Moshe Halevi. Anaph Etz Avoth [“A Branch of the Thick Tree”: The Kavvanoth or Mystical Intentions of the Prayer]

(KABBALAH).

Prague

1752

Habrew manuscript, Ashkenazic cursive script. Illustrated title. Colophon: “Moshe Halevi Emmerich, completed Marcheshvan [5]542 (1782), by my hand”

The scribe, Moshe Halevi Emmerich of Prague, has copied the Lurianic code of prayer, Peri Etz Chaim (“The Fruit of the Tree of Life”), composed by R. Isaac Luria's disciple, R. Chaim Vital. The manuscript contains the entire text of Peri Etz Chaim. It is not quite clear why the copyist assigned a different name, “Anaph Etz Avoth,” to the book. Moshe Halevi Emmerich worked on this manuscript for thirty years from 1752-1782. How ironical that very year of the completion, 1782, Peri Etz Chaim was printed for the very first time on the press at Koretz (Korzec). The Emmerich Family were distinguished among Prague’s Jews. Salomon (Salman) Emmerich (1662-1728), who studied medicine in Leiden and practised in Metz before establishing himself in Prague, was the first Prague Jew to be freed by imperial order from wearing the obligatory neck-frill. His son Moses Salomon Gomperz (d. 1742) was permitted to practice medicine by Prague University after passing an examination, and was the first Jew to graduate from a German university, in Frankfurt on the Oder, in 1721. See EJ, Vol. VII, col. 774