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Azulay, Abraham ben Mordecai ['Azulay, 'Avraham ben Mordekay] ca.1570-1643; Meshulam, Zalman ben Avraham Barukh : SEFER HESED LE-AVRAHAM: SAPIR GIZRATO

Be-'Amsterdam: Ba-bayit uva-defus ... s'el ... 'Imanu'el 'Ati'as ben ... Yosef 'Ati'as, 1685

1st edition. Late 18th Century paper covered boards, 8vo, [5] + 65 + 28 leaves. In Hebrew. Vinograd Amsterdam 517; Fuks (HTN) II 399; StCB 4186,3. Mayer Sulzberger’s copy with his small bookplate at rear and perhaps parent's two small stamps (“S.S.”) on title page. Abraham ben Mordecai Azulai (c. 1570–1643) “was a Kabbalistic author and commentator born in Fez, Morocco. In 1599 he moved to Ottoman Palestine and settled in Hebron. In Hebron, Azulai wrote a commentary on the Zohar under the title Kiryat Arba [City of Arba (in Hebrew four); Gen. xxiii.2]. The plague of 1619 drove him from his new home, and while in Gaza, where he found refuge, he wrote his Kabalistic work Chesed le-Abraham (Mercy to Abraham; Book of Micah vii.20). It was published after the author's death by Meshullam Zalman ben Abraham Berak of Gorice, in Amsterdam, 1685. The work is a treatise with an introduction, ? ‘Abn Hashtiah’ (The Cornerstone; see Talmud Yoma 53b), and is divided into seven ‘fountains’ (Book of Zechariah iii.9), each fountain being subdivided into a number of ‘streams.’ A specimen of the work Chesed Le-Avraham, taken from the fifth fountain, twenty-fourth stream, p. 57d, of the Amsterdam edition: On the mystery of Gilgul (reincarnation) and its details: Know that God will not subject the soul of the wicked to more than three migrations; for it is written, ‘Lo, all these things doth God work twice, yea thrice, with a man’ (Job xxxiii. 29). Which means, He makes him appear twice and thrice in a human incarnation; but the fourth time he is incarnated as a clean animal. And when a man offers a sacrifice, God will, by miraculous intervention, make him select an animal that is an incarnation of a human being. Then will the sacrifice be doubly profitable: to the one that offers it and to the soul imprisoned in the brute. For with the smoke of the sacrifice the soul ascends heavenward and attains its original purity. Thus is explained the mystery involved in the words, ‘O Lord, thou preservest man and beast’ (Psalms xxxvi.7 [R. V. 6]). A popular story about Rabbi Azulai is that of how he retrieved the sultan's sword. When the Ottoman sultan visited Hebron, his precious sword fell into the Cave of Machpela. Anyone sent down to retrieve it disappeared. Only Rabbi Azulai was able to descend into the cave and retrieve the sword. He died in Hebron on November 6, 1643 and is buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Hebron” (Wikipedia). SUBJECT(S): Cabala -- Early works to 1800. Kabbale -- Ouvrages avant 1800. OCLC: 29582374. OCLC lists10 copies worldwide, only four in the US (Harvard, JTS, NYPL, Columbia). Brandeis also appears to hold a copy. Top half-inch of title page removed, with slight loss at top of printer's device design but no text loss. Jewish library bookplate and stamps on blank endpapers. Slight toning to paper as expected, period pen notations to title page. Very Good Condition, an attractive copy in early binding, housed in basic protective box (rab-67-4)

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