Broda, Elchanan. Leket ha-Pardess [a florilegium of kabbalistic excerpts]

(KABBALAH)

1714

Title within garlanded architectural columns. The “additional title” consists of a kabbalistic representation of the seven-branched Menorah in the Tabernacle, in which the four feet represent the four faces of Ezekiel’s mystical vision: the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle (Ezekiel 1:10). The artist has thus sketched four feet: a human leg, hirsute and shodden; a furry paw; a cloven hoof, and a feathered claw. This is a graphic representation of the mystical contents of the book. On ff.28v.-29r. there are several kabbalistic diagrams of the hands extended in priestly blessing. On f.91r. charts of the Shem ha-Mephorash, the seventy-two lettered Name

Ben Jacob L-404 (ms. of R. David Oppenheim)

The author, an adept in Lurianic Kabbalah, nonetheless anthologizes a broad array of earlier kabbalistic literature, such as the works of Gikatilia, Bachaye ben Asher, Recanati, Tziyoni, ibn Gabbai, de Vidas, et al. Present in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, two other manuscript copies of this work (Nos. 1908 and 1954). (The Bodleian mss. had previously been in the possession of R. David Oppenheim of Prague.) In the former, the author’s name is given on the title as “Elchanan of Broda.” The date is given in chronogramic form in the colophon of the present work. One may speculate that the author was some relation of the celebrated R. Abraham Broda of Prague (1650-1717) but this remains pure conjecture. On f.56r. there is a marginalium signed by the renowned bibliographer M. Steinschneider indicating that “this column is omitted” in the Bodleian manuscript. Between ff.90-92 there is a paste-in where the missing leaf (f.91) has been copied from f.104v. of the Bodleian manuscript “Mark 1851.” The copyist’s signs his name “Zalman ben Jacob Koppel.” Leket ha-Pardess has never been published