Img. ID: 574197

The following description was prepared by William Gross:

Sar Shalom Sharabi (Hebrew: שר שלום מזרחי דידיע שרעבי), 1720–1777, was a Yemenite-Israeli Jewish Rabbi, Halachist, Chazzan and Kabbalist. In later life, he became the Rosh Yeshiva of Bet El Yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem. His daughter married Rabbi Hayyim Abraham Gagin of Jerusalem, making him the great-great-grandfather of Shem Tob Gaguine, the "Keter Shem Tob."

Sar Shalom Sharabi was born in Jewish Sharab, Yemen. He moved to Palestine, then under Ottoman rule, in fulfilment of a vow. On his way he stayed in India, Baghdad and Damascus. He was one of the earlier commentators on the works of the Ari, a major source of Kabbalah. His Siddur was known as the "Siddur Ha-Kavvanot," and is the main siddur used today by Kabbalists for prayer, meditation and Yeshiva study. It is a Siddur with extensive Kabbalistic meditations by way of commentary.

This manuscript contains prayers according to the Rashash for Passover, Chanukah and Purim. It is written in a Yemenite-Orinetal hand at the turn of the 19th century. The manuscript was cpied by R. Yihya ben Yosef Tzarum, one of the Yemenite sages in the Beit El Yeshiva who embellished it with his comments.

Additional volumes of the prayer book series written by Tzarum and with his comments are in the R. Ya'akov Moshe Hillel Library, nos. 671, 673,678, 699 and 799. He usually ended his comments with the abbreviated words: "And if I am wrong, may the benevolent God forgive me."

42 pp