ISRAEL BEN SHABTHAI OF KOZHNITZ. Or Yisrael [expository notes to the mystical Tikunei Zohar by the Kozhnitzer Maggid]

(CHASSIDISM).

Kozhnitz

(circa 1813)

Manuscript on paper, written in a precise Aschkenazic script with corrections in another hand. With stamps of previous owners: The Chassidic Rabbis Yehoshua of Sosnowitz and Ostrava, son of R. Shlomo Leib of Lentchna; and Yoseph Tzvi Kalisch of Kortchov, son of R. Shimon of Skernivitz. The manuscript was composed by Abraham Berish ben Masha Feiga. One assumes that the use of the mother's name indicates that this manuscript was presented to a prominent Chassidic Rebbe, possibly even the Maggid himself

LIKELY THE MANUSCRIPT COPY FROM WHICH THE PRINTED EDITION WAS PUBLISHED. The Maggid of Kozhnitz (1733-1814), was one of the earliest disseminators in Poland of the Chassidic thought of the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch. See Y. Alfasi, HaChassiduth (1977) p.10. The present manuscript is a copy of the marginal notes to the Tikunei Zohar that had been composed by the Kozhnitzer Maggid. Of importance is the fact that when citing the Maggid on the first leaf, the copyist does not attach to his name the traditional blessing for the deceased (Zatza"l), indicating that the Maggid was still alive at the time. The work was eventually published in Czernowitz, 1862 (see lot ***). The publisher states that he had the text edited from a manuscript copy (the present one?) and not from the Maggid’s original manuscript. The published edition differs slightly from the present manuscript by adjusting page- and line-numbers to conform with the Slavuta edition of Tikunei Zohar. Also of note, the marginal corrections to our manuscript have been incorporated into the printed editon