Obj. ID: 36433  Temunah, Korets (Korzec), 1784

This text was prepared by William Gross:

Early Kabbalah sefer discussing the hidden meaning in the aleph-beis letters, attributed to the great Tannaim, Rabbi Nechuniya ben HaKaneh and Rabbi Yishmael Cohen Gadol.This sefer includes an anonymous commentary as well as Kuntress Sod Hashem regarding the Shem Hameforash and the development of the worlds.
This first edition was published in Koritz, 1784.
[1], 76 leaves | 20 cm
The community in Korzec, where this volume was printed, was one of the oldest in Poland. Jews were living there in the 13th century. During the Chmielnicki massacres in 1648/49 the community was almost annihilated, but recovered soon afterward to become the most influential in the council of four lands. A textile factory established by Joseph Czartoryski in Korzec at the end of the 18th century employed 120 Jewish workers.
Between 1766 and 1819 there were four Hebrew printing presses in Korzec, some of them associated with those in Shklov, Nowy Dwór, and Ostrog. They printed nearly 100 books, mostly works of kabbalah and chasidism, which contributed considerably to the spread of Hasidism in poland and adjoining countries. Works by Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye and Dov Baer of Mezhirech were first printed there. Korzec was a center of Hasidism. Dov Baer the maggid of Mezhirech and Phinehas Shapiro were active there.
The present volume was issued by the Christian printer Johann Anton Krüger, who ran a Hebrew printing press in Nowy Dwór, Neuhof (near Warsaw), from 1781 until 1814. His books from these years record either Nowy Dwór or Korzec on their title pages, often with his printer's mark. In this instance, his mark is a smallish monogram comprised of the letters JAK, enclosed in a simple foliate frame (Ya'ari 155).