Kehillat Ya‘akov (The Gathering of Jacob), Hayyim Vital, [Morocco: late 17th-early 18th centuries]

78 leaves (8 1/8 x 5 5/8 in.; 207 x 150 mm). 1-15, 17-48, 50-61 [1], 62-77, 79-80

 



 

Yosef Avivi, “The Writings of Rabbi Hayyim Vital Discovered in Jerusalem and Their Redaction by Rabbi Jacob Zemah,” Ha-Ma‘yan 18,4 (1978): 61-77 (in Hebrew).

 

Kehillat Ya‘akov is one of five books edited by Jacob Zemah based on Vital manuscripts which he unearthed in a Jerusalem genizah. The manuscript, which was copied by an anonymous Moroccan kabbalist, features some of Zemah’s emendations, which were never printed, as well as the Moroccan copyist’s own marginalia. These include a note on f. 78v that the printed edition of Sefer ha-Gilgulim (Frankfurt am Main, 1684), a book based on the fourth section of Meir Poppers’ Nof Etz Hayyim, only included thirty-five chapters. Because he had discovered a manuscript that included three more chapters, the scribe decided to append them to the end of the book (fols. 78v-80v).

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