ERGAS, YOSEPH. Shomer Emunim [Kabbalah]. With appendix: "Mevo Pethachim"...

ERGAS, YOSEPH.
Shomer Emunim [Kabbalah]. With appendix: "Mevo Pethachim" [lexicon of Lurianic Kabbalistic terms].

FIRST EDITION. Additional engraved title incorporating vignettes of Moses with the Tablets and Joseph recounting his dreams to his brothers. Second part with divisional title within typographic border. A special copy, with extra wide margins.
ff. (2), 80, (2, errata). Foxed in places and trace wormed. Modern morocco (retaining earlier name in gilt). Sm. folio. Vinograd, Amsterdam 1458.
Amsterdam: n.p. 1736

A dialogue concerning the Kabbalistic tradition between two interlocutors "She'altiel" (literally - "I questioned God") and Yehoyada (literally - "knows God"). In recent decades the work is oft referred to as "Shomer Emunim HaKadmon" (the early Shomer Emunim) to differentiate it from the 20th-century "Shomer Emunim" of R. Arehle Roth of Satmar-Jerusalem. Kabbalist R. Joseph Ergas (1685-1730) established a Yeshiva in Pisa and later served as Rabbi of Livorno. In addition to his halachic scholarship, he is renowned for his polemics against Nechemia Hayon and seeking to refute Sabbatian belief. See E. Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy (1990) pp. 137-43.