Jacob ben Hayyim Zemah (Hebrew:יעקב צמח) was aPortuguesekabalist and physician. He received a medical training in his native country as aMarrano, but fled about 1619 toSafed and devoted himself to theTalmud and the casuists ("poseḳim") until 1625; then he went toDamascus, where for eighteen years he studiedkabbalah from theZohar and the writings ofIsaac Luria andHayyim Vital. He finally settled atJerusalem and opened ayeshivah for the study of the Zohar and other kabbalistic works,David Conforte being for some time one of his pupils.[1]
Jacob Ẓemaḥ was one of the greatest kabbalists of his period and was a prolific author, his works including treatises of his own as well as compilations of the writings of Ḥayyim Vital. He produced twenty works, of which only two have been published. The first of these is theḲol ba-Ramah (Korez, 1785), a commentary on theIdra, which he began in 1643, and for which he utilized the commentary of Ḥayyim Vital. In the preface to this work he maintained that the coming of theMessiah depended on repentance ("teshuvah") and on the study of kabbalah from the Zohar and the writings of Isaac Luria, the delay in the advent of the Messiah being because schools for such study had not been established in every town.
His second published work is theNagid u-Meẓawweh (Amsterdam, 1712), on the mystical meaning of the prayers, this being an abridgment of a compendium which Ẓemaḥ composed on the basis of a more comprehensive treatise.
Among his unpublished works, special mention may be made of theRonnu le-Ya'aḳob, in which he calls himself "the proselyte" ("ger ẓedeḳ").[2] This treatise consists of notes recorded while studying underSamuel Vital and supplemented by his own additions. In his compilation of Ḥayyim Vital's writings, Ẓemaḥ pretended to have discovered many works of Vital which were unknown to the latter's son Samuel.
He died at Jerusalem in the second half of the 17th century.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906)."Zemah, Jacob ben Hayyim".The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Its bibliography:
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