Obj. ID: 39983 Ma'ayan ha-Chochmah, Amsterdam, 1651
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This text was prepared by William Gross:
An extremely rare edition of this Kabbalistic discourse on the Tetragrammaton. The author intentionally did not disclose his name, so that the work remains anonymous.
Despite its brevity, the work addresses in depth the correct pronunciation of the “shem ha-meyuhad” as well as its esoteric meanings. It concludes with a discussion of the seventy-two letters into with the four leters of the “shem ha-meyuhad” can be divided.
This is the only edition of Ma’ayan ha-Chochmah, and has no relation to any of the several other kabbalistic works of the same name.
The printer Yehudah [Leib] b. Mordechai [Gimpel] of Posen worked for Menasseh b. Israel from 1632-1640, and, apparently, as a compositor for Benveniste beginning in 1642.
Samuel b. Moses ha-Levi [Levy Marcus] was also employed by Benveniste.
Together the two established their press and were the first Ashkenazic Hebrew printers in Amsterdam. Twenty books in Hebrew and Yiddish, primarily small works, were printed by them until their partnership ended in 1651, the year this volume was published.