A segulah for shemirah for your home!
Yesod Yitzchak by the Hidden Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Eisik Shochat of Zuravitch
Zolkova, 1810. First Edition
Yesod Yitzchak by the hidden kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Eisik Shochat of Zuravitch is divided into two parts. The first section is a collection of kabbalistic drashos on bris milah and order of study on the night prior to the bris; and the second section, entitled Halichos Olam, is a list of warnings, each opening with the phrase “One should always be cautious to…”
Rabbi Yitzchak Eisik Shochat of Zuravitch (1735-1783) authored the kabbalistic works ‘Raza Mehemna’ and ‘Osios D’Rabbi Yitzchak’. He served as a shochet and bodek in the town of Zuravitch, near Premishla. Eventually, word of his greatness spread far and wide, and contemporary sages attested that while Rabbi Yitzchak Eisik slaughtered an animal, he rectified the spiritual soul that had returned as a gilgul inside of it.
This is the first edition of his sefer.
These sacred writings endured thanks to the prudence of the Yismach Moshe of Ihel. The author had commanded his offspring to bury his writings together with him, but when the Yismach Moshe heard of this, he swiftly ordered scribes to copy and preserve these writings before the burial could take place (see preface to ‘Raza Mehemna’, Lemberg, 1791).
The beginning of the sefer features impressive haskamahs, with the rarest of all being a rare haskamah by the Ketzos Hachoshen.
The said haskamos all praise the author effusively as a hidden tzaddik and kabbalist. The author of Beis Efraim, for example, describes him: “A holy man of G-d, genius of secrets, modest in his ways. We found no one like him in his generation, a faithful kabbalist; a good name surpasses fine oil…It was always his way to conceal himself…”
This is an important sefer that is used as a segulah against illness and as protection for women during and after childbirth.
In the preface to the Premishla 1910 edition, the publisher notes:
“I heard from the grandson of the tzaddik Rabbi Moshe of Kariv z”l…who heard from his grandfather… that his father
Harav Hagaon Hakadosh Sar Shalom of Belz zt”l once said about this sefer that learning it is an excellent, effective segulah in every home, and especially in the house of a woman in childbirth.”
Other Rabbanim, including the grandson of the Sar Shalom of Belz, writes in his warm haskamah,
“Bring this sefer into your home, and revel in it, as it is a wonderful shemirah for the home, and illness will not approach your tents. One with a generous heart will bring this sefer into his home, as written in the above ‘Kuntress Ateres Yesod’ in the name of the holy Rav Hagaon Hakadosh Sar Shalom of Belz zt”l.”
Zolkova, 1810. First Edition.
Page Count: 69 leaves.
Page Size: 22.8 cm.
Condition: Good; light wear in the margins of the title page and one more page; stains (mostly on last page). New leather binding.
Bibliography: Stefansky, Sifrei Chassidus #233
