(of Prague). Vayakhel Moshe [Kabbalah]

GRAF, MOSES BEN MENACHEM.

Aaron and Gershon Segal

Zolkiew

1741

Second edition. Elaborate two-page woodcut Kabbalistic illustration depicting the Thirteen Divine Attributes in the form of the Symbolic Thirteen Rows of Hair in the “Holy Beard” (verso of f. 32). With two inscriptions and signatures of previous owner on title ‘Yitzchak Yisrael ben… Mordechai MeTrivitsh… Memishpachath Rosner” (dated 1799), with Kabbalistic marginal notes in the same hand.

Vinograd, Zolkiew 100.

The author was one of the great Aschkenazic Kabbalists of his time. He gained fame through his public exorcism of a Dybbuk in the town of Nikolsburg in 1696 upon the instruction of R. David Oppenheim (described in Graf’s work Zera Kodesh). The introduction of the present work contains a lengthy exposition on the importance of learning Kabbalah and berates the “fools who oppose its study.” The book contains significant approbations and an historically important introduction containing information about the Rabbis and communal leaders of Nikolsburg including R. Elazar Mendel - R. David Oppenheim’s predecessor to the post of Chief Rabbi, as well as details of Graf’s Kabbalistic study group in Prague, the town of his birth and of the great fire which forced him to flee “naked, with only my soul.”