Kitzur ha-Seder ha-Kadosh (Kabbalistic Compendium for Passover, from Sefer Hemdat Yamim, with Poems by the Sabbatean, Nathan of Gaza), [Italy: 18th century]

20 leaves (11 x 7 1/4 in.; 280 x 185 mm), final leaf blank. collation: 1-2¹⁰. Written in brown ink on paper in an Italian sephardic semicursive Hebrew script. Blindruled on a mastara (ruling board). Marginal wear and tear; stained and soiled as expected. A single leaf in the same hand, loose. Original paper wrapper with additional contemporary paper overwrapper, the latter creased, stained, and worn.

Moshe Fogel, ‘‘The Sabbateanism of the Book Hemdat Yamim: A Reconsideration,’’ ed. R. Elior, The Dream and Its Interpretation (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 2001), part 2, 365–422; “The Allure of Forbidden Knowledge: The Temptation of Sabbatean Literature for Mainstream Rabbis in the Frankist Moment, 1756–1761,” Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 102, No. 4 (Fall 2012) pp. 589–616.

This kabbalistic compendium for Passover is abridged from Sefer Hemdat Yamim, long reputed to be a Sabbatean work which first appeared in the second half of the seventeenth century. Authorship of the work was originally attributed by many scholars to Nathan of Gaza, the prophet of the false messiah Sabbetai Sevi. In fact the present abridgment includes no less than three separate poems whose acrostics validate that assertion by explicitly spelling out Nathan's fuul name and patronymic. Some recent scholars, however, while agreeing that the poems were indeed the product of the Sabbatean Nathan, have nevertheless maintained that the larger work is free of other antinomian material.  

While there remains today, a divergence of scholarly opinion concerning just how Sabbatean it was, Hemdat Yamim—its sources, composition, and ways in which it was accepted— nevertheless offers an instructive example of the vague nature of European Sabbateanism in the mid-eighteenth century.  Sabbateanism existed within, not outside of, the environs of the traditional community; often it was neither publicly nor sharply distinguished from the ‘‘correct’’ faith and "Sabbatean" manuscripts such as the present lot, exploited the widespread dissemination of ‘‘holy writings’’ based on R. Isaac Luria (the Ari) and his followers, which at the time were at the height of their popularity.