Moses Ben Menahem (Präger)

Cabalist of Prague; disciple of R. David Oppenheim; lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He wrote: "Wa-Yaḳhel Mosheh," cabalistic treatises on various passages of the Zohar, with a double commentary ("Masweh Mosheh" and "Tiḳḳune ha-Parẓufim"; Dessau, 1699; Zolkiev, 1741-75); "Zera' Ḳodesh," on asceticism in a cabalistic sense (to this is appended the story of a young man in Nikolsburg who was possessed by an evil spirit, which Moses ben Menahem drove out [Fürth, 1696 and, with this story omitted, 1712]). This story was published in Amsterdam, in 1696, in Judæo-German. Another edition of "Zera'Ḳodesh," with the "Bat Melek" of Simeon ben David Abiob, was published in Venice in 1712.

Bibliography:

  * Azulai, Shem ha-Gedolim, ii. 29, No. 20, Warsaw, 1876;
  * Benjacob, Oẓar ha-Sefarim, pp. 89, 149, 163;
  * Fürst, Bibl. Jud. ii. 399-400;
  * Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. cols. 1945, 2598;
  * Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. iii. 791-792.



D. S. Man.