משה בן מרדכי זכות

Rav Moshe ben Mordechai Zacuto (5385/1625–16 Tishrei 5458/1 October 1697), known by his acronym as the Ramaz and in English sources as Moses Zacuto, was a rav, mekubal and payetan, counted among the greatest mekubalim of Italian Jewry in the seventeenth century. He was born in Amsterdam into a family of anusim from Portugal that had fled there after the expulsion, a descendant of the historian and astronomer Rav Avraham Zacut. He learned in the Ets Haim beit midrash of the Amsterdam kehillah, founded by Rav Menashe ben Yisrael, and in the yeshiva of Rav Shaul Morteira. He had learned Latin in his youth, and once he had come to his own mind he fasted forty days hoping to forget it, holding that it could not sit together with the truths of kabbalah.

To learn kabbalah he went to Poznan in Poland, to Rav Yitzchak of Poznan, a talmid of Rav Shephtil son of the Shelah, and in 1645 he moved to Italy. The core of his learning in kabbalah he took from Rav Binyamin HaLevi, a talmid of Rav Chaim Vital who had come to Italy from Tzfat. He reached Venice at the request of the city’s chief rabbi, Rav Azaryah Figo, who sought a replacement in his old age, and there he served as a proofreader of sefarim and as rosh yeshiva of the Sephardic kehillah. In 5433/1673, at the urging of his talmidim, he moved to Mantua at a fixed salary of three hundred ducats a year, founded a yeshiva there, gathered a wide circle of talmidim, and served as rav of the city until his passing.

In his yeshiva he set up a copying enterprise for the writings of the Arizal, and from it those writings spread through Europe together with the minhagei tefillah built on them. He sifted the writings of the Arizal’s talmidim and concluded that the only ones fit for learning the Torah of the Ari were those of Rav Chaim Vital, which he called “clean flour” and “received from those above,” while he set aside the writings of the other talmidim as resting on reasoning and conjecture. Among his works are Kol HaRemez, his peirush on the Mishnayot — which he knew by heart — printed in Amsterdam in 5479/1718; Shorshei HaShemot, on the holy Names arranged alphabetically; Iggrot HaRemez, mostly letters of kabbalah to his talmid Rav Binyamin HaKohen Vitali; Shudda deDayyanei, takanot for the kehillah of Mantua issued in 5438/1678 together with the other rabbanim of the city; a peirush on the Tikkunei Zohar; and his responsa, first printed in Venice in 5521/1761.

As a payetan he composed the seder of Tikkun Shovavim, the tikkunim for the nights of Hoshana Rabbah and Shavuot, Elef Alpin — a bakashah of a thousand words each opening with the letter alef — and the piyut Or HaGanuz, sung to this day among many edot. He also wrote Tofteh Aruch, on Gehinnom, printed anonymously in Venice in 5475/1715 with the peirush of Rav Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea; it left its mark on the Ramchal, who married a granddaughter of the Ramaz. His leading talmidim were Rav Binyamin HaKohen Vitali of Reggio, who followed him at the head of his beit midrash, Rav Avraham Rovigo, Rav Yehudah Briel, Rav Yeshayah Bassan and Rav Aviad Sar Shalom Basilea. He was niftar in Mantua on 16 Tishrei 5458; his matzeivah came to light in the twentieth century in a storehouse of building materials in the city.