(RaMa”K). Ohr Ne’erav [treatise on the importance of Kabbalah]

CORDOVERO, MOSHE

Lodi, (Lombardy, Italy)

1585

Manuscript in Hebrew, written in an Aschkenazic cursive hand, on paper. Censors’ signatures on first leaf and again on f. 32b]. An illustration of the Sefiroth appears on f. 23b.

A neat manuscript of a classic Kabbalistic text written two years before the appearance of the first printed edition (Venice, 1587). There are slight variations to the printed version, including a table of contents that is only found in the present manuscript. Leader of the mystical school of 16th-century Safed, R. Moshe Cordovero (1522–70) was a central figure in the historical development of the Kabbalah to which his encyclopedic works were a vital element. Ohr Ne’erav is a justification of and insistence upon the importance of Kabbalistic study and is an introduction to the mystical methods explicated in the author’s earlier Pardes Rimonim.