Ilan Ha-Gadol (Kabbalistic Scroll) Poppers type, Warsaw: 1864

Scroll (8 in. x 12 ft.; 205 mm x 3 meters 660 mm). Printed on 17 sheets.

This is is a rare copy in fine condition of the “Ilan ha-gadol” attributed to Poppers, and its content is virtually identical to that of the previous lot. Although Knorr von Rosenroth printed a number of Ilanot on the basis of Hebrew kabbalistic manuscripts in his Latin work of 1677, Jews printed an Ilan for the first time only in 1864 – and this is a copy of that printing. The attribution of this compounded Ilan to the authoritative Poppers, which was itself a nineteenth-century development, undoubtedly made it easier to publish material at once so esoteric and (almost?) heretical in its bold corporealization-visualization of the divine.

 

For this first printed Ilan (by Jews), the publishers opted to preserve the scroll form, with paper sections glued end to end to mimic the appearance and function of parchment scroll upon which it was based. A second edition would appear in Warsaw again in 1883 that abandoned this approach for the codex form; it also added interpolated additional materials from other manuscript families. (The second edition also eschewed even the faintest suggestion of anthropomorphism, and is positively anaemic by comparison with the first edition.)

 

The printed scroll opens with a notable addition to the manuscript by the publisher. Part apologetics, part approbation, and part claim of copyright, the front matter atop the scroll concludes with a sales pitch: this paper scroll is worth acquiring as an amulet to protect its buyer against all pain and damage, and as a charm for raising children. This was not the first commodification of the Kabbalah, nor would it be the last, but it does reveal at least one of the motivations of the first Jews to bring an Ilan to press.