יצחק דמן עכו

Rav Yitzchak ben Shmuel d’min Akko (c. 5010/1250–5100/1340), known in English sources as Isaac of Acre, was a mekubal of Eretz Yisrael, counted among the great chachamim of Akko in the last generation of that city’s Jewish community. He was born in Akko, then the most important port city of Eretz Yisrael with a flourishing kehillah; his rebbe muvhak was Rav Shlomo ben Shmuel HaTzarfati of Akko, and some count him a talmid-chaver of the Ramban, though the matter is doubtful. When the city fell to the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Khalil in 5051/1291 and most of its Jews were killed or taken captive, Rav Yitzchak was among the captives. He was redeemed, is found in Italy in 5061/1301, and traveled from there to Spain, where he settled in Navarre and lived until his petirah at the age of ninety.

In Spain he undertook the inquiry for which he is remembered in the annals of kabbalah: tracing the origin of the Sefer HaZohar, which had then first spread through Rav Moshe de Leon. He met Rav Moshe at Valladolid, who swore that an ancient manuscript written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai himself lay in his house at Ávila; Rav Moshe was niftar before he could show it, and Rav Yitzchak went on gathering testimony, hearing conflicting accounts. His report, drawn from his lost history Divrei HaYamim, is preserved in the first edition of the Sefer Yuchasin; and from his later sefarim it is clear that in the end he was convinced of the Zohar’s antiquity — in his Otzar HaChayim he holds that the Zohar is the Torah of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.

He wrote many sefarim, most of which were never printed. His Meirat Einayim, explaining the sodot in the Ramban’s pirush on the Torah, circulated in manuscript for centuries and was printed in full in Yerushalayim in 5735/1975; his Otzar HaChayim, a journal of his avodah in kabbalah, was printed in 5780/2020 by Machon Chochmei Yerushalayim. He also wrote a pirush on Sefer Yetzirah and a sefer of mussar that Rav Eliyahu de Vidas quotes again and again in Reishit Chochmah. The Chida writes that he saw manuscripts of his describing how, through the chochmah of tzeruf of the holy Names that he received from his rebbeim, malachim would come and reveal sodot to him. In many manuscripts he is cited by the acronym HaYida — “the Rav Yitzchak d’min Akko.”