The National Library of Israel is making available to the public for the first time a 500-year-old letter shedding light on the life of the Arizal.
The letter, which is being made public in honor of the late Yerushalayim collector Ezra Gorodesky, is “worth its weight in gold,” said Yoel Finkelman, curator of the library’s Judaica collection.
The writer of the missive, named David, wrote to the Arizal during the Arizal’s sojourn in Egypt in the sixteenth century.
The letter’s purpose was to enlist the Arizal’s support for an emissary who had been dispatched from Tzfas to raise money among Diaspora Jews for Jews living in the Holy Land.
The letter was preserved because it had been used to bind another book, a common practice before the invention of cardboard. Bookbinders would take paper or vellum pages from worn-out volumes and stick them together into dense stacks that would serve as stiff enough material for book covers.
“This letter, which is worth its weight in gold, is part of the precious collections in the National Library, which comprises a national source of information about the Jewish history of Israel,” said curator Finkelman.
“The letter, which was preserved in an unusual manner in the binding of old books, is a major discovery about the influence Ha’ari had, not only in the field of Kabbalah but also worldly matters,” he added. JNS.ORG
{Matzav.com Israel}
Seems like they are expecting a fee of the letter’s weight in Gold
It’s a letter from an unknown David TO the Ari. Why would it be worth its weight in anything but the very paper it was written on?
Because the ARI z”l left no personal writings of his own (what we know is mainly through the writings of R. Chaim Vital), and the letter is a very rare first-hand (primary source) glimpse into the personal/community activities – and it has information not found in any other source.