אברהם בן אליעזר הלוי

Rav Avraham ben Eliezer HaLevi, called HaZaken, the Elder (c. 5220/1460–between 5290 and 5295/1530–1535), was a mekubal, a rosh yeshiva in Yerushalayim, and one of the great mechashvei kitzin of the generation of the Spanish expulsion. He was born in Spain, in Toledo, some thirty years before the gerush, a brother of Rav Shlomo HaLevi; he married, in her second marriage, the mother of Rav Moshe Castro, a sister of Rav Avraham Zacut, author of Sefer Yuchasin. His rebbe in Kabbalah was Rav Yitzchak Gakon, and he learned as well from his uncle Rav Avraham ben Nachmiash. Shortly before the expulsion of 5252/1492 he completed Masoret HaChochmah, a short survey of the Kabbalah of Spain.

The gerush (exile of the Jews) carried him out of Spain by way of Portugal and Italy; he was in Greece before 5268/1508, in Constantinople in 5270/1510, and afterward in Egypt. He came up to Eretz Yisrael in approximately 5273/1513 and settled in Yerushalayim, where he learned in the yeshiva of Rav Yitzchak HaKohen Sholal, the nagid of Egypt; he was among the foremost of its chachamim and in time. The letters he sent out from Yerushalayim in those years carry chidushim in Kabbalah and serve as a source for the history of the city’s Jews, and it was from Yerushalayim that he wrote in 5288/1528 to the Beta Yisrael of Ethiopia, one of the earliest exchanges between them and the Jews of Europe and Israel.

He wrote at length on the geulah, leaving scarcely a source in the wide literature on it that he did not take up. He held that 5284/1524 would be the year of the pekidah, reading it out of the pasuk in Korach on the staff of Aharon that budded and blossomed and bore almonds, with 5290/1530 as the year of the final geulah — and his brother-in-law Rav Avraham Zacut reached the same reckoning in Sefer Yuchasin. Fourteen years before the appointed time, while in Constantinople, he printed Mishra Kitrin on the keitz spoken of in Sefer Daniel, one of the earliest Hebrew sefarim to come off a press. Asked in 5285 why the pekidah had not come, he answered that it had indeed begun, the first to be redeemed being Bnei Reuven of the ten tribes. In Yerushalayim he wrote Ma’amar Perek Chelek on the sugyot of Sanhedrin that speak of the geulah, and in 5281/1521 Iggeret Sod HaGeulah on the Zohar; his Sefer Ohel Moed, Megillat Amrafel with its kavanot for kiddush Hashem, Sefer Zikaron on Rashi on the Torah, and his commentary on Shir HaShirim and Kohelet remain in manuscript.