Hayyim ben Abraham ha-Kohen
Hayyim ben Abraham ha-Kohen (1585–1655) was a Jewish rabbi and writer. He was from a family in the then-Ottoman Empire city of Aleppo, though the family had migrated there after the expulsion of Jews from Spain a century earlier.[1]
He was leading disciple of Hayyim ben Joseph Vital, and served for 20 years as rabbi in Aleppo.
Hayyim ha-Kohen had a colorful history of publication. In the introduction to his book Torat hesed, he wrote that after he sent his manuscript for Ateret zahav (on Esther) to Venice for publication, he received no response for several years, and boarded a vessel to Europe to personally supervise publication of Ateret zahav and all his other works, bringing them all with him on the trip, all of which existed only in a single manuscript copy each.[1]
During a particularly severe storm, the ship on which he was a passenger took refuge at Malta, where it was boarded by Barbary corsairs. He jumped overboard and went ashore, wandering in the wilderness for some time before encountering other people. Every single one of his manuscripts was lost. He claimed that he had re-written Torat hesed, and his other works, from memory.[1][2]
He died in 1655 and was buried in Livorno. After his death, one of his works, Torat hesed was reputed to have been plagiarized by the Rabbi David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida and published as Migdal David.[1] Later scholars, such as Chaim Yosef David Azulai and Heimann Joseph Michael, considered the true author of Migdal David to have been Hayyim ha-Kohen.[3][4]
The 18th century rabbinical scholar Chaim Yosef David Azulai wrote that when he first arrived at Livorno, on Rosh Chodesh Elul in 1753, he prostrated himself before the grave of Hayyim ha-Kohen.[5]
Works
- Ateret zahav, on Esther
- Tur barekhet
- Torat hesed, a Kabbalistic commentary on the Book of Ruth
- Torat hakham (Venice, 1654), a book of sermons
- Mekor hayyim, a Kabbalistic commentary on the Shulchan Aruch
- Mekor hayyim part 1 (Constantinople, 1650)
- Mekor hayyim part 2 (Amsterdam, 1654)
- Mekor hayyim part 3 (Livorno, 1655-56)
References
- ^ a b c d Heller, Marvin J. (2013). Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book. Brill Publishers. pp. 366–367. ISBN 9789004245242. Retrieved 2025-12-26.
- ^ Heller, Marvin J. (2010). The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus. Brill Publishers. p. 743. ISBN 9789004189560. Retrieved 2025-12-26.
- ^ Heimann Joseph Michael, Or ha-Ḥayyim (Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1891)
- ^ Chaim Yosef David Azulai, Shem HaGedolim, with additions by Menachem Mendel Krengel (Jerusalem, 1979)
- ^ Chaim Yosef David Azulai, Magal tov ha-shalem (Jerusalem, 1983), 4.