Seder Hatephilah al Derech Hasod [prayers through the year]

(LITURGY)

n.p.

Zolkiew

1781

According to the mystical elements of Chaim Vital and the meditations of Isaac Luria

Vinograd, Zolkiew 415 (erroneously noting only one errata leaf)

The first Complete Aschkenazi AR”I z”l Prayer-Book. The rise of the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria led many Kabbalistic circles to compile prayer-books containing specialised Lurianic meditations and esoteric rites. These texts circulated in manuscript among differening regional circles of Kabbalists. The first printed Lurianic prayer-book was the Sha’arei Rachamim (Salonika, 1741) which accorded to Sephardic rite. Before our prayer-book, there was a previous Aschkenazic prayer-book that incorporated the Lurianic kavanoth (meditations), ‘Or ha-Shanim by R. Aryeh Leib Epstein (Königsberg, 1765). However Epstein’s prayer-book was incomplete.The present Zolkiew edition is the first complete Aschkenazic prayer-book with intentions of ARI. (See printer’s introduction.) According to a stipulation in the haskamah (approbation) of R. Mordecai Ze’ev of Lvov, permission was granted to print the prayer-book only if it was done without the nekudoth or vowel points, in order to make the prayer-book inaccessible to the average man. It was felt that the Lurianic kavanoth (meditations) should be reserved for the spiritual elite. See also Abraham David Lavoot in his introduction to Sha’ar ha-Kollel (printed as an appendix to Torah ‘Or, the Siddur Nusach ARI of the Lubavitch chasidim)