Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi

Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi
Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi
	Front page of his Mashreh Kitrin.
Personal
Born	Abraham Ben Eliezer Ha-Levi; c. 1460; Toledo, Spain
Died	after 1528; Jerusalem, Ottoman Empire
Religion	Judaism
Parents	Rabbi Eliezer HaLevi (father);

Rabbi Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi the Elder (Hebrew: רבי אברהם בן אליעזר הלוי הזקן; c. 1460 - after 1528) was a Sephardic rabbi and kabbalist known for his apocalyptic treatises on Kabbalah and his beliefs regarding messianism. He was also an early member of the old yishuv, immigrating to Jerusalem in 1514.

Biography

Born in Toledo, Spain, to a distinguished family. In his early years, he studied under Rabbi Isaac Gakon. While in Spain, he wrote several kabbalistic treatises, the most famous of which is "Masoret ha-Hokhmah" a brief account of Spanish Kabbalism which he finished shorty before the Expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. After said expulsion, Rabbi Abraham lived in Portugal for a short time, where he published "Meshare Qitrin". It was also during this time that be became affiliated with Abraham Zacuto and Isaac Abrabanel and was influenced by apocalyptic sentiment popularized after the Spanish inquisition. Like many of his contemporaries, he believed that the year 1524 would be the beginning of the messianic era and that the Messiah himself would appear in 1530–31. This belief became an obsession for Rabbi Abraham would spent countless years searching for proof in the Bible and the Talmud as well as in kabbalistic literature. He left Portugal and briefly settled in Greece where he wrote the treatise "Mashreh Kitrin" an apocalyptic explanation of the Book of Daniel. The work was printed in Istanbul in 1510 and was one of the earliest printed Hebrew books. In 1514 he immigrated to Jerusalem alongside Isaac ha-Kohen Sholal. In Jerusalem, he widely respected and became widely known through his literary and religious activities. In Jerusalem he wrote "Ma'amar Perek Ḥelek" an explanation of talmudic statements in tractate Sanhedrin relating to messianism.

Interestingly, Rabbi Abraham viewed Martin Luther in a good light, as he believed him to be a component of the Messianic era. Seeing Martin Luther as the destroyer of the Christian faith. In 1521, Rabbi Abraham wrote "Iggeret Sod ha-Ge'ullah" in which, he interpreted the Zohar, relating it back to his Messianic beliefs. Various other kabbalistic writings of Rabbi Abraham have been preserved: "Ma'amar ha-Yiḥud" and "Megillat Amrafel" . In 1528 Rabbi Abraham wrote to the Beta Israel, making it one of the easiest correspondence with said community. Rabbi Abraham must have died between 1529 - 1535, as in 1535 David ben Solomon mentions Rabbi Abraham as being died for a long time.[1][2][3]

gollark: How do you know your password is the right one?

gollark: I should assign unique IDs to the other sandbox escape bugs.

gollark: My "fix" is this:```lua--[["Fix" for bug PS#E9DCC81BSummary: `pcall(getfenv, -1)` seemingly returned the environment outside the sandbox.Based on some testing, this seems like some bizarre optimization-type feature gone wrong.It seems that something is simplifying `pcall(getfenv)` to just directly calling `getfenv` and ignoring the environment... as well as, *somehow*, `function() return getfenv() end` and such.The initial attempt at making this work did `return (fn(...))` instead of `return fn(...)` in an attempt to make it not do this, but of course that somehow broke horribly. I don't know what's going on at this point.This is probably a bit of a performance hit, and more problematically liable to go away if this is actually some bizarre interpreter feature and the fix gets optimized away.Unfortunately I don't have any better ideas. Also, I haven't tried this with xpcall, but it's probably possible, so I'm attempting to fix that too.]]local real_pcall = pcallfunction _G.pcall(fn, ...) return real_pcall(function(...) local ret = {fn(...)} return unpack(ret) end, ...)end local real_xpcall = xpcallfunction _G.xpcall(fn, handler) return real_xpcall(function() local ret = {fn()} return unpack(ret) end, handler)end```which appears to work at least?

gollark: Fixed, but I don't really know how or why.

gollark: ... should I create a bug report?

References

Cohn-Sherbok, Dan (2020-01-16). A Dictionary of Kabbalah and Kabbalists. Aelurus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907605-17-8.
"Abraham ben Eliezer Ha-Levi | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
Robinson, Ira (1981). "Messianic Prayer Vigils in Jerusalem in the Early Sixteenth Century". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 72 (1): 32–42. doi:10.2307/1454163. ISSN 0021-6682.

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[1] Cohn-Sherbok, Dan (2020-01-16). A Dictionary of Kabbalah and Kabbalists. Aelurus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907605-17-8.

[2] "Abraham ben Eliezer Ha-Levi | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2020-06-10.

[3] Robinson, Ira (1981). "Messianic Prayer Vigils in Jerusalem in the Early Sixteenth Century". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 72 (1): 32–42. doi:10.2307/1454163. ISSN 0021-6682.