Etz ha-Da'at Tov (The Good Tree of Knowledge) Haim Vital, Holograph manuscript: [Safed: ca. 1563]

1 leaf (8 1/4 x 6 in.; 210 x 155 mm). Written in brown ink on paper in a sixteenth century Sephardic semi-cursive script. Minor tears, losses due to biting ink, and a single marginal wormtrack affect a few letters. Mylar sleeve.

A rare holograph manuscript of Hayyim Vital, renowned disseminator of Lurianic Kabbalah.

Hayyim Vital (1542–1620), was born in Safed in the Land of Israel. In 1564 he began to study Kabbalah, according to the system of Moses Cordovero. After Isaac Luria's arrival in Safed, Vital became his principal disciple, studying under him for nearly two years until Luria's death in the summer of 1572. Vital’s most enduring accomplishment was his subsequent arrangement of Luria's teachings in written form, often accompanied by his own elaborations, a task which took him some twenty years.

Before his association with Luria, however, Vital had undertaken an important work, Sefer Etz ha-Da'at which demonstrated his affinity towards and command of Cordovero's teachings. Only parts of this work which included commentaries on most of the books of the Bible, remain extant . Vital’s methodology was organized under the rubric Pardes (literally: “orchard,” but actually an acronym formed by the initial letters of the four traditional ways of explicating sacred texts: (peshat, "the literal meaning"; remez, "the allegorical meaning"; derash, the exegetical meaning,” and sod, “the mystical or esoteric meaning.”) Despite conflicting internal references, most scholars agree that Vital composed the bulk of this work before the age of twenty.

It had long been believed that only chapters 2 and 6 of this work were preserved in Vital’s own hand, and it was from these fragments that the work was published. (in the collection of Rabbi Alter of Gur [MS # 185] and in a second part preserved in the kabbalistic yeshivah Bet-El). In approximately 2006 a previously unknown manuscript was discovered in a private collection. In order to offset the expense of the manuscript and to help facilitate the costs of publication of the previously unknown words of Hayyim Vital, several pages, including the present lot, were were sold privately.

This is the first time a page in the hand of Hayyim Vital has been sold at auction.

LITERATURE:
Etz ha-Da'at Tov le-Rabeinu Hayyim Vital, Jerusalem: Netanel Loew: 2008. pp. 206-210.