[Kabbalistic homilies through the year]. Anonymous (Attributed to Nathan of Gaza)

CHEMDATH YAMIM

n.p.

Venice

1763

Four volumes. Titles in red and black within typographic and textual borders. Opening blank of Vol. I, signature of former owner Eliyahu bar Abraham Ben Amozeg (see below). Bookplate of Sydney Humphries

Vinograd, Venice 1963

R. Elijah Benamozegh Copy. Though suspected of Sabbatian leanings, Chemdath HaYamim soon became a favorite within the Sephardic literary world and no warnings of R. Jacob Emden could wean Sephardic Jewry away from this literary masterpiece. Chemdath Yamim first appeared in Izmir in 1732 and then Constantinople in 1735. The present third edition is the most sumptuous. See I. Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, Vol.V (1974), pp. 151-160. R. Elijah Benamozegh (1822-1900), Rabbi of Livorno, achieved in his writings a unique synthesis of the old and the new, combining at once the latest findings of modern scholarship with a deep devotion to the perennial wisdom of the Kabbalah, however this blend put him at loggerheads with his contemporary Samuel David Luzzatto (ShaDa"L), whose rationalism impugned the validity of Kabbalah. See EJ, Vol. IV, cols. 462-63