Warsaw, Jewish Historical Institute, Ms. 293Zacuto Ilan

Warsaw, Jewish Historical Institute, Ms. 293Zacuto Ilan

Shelfmark:
Ms. 293, Recto
Library of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw, Poland
Material:
paper
Handwriting:
Oriental
Main Language:
Rabbinic Hebrew
Former Shelfmark:
VI 20, Jewish Community of Vienna Library, Vienna, Austria
About the MS:
This seventeenth-century witness, formerly preserved in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, served as the master copy of Ḥayyim Vital’s Oẓrot Ḥayyim. It is a document of exceptional historical significance, as it contains the autograph marginalia and diagrams of R. Moses Zacuto (the RaMaZ). In an important note, Zacuto argues that several schematic arrays of the sefirotic configuration rejected by Moses Cordovero in his Pardes Rimonim were, in fact, authentic visualizations of specific parẓufim—most notably Arikh Anpin—of which Cordovero was unaware. To substantiate this transvaluation of classical forms, Zacuto appended his own ilan of Arikh Anpin to the manuscript. This witness became the basis for Zacuto’s effort to distribute Oẓrot Ḥayyim, a project that eventually produced over eighty copies. Although the physical manuscript was stolen from the Institute several decades ago, its contents remain accessible via microfilm.
Colophon:
On the Title Page: "שנת ה'ש'ק'ט', מכתיבת ידי הצעיר רפאל מורנו יצ"ו"
Type:
Zacuto, Lurianic
Research Literature:
  • Yosef Avivi, Kabbalat ha-Ari (Jerusalem: 2008), volume 2, 727–728. J. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), 381–382. Arthur Zacharias Schwarz, Die hebraeischen Handschriften in Oesterreich (Leipzig: 1931), number 271.
NLI Record:
NLI Record

Edition

Edited by:
Boaz Taub (Editor)
Publisher:
The Ilanot Project, University of Haifa; University of Göttingen
Publication date:
2025-02-11
Funding:
Volkswagen Stiftung Niedersächsisches Vorab - Research Cooperation Lower Saxony – Israel ‏ Maps of God - Building a Portal to Visual Kabbalah (Digital Humanities); The Israel Science Foundation‏ No. 1568/18 (Art, Kabbalah, and Cultural Capital: The Making and Meaning of a Renaissance Cosmographic Masterpiece)
License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 This resource is published under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.