מנחם ציוני

Rabbi Menachem Tziyoni ben Meir of Speyer (מנחם ציוני) was a mekubal (master of kabbalah) and paytan (liturgical poet) of Ashkenaz, who lived from about 1340 to about 1410. He is known above all for his sefer Tziyoni on the Torah, a collection of explanations by way of the hidden Torah, and he is the first person known to have called himself “Tziyoni.”

He was born in Speyer, in Germany, to Rabbi Meir, whose mother Yenta was the daughter of Rabbi Yakar ben Shmuel of Cologne. As a young man he went to Jerusalem and learned in the yeshiva of Rabbi Yitzchak of Bilstein; in the introduction to his sefer he writes that he took the name Tziyoni because of his learning in Jerusalem. He then returned to Frankfurt. In 1373 he was in Cologne, and in 1388 he was living in Venice. He wrote two sefarim, Tziyoni and Tzefunei Tziyoni, and dozens of poems, many of them about Tziyon. He is most likely the author of the kinah (lament) for Tisha B’Av Tziyon Me’on Cheshki, said in the Western Ashkenaz order of kinot, whose acrostic reads Menachem Tziyon ben HaRav Rabbi Meir.

The Tziyoni draws on the Zohar and the Bahir, on the early kabbalistic writings of the time of the geonim, on Rashi, and on rishonim such as Rav Saadia Gaon’s Emunot VeDeot, the Rambam’s Moreh Nevuchim, Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra and the Ramban; in Parshat Vayeshev he brings the Rashba. It opens with poems arranged by the alef-bet and in acrostic. Bereishit opens with an introduction on why it matters to believe that the world was created, quoting the Rambam’s proofs at length. Short poems lead from one parsha to the next, and an acrostic poem closes the book.

The Yalkut Reuveni quotes the Tziyoni many times. It was printed in Cremona in 1559; that same year Spanish soldiers burned the edition, and it was printed there again in 1560.

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