Sefer Berit Menuhah (Covenant of Rest), Abraham ben Isaac of Granada, [Eastern Europe?: late 17th-early 18th centuries]

80 leaves (7 3/4 x 6 1/2 in.; 195 x 165 mm.)

A complete, neat copy of Abraham ben Isaac of Granada’s (thirteenth century) Sefer Berit Menuhah, a compendium of practical Kabbalah focused on various permutations and vocalizations of the Ineffable Name of God. The work was highly esteemed by the kabbalists of Safed, including Moses Cordovero, Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, and Hayyim Vital. The text of the first three leaves was filled in by Obadiah Bezalel of Vilna in 1876 based on a printed edition of the work. The anonymous scribe of the present manuscript claims to have copied some kabbalistic material (ff. 78r-79r) from Naphtali Bacharach’s Emek ha-Melekh (Amsterdam, 1648), a controversial book summarizing Lurianic kabbalistic theology, and based primarily on the works of Vital and Sarug, but the sections quoted here do not appear in any known rescension of Bacharach’s work.