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This illustration of an armillary sphere is from a treatise on astronomy, Sefer mareh ha-ofanim (The Appearance of the Heavenly Beings), by Solomon ben Abraham Avigdor. The treatise was mostly a…
On the signs of the plague and the poisonous fever that is called pestilence, and how a person should conduct himself to guard himself from them, in accordance with the nature of this lower…
The kinnor, called in a foreign tongue arpa (harp), is a wooden instrument made in the likeness of a wide-open entrance without their being doors on it, and its upper threshold is broad and its lower…
This elaborate Italian kabbalistic manuscript depicts the inner processes of the divine (the sefirot) in the shape of a tree (in Hebrew, ilan), or tree of life. Visualization plays an important part…
This bronze physician’s mortar from Verona, Italy, is decorated with a seven-branched candelabrum, flanked by the Hebrew letters mem and resh, likely the initials for the Hebrew term for “physician’s…
Here, dear reader, is a prayer for you that I composed to be recited on the first night—before your permitted intercourse, by virtue of the marriage canopy, wedding ceremony, and marriage contract…
And the sages have stated, in regard to the reward of those who serve the Almighty and carry out His will in this world, in Song of Songs Rabbah 6:8: Anyone who occupies himself with the Torah in this…
On the preservation of one’s health when going to sleep and upon awakening. Our master, of blessed memory, wrote the following in laws 4 and 5 [Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer ha-mada, hilkhot de‘ot…
All nations have been subject, in their authors, as in all other things, to significant important changes. Inclinations, needs, and the relations of their subjects change, as do the passions of the…
Kabbalist Elijah Menaḥem ben Abba Mari Ḥalfan constructed this diagram, now stained and torn, with the assistance of his tutor Abraham Sarfati. It depicts the sefirotic system and includes Ḥalfan’s…
