, rather than ecstatic, variety. In six brief chapters, the work treats the topics of cosmology (the structure of the universe) and cosmogony (how the universe came into being) via expositions on the ten so-called Sefirot (the first use of this term in Jewish literature) and the twenty-🐟two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which were used to create the world. Over the course of the millennium after it first appeared, it exerted enormous influence on both philosophically- and kabbalistically-inclined Jewish scholars, many of whom wrote commentaries on it.

The present lot is the first edition of this seminal tract, issued in Mantua by the same publisher who only a few years earlier had printed the first edition of the Zohar katan (see lot 31). It begins (ff. 2r-18v) with a long introduction attributed to Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (Rabad; ca. 1125-1198) but actually composed by Rabbi Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi of Spain (early fourteenth century), as well as a shorter introduction (ff. [19r-20r]) by Rabbi Moses ben Isaac Botarel (end of fourteenth-beginning of fifteenth centuries). The body of the work follows (starting on f. 20v) and is surrounded on three sides by the commentaries of Ashkenazi (again attributed to Rabad), Botarel, and Rabbi Azriel ben Menahem of Gerona (early thirteenth century), the last attributed to Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (1194-1270). The volume concludes with a commentary later mistakenly ascribed to Rabbi Saadiah ben Joseph Gaon (882-942), as well as an abbreviated version of the commentary of Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah of Worms (ca. 1165-ca. 1230) (ff. 91r-101v), ♊followed by an alternate version of the text of the book itself (ff. 102r-105r) and statements by the printers (f. 105r-v).

This edition of Sefer yetsirah was printed with an illustrated leaf containing important circular diagrams, meant to be cut out by the book’s owner and attached as volvelles on ff. 8v, 10v, 33r, 77r. In many surviving exemplars, this page is either missing or has been duly processed, with the volvelles mounted in their proper places; the present copy’s leaf, however, remains intact. Another intriguing feature of this lot is evidence of internal censorship: strikethroughs of certain key words in passages on ff. [78r]-79r appear to indicate that one of the book’s owners expurgated the text in order to prevent the uninitiated from engaging in she’elat halom (the practice of seeking knowledge from the Divine while𓃲 dreaming).

Literature

Marvin J. Heller, The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus, vol. 2 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), 542-543.

Chaim and Betzalel Stefansky, Sifrei yesod: sifrei ha-yesod shel ha-sifriyyah ha-yehudit ha-toranit (n.p.: Chaim ജand Betzalel Stefansky, 2019), 96 (no. 333).

Vinograd, Mantua 86