Etz ha-Da'at Tov (The Good Tree of Knowledge) Haim Vital, Autograph manuscript [Safed: ca. 1570-74], bound with Sefer Zevah Pesah (Haggadah), with commentary by Don Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel, Venice: Marco Antonio Guistiniani, 1545

Etz ha-Da'at Tov: 2 folios (8 x 6 in.; 204 x 155 mm). Written in brown ink on paper in the distinctive sixteenth century Sephardic semi-cursive script of Rabbi Hayyim Vital, 42-44 lines to a page. Early foliation in Hebrew letters (ff.275-6) and running titles in lighter, later ink. A single line of text on f. 276v written in distinctive seventeenth century Sephardic semi-cursive script of Rabbi Samuel Vital.  BOUND WITH Sefer Zevah Pesah: 67 leaves (8 x 5 7/8 in.; 202 x 150 mm). collation: 1-16⁴, 17³=67 leaves. Woodcut vignette on title; owners' signatures on title page; marginal soiling and occasional spotting; final quarter of book with worm track at lower gutter margin, last few leaves mended. Sixteenth-century limp vellum, blind-ruled with gold-stamped olive-wreath medallion; remboîtage, upper hinge cracked, soiled.

(Manuscript leaves) Hayyim Vital, Safed, ca. 1670-74, his autograph manuscript; Samuel Vital, Cairo, 1675, his manuscript notation on f. 276v. (Haggadah): Shabbetai Hayyim Ber and Jehiel Dov Friedman, their signatures on title page.

(Manuscript Leaves): Etz ha-Da'at Tov le-Rabeinu Hayyim Vital, Jerusalem: Netanel Loew: 2008. pp. 269-277.

(Haggadah): Vinograd, Venice 238; Yudlov, 13; Yaari 10; Yerushalmi 18.

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 there, 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. The work contains commentaries on Tanakh, Talmud with Rashi and Tosafot, and sermons for special Sabbaths. 

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 (in the collection of Rabbi Alter of Gur [MS # 185] and in a second part preserved in the kabbalistic yeshivah Bet-El) that the work was published. 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 in 2008, several pages, including the present lot, were sold privately.

The two leaves of the present lot are arguably among the most important insofar as they include Vital's teachings on the Passover Haggadah, as well as for the Sabbath preceding Passover, Shabbat ha-Gadol. There is also a fascinating notation (top line of f. 276v) written by Hayyim Vital's son, Rabbi Samuel Vital noting that he had copied part of the commentary into his own book, Totsa’ot Hayyim.

Bound with the first haggadah printed in venice, Zevah Pesah, with the commentary of Don Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel (1437–1508). This is the first book printed by Marco Antonio Giustiniani. On the title page is his printer's device, a representation of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, an image often conflated by Christians with the Bet ha-Mikdash, or Holy Temple that until 70 CE, occupied the same location. The banner unfurled above reads: The glory of this latter House shall be greater than that of the former, says the Lord of hosts (Haggai 2:9). The verse, which in its original context imagined a rebuilt Holy Temple in Jerusalem that would eclipse the Solomonic Temple, here takes on a more subversive meaning. Giustiniani's use of this biblical passage was intended to suggest that his fledgling press would overshadow that of his great rival, Daniel Bomberg, though this proved not to be the case.