Peirush Merkevet Yehezkel ve-Sefer Yezirah (Commentary on the Chariot of Ezekiel, and Book of Creation), Jacob ben Jacob ha-Kohen of Castille [Germany: 13th century]

14 leaves (7 3/4 x  5 1/2 in.; 198 x 140 mm), written in brown ink on paper in Ashkenazic semi-cursive and square scripts, seventy-five lines;eight diagrams; extensive marginal notes, usually framed in ink. collation: 1^8, 2⁶. = 14 ff. Lightly browned; several leaves strengthened at gutter, affecting a few words of text inner margins of ff. 1, 14; corners rounded; outer margins trimmed, affecting some letters in marginal notes. Modern blind-tooled morocco.

Daniel Abrams; Asi Farber-Ginat, Perushe ha-Merkavah le-R. Elʻazar mi-Ṿorms u-le-R. Yaʻaḳov ben Yaʻaḳov ha-Kohen, Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2004. Mark Verman, The Books of Contemplation: Medieval Jewish Mystical Sources, Albany:1992; Gershom Scholem, Kitvei Yad be-Kabbalah … bi-Yerushalayim (1930), pp. 208–13.

the earliest ashkenazic text of an important mystical treatise

Jacob Ben Jacob ha-Kohen was a 13th century Spanish kabbalist who spent a great deal of time traveling among the Jewish communities in Spain and Provence, looking for remnants of earlier mystical writings and traditions. Jacob was strongly influenced by the mysticism of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, and maintained contact with the last members of the kabbalist circle of the Sefer ha-Iyyun ("Book of Speculations"). This commentary blends Spanish kabbalism with pietist traditions and is partly based on Eleazar of Worms' Sodei Rezaya and serves to further establish the link between Hasidei Ashkenaz and the kabbalists of Provence. Jacob's authorship of this work is attested to by his pupil Moses of Burgos who cites a number of passages in his master's name.

The first part of the present manuscript (f. 1r-13r, line 9) comprises the complete text of Jacob's commentary to Ezekiel's "Vision of the Divine Chariot." The present manuscript is the earliest (by some 200 years) of only four or five surviving medieval copies of this work in an Ashkenazic script. The second part of the manuscript commences on the same line (f. 13r, line 9) in the same thirteenth century Ashkenazic hand. This second unit is a commentary on the thirty-two paths of wisdom in Sefer Yezirah. This work was a product of the Iyyun circle, originally composed in either Spain or Provence during the 13th century. 

We would like to thank Benjamin Richler and Joseph Avivi for providing information that assisted with the cataloging of this lot.