Omer Mann [commentary to Idra Zuta, with text]

DI LONZANO, MENACHEM BEN YEHUDAH.

Germany

c. 1700

Manuscript in Hebrew, written in a cursive Aschkenazic hand on paper. Flyleaf with signature of previous owner: Eliezer Joel… Brod…This holy book is entitled Omer Mann on account of the verse Omer LeGilgoleth.”

This complete Zoharic commentary remains unpublished. The version of di Lonzano’s Omer Mann that was published in Vilna in 1883 is only a fraction of the complete commentary. In the present manuscript the author disagrees in many places with the opinions of the Ariza’l and R. Chaim Vital. It is likely that the Vilna edition only includes those discussion points that are not in disagreement with the above. Of Italian extraction, little is known of Menachem di Lonzano’s life beyond the fact that he was left an orphan at a young age and subsequently moved to Jerusalem. His world was one devoted to Torah study, however as an original thinker, he aggressively defended his conclusions and attacked both his predecessors and especially his contemporaries when he felt they misinterpreted earlier texts. Despite the personal enemies he made, in one respect he most certainly was in harmony with the spirit of his times and that was in his passion for Kabbalah. He died c. 1624. See EJ, Vol. XI, cols. 486-7.