מאיר הכהן פופרש

Rav Meir Poppers (5388/1628–2 Adar 5422/1662), whose name is also written Papirsh, was the mekubal whose arrangement of the writings of the Arizal became the form in which those writings reached the generations after him. He was born in Krakow to Rav Yehuda Leib HaKohen, a wealthy merchant, showed unusual gifts as a child, and was already learning kabbalah at thirteen. Seeing this, his parents sent him to Yerushalayim to learn from the talmidim of the Arizal; there he learned under Rav Yisrael Ashkenazi and under Rav Yaakov Tzemach, a talmid of Rav Shmuel Vital, and became one of the pillars of the yeshiva of mekubalim in the city.

In 5406/1646, taking up the work of his rebbe Rav Yaakov Tzemach, he began to edit the writings of the Arizal. Three years later, when word reached Eretz Yisrael of the massacres in Poland, he set out to learn what had become of his family. His road took him first to Damascus, where he searched through the manuscripts of Rav Chaim Vital and settled on a plan to set the Arizal’s teachings into three sefarim; he labored at the arrangement as he traveled on to Constantinople, and finished it in Krakow, which he reached in 1650. The three were Derech Etz Chaim, known everywhere simply as Etz Chaim, Pri Etz Chaim, and Nof Etz Chaim; the last two were never printed whole, but only in portions under various names. These were the editions that circulated among the talmidim of the Gra and among the chassidic rebbes in the century that followed.

The Chida writes that he composed thirty-nine sefarim. Among them are Derech Se’udah, the kavanot of netilat yadayim and of the meal, printed in Prague in 5438/1678; Or Tzaddikim, mussar and hanhagot drawn from the kabbalah of the Arizal and arranged under the pillars of Torah, avodah and gemilut chasadim, its practical conduct for the order of the day filling some two thirds of the sefer, printed in Hamburg in 5450/1690; thirty-two klalim in the hidden Torah, printed later under the name Mesilot Chochmah; and Me’orat Natan, also called Yair Nativ, which explains the terms used in kabbalah. Rav Tzvi Hirsch Chazan, a dayan in Poznan, reissued Or Tzaddikim with many additions of his own under the title Or HaYashar. Rav Meir turned back toward Eretz Yisrael in 5414, fell ill on the road and arrived broken in body, and was niftar in Yerushalayim on 2 Adar 5422, at thirty-four.