Obj. ID: 36821
Jewish printed books  Reishit Chochmah by Eliyahu ben Moshe di Vidas, Shklov, 1816

This text was prepared by William Gross: Ethical and moral work by R. Elijah b. Moshe de Vidas (16th century), kabbalist, author on morals, one of the great kabbalists of Safed. R. Vidas was a disciple and close friend of R. Moses Cordovero, whom he always called "my teacher" without mentioning his name. In 1575 he completed his major work Reshit Hokhmah, one of the outstanding books on morals in Judaism. In contrast with previous authors in this field, Vidas included kabbalistic theories in his work, which was aimed at a popular audience; in particular, he quoted at length all that is said in the Zohar on the question of morals and religious conduct. Quotations from the Zohar were annotated from manuscripts still found in Safed. The book is encyclopedic in character and is divided into five long chapters, "Fear," "Love," "Repentance," "Holiness," and "Humility." Vidas added five chapters from Israel Al-nakawa's Menorat ha-Ma'or which was then known only in manuscript. They include chapters on the mitzvot, on education, on business dealings in good faith, and on manners. At the end of these, he added Huppot Eliyahu Rabbah, a collection of rabbinical sayings which list qualities (e.g., "three good qualities..."), and Or Olam, moralizing sayings which open with the word "forever" or with the word "great"; for example, "great is charity, even more than sacrifices."
R. Vidas' book is written in an easy and engaging style, avoiding metaphors. It was immediately accepted as one of the most important books on morals and was printed some 40 times. The first edition was printed in Venice in 1579 during the author's lifetime. The date of R. Vidas' death is still unknown. Because of its great length, his book was summarized several times: Reshit Hokhmah Kazar (Venice, 1600), completed in 1580 in Asti, Italy, by R. Jacob b. Mordecai Poggetti; Tappuhei Zahav, by R. Jehiel Melli (Mantua, 1623); Toze'ot Hayyim (Cracow, before 1650) by R. Jacob Luzzatto, a preacher in Poznan. These three summaries were published many times.
Eliyahu de Vidas (1518–1592) was a 16th-century rabbi in Palestine. He was primarily a disciple of Rabbis Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (known as the Ramak) and also Isaac Luria.[1] De Vidas is known for his expertise in the Kabbalah. He wrote Reshit Chochmah, or "The Beginning of Wisdom," a kabbalistic, pietistic work that is still widely studied by Orthodox Jews today. Just as his teacher Rabbi Moses Cordovero created an ethical work according to kabbalistic principles in his Tomer Devorah, Rabbi de Vidas created an even more expansive work on the spiritual life with his Reishit Chochmah. This magnum opus is largely based on the Zohar, but also reflects a wide range of traditional sources. The author lived in Safed and Hebron, and was one of a group of prominent kabbalists living in Hebron during the late 16th and early 17th-century.
The volume was printed by Yitzhak b. Shmuel in the Belarus town of Shklov. The mark on the title page, used in many variations by Hebrew printers of this era, shows an architectural monument flanked by two urns and topped by a bird. In this variant, the central medallion encloses the crowned cursive letter A set over the Roman numeral I, refering to Alexander the First (Pavlovich), Emperor of Russia 1801-1825.
The town of Shklov was an important center of Jewish learning. Jews first received a charter to settle in Shklov in 1668. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Shklov became an important commercial center, where, in the words of a visiting diplomat in 1699, Jews were “the richest and most influential class of people in the city.”
The golden era of the Shklov Jewish community was the period between its annexation by Russia in 1772 and the Napoleonic war of 1812, when it was a thriving economic and cultural center. A yeshiva was established there by Binyamin Rivlin (1728–1812), a close disciple and associate of the Gaon of Vilna who trained a generation of scholars that followed the Gaon’s teachings, including Menaḥem Mendel ben Barukh Bendet of Shklov, who prepared many of the Gaon’s writings for publication. In early 1772 Shklov was the first community in Eastern Europe to pronounce the followers of Hasidism heretics, and Rivlin was the driving force behind the enactments against Hasidim issued by the Va‘ad Medinat Rusiya in Shklov in 1787.
Between 1783 and 1835 several Hebrew printing presses operated in Shklov, making it the largest center during this period of Hebrew printing in Eastern Europe. Some 200 books were published there.
In 1808–1809, Menaḥem Mendel and Yisra’el ben Shemu’el of Shklov organized the migration of several hundred Jews, including scholars and merchants, from Shklov to the Land of Israel. There they established the first non-Hasidic Ashkenazic communities in Palestine, in Safed and Jerusalem. After their departure, the influence of Lubavitch Hasidism grew in Shklov, and a number of Hasidic and Lubavitch books were issued from the town.
169 [i.e. 170] ff., quarto