A nice find for me this week was a first edition of the first published work of R. Yaakov Abuhatzeira (1806–1880), titled Doresh Tov (1884, Jerusalem). Living in Morocco, R. Yaakov had no access to a Hebrew printing press to publish his sefarim; the nearest Hebrew printing press at the time was in Italy, at a distance that was prohibitively expensive and dangerous to cross. After his passing, his son, R. Aharon, took it upon himself to travel to Jerusalem to work on publishing his father’s writings.
While R. Yaakov Abuhatzeira was a leading rabbi and Kabbalist in Morocco who led his community as rabbi and dayan for many decades, his name was not very familiar to the great rabbis of Jerusalem of the era. Family legend tells of the trouble R. Aharon had in obtaining approbations from the great rabbinical figures in Jerusalem for the publication of his father’s sefarim, being that they were not aware of the author and his great stature in Morocco.
Per legend, the night following their refusing to give approbations for this work, the rabbis of Jerusalem were visited by R. Yaakov Abuhatzeira in a dream in which they were reprimanded for their refusal. The following morning when the rabbis convened and became aware that they had all had similar visits in their dreams, they hastened to write lengthy glowing approbations for these works.
The first edition does indeed contain many prominent approbations, including from R. Rafael Panijel; R. Yaakov Shaul Elyashar; and the rabbis of Hebron, Tiberias and others. Doresh Tov contains sermons, and mussar in the unique style of R. Yaakov, combining Kabbalah and Nigleh, strongly imbued with the ideal ideal of an ascetic way of life, with self-discipline and abstention from worldly desires leading the reader on a path to G-d.
