TAITATSAK, YOSEPH.

TAITATSAK, YOSEPH.

KAF HAKETORETH [Kabbalistic-apocalyptic commentary to Book of Psalms / Tehilim].

HEBREW MANUSCRIPT. Composed shortly after the Expulsion from Spain in 1492.

Written on paper in dark brown ink by Saadiah ben Moshe of Mesila (Algeria) for Judah Zizah, and completed on Sunday, 35th day of the Omer, 1558. 175 leaves on laid paper (11 x 8 inches; 28 x 20 cm). Oriental semi-cursive Hebrew script with square headings.

Some worming in first and last leaves, affecting single letters, dampstaining. Modern blind and gold-tooled red morocco.

Ottoman, 1558.

Provenance:

Christie’s, Important Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books from the Library of the London Beth Din, 23rd June, 1999, Lot 58.

Kaf HaKetoreth is a commentary on Psalms composed in the period immediately prior to and following the Spanish Expulsion of 1492. Its Kabbalistic interpretations have a distinctly messianic, eschatological flavor and are filled with invective against Christianity, as might be expected of a work by one of the Spanish exiles.

The psalms are here conceived as serving a dual purpose, both as hymns of comfort in a time of catastrophe and as mystic weapons to be wielded in the struggle against evil.

While the work lost its authorial attribution early on, recent scholarship has ascribed it to R. Yoseph Taitatsak (author Shailoth U’Teshuvoth Maharita’tz), one of the premier halachists and Kabbalists of sixteenth-century Salonika, whose correspondents included R. Yoseph Karo.

Thorough study of the volume would surely yield further insight into the theological-spiritual world of Sephardic Jewry in this critical, tumultuous period of its history.

Prof. Moshe Idel lists four manuscript copies of this unpublished commentary: Three in the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris (MSS HB. 845-847) and this manuscript previously housed in the London Beth Din library.

Two other copies of this work are also known, one in the Schocken library in Jerusalem (MS 15791), and one in the Russian State Library in Moscow (Guenzburg collection 921), the latter copied in Adrianople in 1529.

See Neubauer, no. 5, p. 2; Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts, Jerusalem, F 4674; G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) p. 248-49; G. Vajda, in Revue de l'histoire des Religions 197 (1980) p. 45-58; M. Idel, in Sefunot 17 (1983) p. 195-201. 

The present manuscript is one of two known dated copies of this text and the only one remaining in private hands.