RAZIEL HAMALACH. Anonymous

(KABBALAH)

Moses Mendes Coitinho

Amsterdam

1701

FIRST EDITION. Title within elaborate woodcut architectural border. Unusual Kabbalistic charts and diagrams throughout. A Wide-Margined Copy. Previous owners’ signatures and stamps on the title page including “Tzvi Hirsch... of Berlin”.

Vinograd, Amsterdam 731; Fuks, Amsterdam 573

A cornucopia of mystical texts and magical recipes. Though the title purports that the book was handed by the angel Raziel to Adam, it has long been known even in the most traditional circles that the work is in fact medieval in origin. The perspicacious Rabbi Zadok Hakohen of Lublin, a hasidic rebbe with a critical faculty, attributes authorship to Rabbi Elazar of Worms, author of Roke’ach. (See Rabbi Zadok Hakohen of Lublin, Sepher ha-Zichronoth, appended to Divrei Sophrim (Lublin, 1913), 34c-d; Uziel Fuchs, “‘Critical’ comments in the writings of R. Zadok Hakohen of Lublin,” in Gershon Kitsis ed., Me’at la-Tzadik (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 266-267. Because of the popular belief that the book is protection from fire, many keep a copy of Raziel in the home, or today, in the automobile