Abraham Azulai
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Abraham Azulai (ca. 1570-1643) (Hebrew: אברהם בן מרדכי) was a Kabbalistic author and commentator born at Fez about 1570.
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[edit] Biography
The expulsion of the Moors from Spain brought a great number of the exiles to Morocco, and these newcomers caused a civil war from which the country in general and the Jews in particular suffered greatly. Abraham Azulai, in consequence of this condition of affairs, left his home for Palestine and settled in Hebron.
[edit] Works
In Hebron he wrote a commentary on the Zohar under the title Kirjath Arba (City of Arba; Gen. xxiii. 2). The plague of 1619 drove him from his new home, and while in Gaza, where he found refuge, he wrote his cabalistic work Ḥesed le-Abraham (Mercy to Abraham; Micah vii. 20). It was published after the author's death by Meshullam Zalman ben Abraham Berak of Gorice, in Amsterdam, 1685. Another edition, published in Sulzbach in the same year, seems to be a reprint, although Steinschneider, in Cat. Bodl. col. 666, thinks the reverse. Azulai's commentary on the Zohar, Zohore Ḥammah (Rays of the Sun), was printed in Venice, 1654. He also wrote: Or ha-Lebanah (Light of the Moon), Ma'asse Ḥosheb (Cunning Work), and Kenaf Renanim (Peacock's Wing). He died at Hebron on November 6, 1643.
Of the numerous manuscripts that he left and that were in the hands of his descendant, Hayyim Joseph David (No. 4), some are still extant in various libraries. Only one was published, a cabalistic commentary on the Bible, under the title Ba'ale Berit Abraham (Abraham's Confederates; see Gen. xiv. 13), Wilna, 1873. His most popular work, Hesed le-Abraham, referred to above, is a kabbalistic treatise with an introduction, אבן השתיה (The Cornerstone; see Talmud Yoma 53b), and is divided into seven "fountains" (see Zecharia iii. 9), each fountain being subdivided into a number of "streams." The contents of the work are hardly different from the average vagaries found in cabalistic books, as evidenced by the following specimen from the fifth fountain, twenty-fourth stream, p. 57d, of the Amsterdam edition:
On the mystery of metempsychosis and its details: Know that God will not subject the soul of the wicked to more than three migrations; for it is written, "Lo, all these things doth God work twice, yea thrice, with a man" (Job xxxiii. 29). Which means, He makes him appear twice and thrice in a human incarnation; but the fourth time he is incarnated as a clean animal. And when a man offers a sacrifice, God will, by miraculous intervention, make him select an animal that is an incarnation of a human being. Then will the sacrifice be doubly profitable: to the one that offers it and to the soul imprisoned in the brute. For with the smoke of the sacrifice the soul ascends heavenward and attains its original purity. Thus is explained the mystery involved in the words, "O Lord, thou preservest man and beast" (Psalms xxxvi. 7 [R. V. 6]).
– Abraham Azulai, Hesed le-Abraham
[edit] Jewish Encyclopedia Bibliography
- Azulai, Shem ha-Gedolim, s.v.;
- Benjacob, Oẓar ha-Sefarim, p. 196;
- Fürst, Bibliotheca Judaica, i. 67;
- Michael, Or ha-Ḥayyim, p. 12.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.
