RAZIEL HAMALACH. [Kabbalah]. Anonymous.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

Moses Mendes Coitinho

Amsterdam

1701

FIRST EDITION. Title within elaborate woodcut architectural border. Unusual Kabbalistic charts and diagrams throughout. A Wide-Margined Copy. The Samuel Judah Copy (recording the dates of his birth and marriage on the title-page)

Vinograd, Amsterdam 731; Fuks, Amsterdam 573

A collection of mystical, magical and cosomological texts whose authorship is traditionally attributed to the Biblical Adam. It is popularly believed that the Book of Raziel’s talismanic powers protects its owner’s home from fire and other dangers. The Samuel Judah Copy. Son of Baruch Judah, born in New York on August 19th, 1728, a member of Congregation Shearith Israel, he became a “well-known merchant” in that city, appointed a Freeman in 1769. He signed the anti-British Non-Importation Agreement in 1770 and when the British occupied New York was forced to flee to Philadelphia where he was involved in selling booty captured by American privateers. He married Jessie Jonas on December 19th 1759 with whom he fathered twelve children. He died in Philadelphia on October 19th 1781. Most uncommon to find an 18th century American Jew with a Hebrew Kabbalistic treatise in his Library. See J.R. Rosenbloom, A Biographical Dictionary of Early AMerican Jews (1960) p.81; D. de Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone (1952) pp.392-4; E. Wolf & M. Whitman, The History of the Jews of Philadelphia (1957) pp.99,166,408-9.