Cheshbon ha-Nephesh ("Taking Stock of the Soul") with conclusion to Rephu'oth ha-Am ("Remedies of the People"). By an unknown scribe.

LEVIN (LEFIN), MENACHEM MENDEL.

Eastern Europe

Early 19th-century

Hebrew Manuscript. Inscribed on front fly: "Shayach le-ha-Rav ha-Gaon ha-Gadol charif u-baki s[inai] ve-o[ker] h[arim], ba['al] ha-mech[aber] Sepher Beith [--], Yitzchak Eizik zt"l A[v] B[eith] D[in] de-Volkovisk" [Property of R. Yitzchak Eizik of Volkovisk]. Below are more grandiloquent inscriptions: "ha-meigein al ha-dor" ("who protects the generation"; and Rashkabaha"g ("Rabbi of the Entire Diaspora")

COPY OF R. YITZCHAK EIZIK [CHAVER] OF VOLKOVISK AND SUVALK. M.M. Lefin, a Galician Maskil (1749-1826) published his work of moral inventory, Cheshbon ha-Nephesh, in Lvov in 1808. (Appended was a supplement to his earlier work Rephu'oth ha-Am [Zolkiew, 1794].) This practical manual for self-improvement was reprinted in Vilna in 1844 at the behest of Rabbi Israel Salanter, founder of the Lithuanian Mussar movement. Rephu'oth ha-Am was a Hebrew reworking of the physician Tissot's Manual of Popular Medicine and Hygiene, undertaken at the suggestion of Lefin's mentor Moses Mendelssohn. See I. Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, Vol VI (1975), pp. 275-280; EJ, Vol. XI, cols.107-8. R. Yitzchak Eizik Chaver (or Wildman) (1789-1853), was a great Lithuanian halachist and kabbalist in the tradition of the Vilna Gaon. (R. Yitzchak Eizik was third in the chain of transmission from the Vilna Gaon. He was initiated in the wisdom of Kabbalah by R. Menachem Mendel of Shklov, who in turn, received such wisdom directly from the Gaon himself.) He is most famous for his magisterial work of Kabbalah, Pithchei She'arim. R. Yitzchak Eizik served at various times as Rabbi of Volkovisk, Tiktin and Suvalk. See N.Z. Friedmann, Otzar Harabanim 11168; Rabbotheinu she-ba-Golah - Lita, Vol. II (1998), pp. 229-30.