Zoth Chukath ha-Torah [Abbreviation of R. Isaac Luria’s Sepher ha-Kavanoth]

CHIZKUNI, ABRAHAM

n.p.

Venice

1659

FIRST EDITION. Title within woodcut architectural border. Florets on final page. On final blank, a page of manuscript (“Kavanah li-Zechirah” or “Meditation for Memory”) copied “from the Siddur ha-Ari za”l”

Vinograd, Venice 1343

The author, a native of Cracow, adopted the surname “Chizkuni” after his father Chizkiyah. The book bears the haskamoth (encomia) of R. Benjamin Halevi, an emissary from the Holy Land “wandering for the past three years,” and of R. Eliezer Nachman Foa, a disciple of R. Menachem Azariah (Ram”a) of Fano. In his introduction, Chizkuni states there was an earlier attempt to abbreviate the Lurianic kavanoth, namely Kenaph Renanim by the Moroccan kabbalist Abraham Azulai. (Azulai’s grandson, Chaim Joseph David Azulai, lists the manuscript Kenaph Renanim in Part II of his bibliography, Shem ha-Gedolim.) However, Chizkuni found Azulai’s rendition of the kavanoth unsatisfactory. Zoth Chukath ha-Torah was edited by the preeminent Italian kabbalist R. Moses Zacuto. On ff. 26v.-27v. there is a mystical poem composed by Zacuto