AMIDA (Berakha 11) All you need is love

השיבה שופטינו כבראשונה 
 
Previously, we explained the blessing  teqa’ beshofar gadol “Make sound the Shofar… that will announce our redemption… and bring us back to the Land of Israel”. 
In this blessing hashiba shofetenu we ask God to provide us with the right political leaders kebarishona “like those we had in the past”.
Our first and greatest leader was Moshe Rabbenu.
What was so special about Moshe?
1. When the people of Israel worshipped the golden calf, Moshe Rabbenu (see last week’s Parasha) rejected God’s offer to get rid of the “stubborn Jews” and make him a leader of a new Nation.  Moshe Rabbenu begged God to forgive the people of Israel. And he told God, “If not, please erase me too from Your Book”. For Moshe the whole concept of leadership would not make any sense if it would hurt the people of Israel. A good Jewish leader is the one that loves Am Israel more than he loves himself.
2. Why Moshe broke the tablets, when he saw the people dancing around the golden calf? According to one opinion, Moshe broke the tablets in an effort to defend the people of Israel. How so? The tablets,(“YOU SHALL NOT HAVE OTHER GODS”) were the most clear evidence against the people’s sin. Moshe choose to cover-up for them, breaking the incriminating document. In a sense, Moshe was willing to bring upon himself a more serious sin (breaking GOD’S tablets!) just to downplay as much as possible the sin of Israel.
3. Moshe’s love for Am Israel made him the best advocate we Jews ever had. God said: “Let me get-rid of this stubborn people”. “Stubborn”, because I took them out of Egypt, I opened for them the sea, I gave them the Manna, I gave them the Tora, I revealed Myself to them, and now, they abandon Me and worship a calf?!”.  Moshe said: You’re right, the Jews are stubborn. But once they get it, once they will have You as their God, because of their stubbornness, they will NEVER abandon You. They will be forced to convert, but they will resist. They will embrace You and Your covenant, no matter what. They will be willing to suffer humiliation, persecution, torture and death, and still be loyal to You. They will even go to their deaths saying ‘Ani Ma-amin’. This is going to be Your ‘stubborn people’.”
  
ahabat Israel, love for the People of Israel, is the prerequisite for the right Jewish Leader. 


Rabbi Yosef Hayon (15th Century, Portugal)

Not many details are known about the biographical data of rabbi Yosef Hayon (or Hayun). We know that he was born and died in Lisbon, Portugal. And that his main rabbinical activity must have been between 1440 and 1480.  We also know that he was considered “The last Rabbi of Lisbon”, before the forced conversion of the Portuguese Jews in 1496.  Rabbi Hayon was one of the four students of rabbi Isaac Canpanton (1360-1463), the Gaon of Castile (Spain) and author of darkhe haTalmud, a book that instructs teachers and rabbis how to teach the Talmud.  


We also know that Rabbi Hayon lead a selected group of students to whom he taught  the More Nebukhim, Maimonides’ Guide of Perplexed, a book that requires, beyond mastery of Biblical and rabbinical literature,  a vast knowledge of philosophy, language and science.   Among his students in that circle was the celebrate Rabbi Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508) 

Rabbi Hayon wrote commentaries on most Biblical books. But most of those books are not extant today.  What we do have in its entirety is his commentary on Pirqe Abot, written in 1470 . 

Some of the personal characteristic of Rabbi Hayon might be learned from his commentaries about the ideal Tora Scholar. 

Rabbi Hayon says (p. 163, Venezia Edition): “If a Tora scholar wants to have many students, he has to be a role model. If the teacher’s personal actions do not reflect his wisdom and his moral teachings, he will not have students”. 

When a Tora scholar teaches or speaks (p. 104), “he has to use few words with rich meaning, and not many words with little meaning… long discourses are not easy to digest for the students” 

A rabbi (p.281) “cannot loss his temper, not just with his students but with every person, because anger and wisdom exclude each other (כי הכעס מעלים חכמה).    On the contrary , the rabbi has to be friendly with all those who come to learn from him. This attitude is what will allow students to getting closer to the rabbi”.

Rabbi Hayon explains (p.174) that there is a balance to be kept in the relationship between a rabbi and his students. The rabbi, being an authority, has to behave with humbleness toward his students. But the students should not behave toward the rabbi according to the rabbi’s humbleness; the students must act toward the rabbi with the respect owed to a high authority.  
Rabbi Yosef’s great humbleness is reflected in one of his commentaries (p.187) where he says that a student should not learn just from one rabbi (תלמיד חכמים), “because even a great rabbi could be mistaken in some of his opinions, and other rabbis with less knowledge might have great ideas”.  Let’s remember that this encouragement is coming from the Senior Rabbi of Portugal. 
 
 
To download the book MILE DEABOT click here
 


AMIDA (berakha 10), Jewish Religion or Jewish people?

תקע בשופר גדול לחרותינו 
The ‘amida is divided in three sections. The first section, which includes three blessings, consists in praising God. The third section, also three blessings, is about thanking God. And the middle part, thirteen blessings, deals with our requests to God. This last section is subdivided into two major subjects: 1. Personal requests  (we ask God to grant us: intelligence, protection, good health, livelihood, etc.) and 2. National requests (Coming back to Israel, have our Political leaders back, restore our capital Jerusalem, etc.) .
Our berakha, “Bring us back to the land of Israel” inaugurates the section dealing with our National aspirations. Indeed, the first thing we ask God as a nation is to gather all of us from the four corners of the earth and to bring us back to our homeland, Israel.
Incidentally, this berakha clarifies a very relevant point, shedding light on the present debate about Israel’s claim to be recognized as a “Jewish State”.
Israel’s foes, Palestinians and the Arab League of Nations, etc., justify their rejection of a Jewish State saying that a religion-based country (a Jewish State) is a racist and apartheid state (See for example this).  They’d say that Israel’s claim is as if, for example, Japan would declare itself a Buddhist State, and grant citizenship only to people who practice Buddhism, or so.  (Needless to mention that the same logic is not applied against the establishment of the “Islamic republic of Iran” or “Saudi-Arabia”, an Islamic theocratic monarchy, which officially prohibits public non-Muslim religious activities).
An important lesson we learn from our berakha, and from the next five “national” requests, is that “religion” is not the only way to describe Judaism.  Judaism–or Jewishness–concerns primarily the legal status of every member of the Jewish NATION. Being Jewish is a virtual “citizenship”, maternally inherited, which does not expire even when a Jew lives in exile for centuries.  You cannot conceive Judaism as you conceive any regular religion: a system of faith, without national elements. Religious groups do not have a land of reference. Christians are not “a nation”.  If you are a Christian you do not pray to go back to Rome or reestablish the Christian government in the Vatican. You do not have National aspirations. On the contrary, State and Church are deliberately disconnected. The same can be said about Islam (Farrakhan’s “Nation of Islam” is the name of his religious movement, not the way Islam views itself, as it can be clearly seen from the name League of Arab “Nations”).
Judaism, as we learn from this berakha, would not make sense without the Land of Israel, or the aspiration to come back to it. Israel, the Jewish State, is the original Homeland of the Jewish People.   In this sense, “Israel, a Jewish State” is as if Japan would simply declare that “Japan is the Homeland of all Japanese people”.
Jews who live outside Israel, are proud, law-abiding and grateful citizens of the countries where we live, but we are still part of the Jewish Nation (Nation=shared history, shared language, shared Law, shared Land). And as we express it in this Berakha, our hope is that one day we will be gathered from the four corners of this planet, and reunited again in our original homeland. Fulfilling thus the ultimate vision of the Jewish Prophets:  The people of Israel, living in the Land of Israel, under the Law of Israel.


SHABBAT: Iphone vs. iShabbat

כי ששת ימים עשה ה’ את השמים ואת הארץ
Shabbat is the day in which Jews celebrate Creation. On Shabbat we give our testimony that the world is not here by happenstance. Our beautiful planet and the whole universe was made by an Intelligent Creator.  The way we celebrate Creation is by not disturbing Creation. We do not modify, recreate, ignite or activate anything.  Similar to God’s purposeful lack-of-Creation on the seventh day, we too stop all forms of human creativity. The creative tasks applied to the construction of the Mishkan serve as the model of all creative tasks we refrain from on the seventh day.
But, beyond this, is Shabbat still necessary?
Well, I believe it is.  I actually think that in certain sense Shabbat is today more relevant than ever in human history.  Think about the newest addiction: “The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month.”    Says Pico Iyer in the NYT (December 29, 2011).  Texting and Whatsapping became epidemic. And we are not communicating better. Actually “We have more and more ways to communicate…but less and less to say.”
Pico seems to believe that Shabbat is the future of human civilization  “Since luxury…is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow… will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once.”
Shabbat is needed to re-humanize us: “Two journalist friends of mine observe an ‘Internet sabbath’ every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation.”
Lastly, Shabbat also helps us to save some money: “Those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in ‘black-hole resorts,’ which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms”
Disconnect your phones (and see that your children do the same!). And reconnect with HaShem, with your family and with yourself. 


AMIDA (Berakha 09) , “Make us rich… but save us from Affluenza”

The 9th berakha of the Amida, barekhenu or barekh alenu, is the blessing in which we ask haShem to grant our livelihood (parnasa).
 
This blessing focuses specifically on requesting dew, rain, a good year’s crop, and a successful production of vegetables and fruits.  We ask HaShem to provide us material blessings and protect our source of livelihood from weather inclemencies and other natural disasters.
We particularly ask God to send rain. One of the most disastrous scenarios for the economy of Israel, and this is true even today,  is a period of drought.  Rain coming on its due time is God’s blessing to the people of Israel, as it is explicitly recorded in the Shema Israel. We also learned in the second part of the Shema that rain in the land of Israel is conditioned to the people of Israel’s keeping God’s Covenant. The Tora describes a sort of cause/effect dynamics between the People of Israel’s behavior and Israel’s skies. Heavens of the Holy Land are not governed by the rules of nature but by God’s retribution or reward to Israel’s loyalty.
Although this berakha refers exclusively to the agricultural aspects of Israel’s economy, because it was conceived for the ancient Israel nation, when Jews dedicated mostly to agriculture, it also alludes to our general economic success. This berakha implicitly includes our request to God to bless our sources of livelihood in present times: our businesses, our jobs, our investments, etc. 
Another important thing we learn from this berakha is that we specifically ask God to send rain as ‘blessing’ (tal umatar librakha). In other words, we expect to receive whatever rain is needed for the land, and not more than that! Rain in excess is the opposite of blessing.  Similarly, in many areas of material life, excess might be counterproductive.  Material excess can turn into a psychological “disorder”, which might affect us and our children, known as “Affluenza” 1. The feelings of unfulfillment and frustration that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by tireless pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to consumption.   
We should ask HaShem to bless us, providing us with what we really need.   
 
 
More on asking God in excess of
what you really need
“How the Lives of 10 Lottery Millionaires went Disastrously Wrong” (from money.co.uk)

Who wants to be a millionaire? Most people, surely (except billionaires of course). But sadly, winning a truck-load of money on the lottery, any lottery, comes with a heap of baggage. Daydreams of a millionaire lifestyle seem to have a habit of turning sour faster than a sub-prime mortgage, isolation, paranoia, drugs, crime, poverty and prison await those who fail to adjust, as this top ten of ‘Lottery Losers’ shows:

1. Jack Whittaker won a record $314.9m Powerball Jackpot in 2002. But life since then has been a long list of arrests, lawsuits, broken relationships and even death. In 2007, his then wife, Jewell admitted she wished she had ‘torn up the ticket’.

2. William “Bud” Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lotrery in 1988. He later described the experience as a nightmare and wishes it had never happened – who can blame him after he was sued by a former girlfriend eager to get her hands on the cash and his brother hired a hitman in the hope of inheriting the winnings. He invested in ill-fated family businesses and within a year was $1m in debt. Today he gets by on social security payments.

3. Luke Pittard from Wales won a ‘measly’ £1.3m on the National Lottery. After the novelty worn off and the obligatory lavish holiday, wedding and new home were done and dusted, he got bored and returned to work at MacDonalds.

4. An as-yet-unnamed Sicilian won £79m on the Italian lottery in 2008. Before he or she could even collect the winnings consumer groups were demanding that the windfall be seized by the government. The winner has since gone into hiding, fearing the Mafia will come calling.

5. Janite Lee won $18 million in 1993. Her generosity in giving money to a variety of political, educational and community causes was commendable – but just eight years later she filed for bankruptcy.

6. Mark Gardiner from London won $ 11m in 1995. Thirteen miserable years later, he hasn’t lost his money, but he has lost all his friends – even the ones he treated to new £100,000 homes – and lost touch with his family.

7. Michael Carroll won a £9.7m National Lottery Jackpot in 2002. Since then he has appeared in court more than 30 times and been jailed for drug related offences. In 2008, he admitted that ‘just’ £500,000 of his windfall remained.

8. Willie Hurt won 3.1 million in 1989. Two years later the money  was gone and he was on a murder charge. Hurt spent his fortune on a divorce and crack cocaine.

9. Charles Riddle won $1 million in 1975. The original lottery car crash, he quickly got divorced, faced several lawsuits and was eventually indicted for selling cocaine.

10. Ken Proxmire won $1 million in the Michigan Lottery.He moved to California and invested in a car business with his brothers. Five years later, he was bankrupt and back working as a machinist.

 



Rabbi Ya’aqob Kholi (1689-1732)

Rabbi Ya’aqob Kholi (aka Culi, Koli, etc) was born in Yerushalayim in 1689. In those days the situation of the Jews in Israel turned to be disastrous, politically and financially, and at a young age, rabbi Ya’aqob established himself in Constantinople, Turkey.  There he met the famous rabbi Yehuda Rosanes. Rabbi Ya’aqob became one of this best students, and Rabbi Rosanes assigned him as Dayan of Constantinople.  In 1727 rabbi Rosanes died, leaving behind a vast literary work in handwriting. Rabbi Ya’aqob took upon himself to publish his teacher’s books, knowing that the task will demand many years of his life.  In 1728 he published Rabbi Rosanes’ Parashat Derakhim and in 1731 he published the most famous book of rabbi Rosanes: Mishne leMelekh, a commentary on Maimonides’ Mishne Tora.  During these years he also began his own work, the famous book me’am lo’ez.  
Me’am lo’ez is an extraordinary book, a monumental anthology of Midrashim and Halakhic material, arranged according to the weekly Parasha. The special thing about this book is that it was one of the first books written for the masses, not for Tora-scholars.  One book of this sort was previously written, ‘en-ya’aqob, by Rabbi Kholi’s great-grandfather, rabbi Ya’aqob ibn Habib.  The book was written in Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish (Spanish written with Hebrew characters) the language introduced  by those Jews expelled from Spain in 1492, which became popular among most Sephardic communities.   

Aside form the rich Talmudic material, rabbi Ya’aqob introduced many autobiographic notes and anecdotes, which makes the reader feel transported to the ancient Sephardic communities in Turkey and other parts of the Middle East, where Jews were victims of permanent abuse and persecutions. In those difficult circumstances Me’am Lo’ez invites the Jewish families to see the Shabbat as an “Island of time”, a 24 hours opportunity to disconnect from sadness and enjoy peace and happiness.  The author encourages Jews, most of them living in poor conditions, to practice Hesed (kindness) with those who are in a worse situation.  He found that the best antidote to cope with the feelings of hardship is not self-pity but opening one’s homes and hearts to those who are poorer than him (hakhnasat orahim), to take care of the widows, the orphans and the sick.  Rabbi Kholi died at a very young age. When he was just 43 years old.  

 

 
ספר מעם לועז
Rabbi Kholi, the author of me’am lo’ez, wrote the book of Genesis and on two thirds of the book of Shemot.  He had a great zekhut: in the same way that he published the books of his ancestors and teachers, his own book me’am lo’ez was continued by several rabbis from Turkey and other communities, for generations to come. 
Rabbi Ytshaq Magriso completed the book of Exodus and wrote the commentary on the books of Leviticus and Numbers.
Deuteronomy was written by Rabbi Ytshaq Bekhor Agruiti. 
The Book of Yehoshua by Rabbi Rahamim Menahem Miterani. 
The book of Esther by Rabbi Raphael Hiya Pontremoli. 
Rabbi Shemuel Yerushalmi translated the Me’am Lo’ez to Hebrew. 
And Rabbi  Aryeh Kaplan from Ladino to English  (see this)


 


AMIDA (Berakha 08) HaShem is the ultimate Healer

רְפָאֵנוּ ה’ וְנֵרָפֵא
“Cure us, Oh God, so we will be cured…”

 

In this berakha we acknowledge that God is the ultimate healer.  When we are sick, we assert, our cure ultimately comes from Him.
 
This Berakha, and the subject of being sick/being cured is a great example of the complex dynamics between man’s freedom of choice and God’s intervention in our lives. 
 
First, in the way a disease is acquired. Many times illness is a consequence of our wrong choices. If we make an habit of eating the wrong foods, or if we don’t take care of our health, sickness might be directly or indirectly our own making. The Rabbis expressed this idea in TB Ketubot 30a: הכל בידי שמים חוץ מצינים פחים “Everything is in God’s hand, except colds and insolation”. In other words, if I willingly expose myself too much to cold or too much to heat, I cannot expect HaShem to protect me from my bad choices.   On the other hand, certain diseases (perhaps most) are not a consequence of our behavior, but an adversity out of our control. And many times it is impossible (and useless) to assess where the blame should be placed.  In any case, we pray to HaShem to help us and to remove from us all illness, pains and wounds.  
 

The second point is that the Tora forbids a person to rely just on God for getting cured. We are obligated to seek a physician’s intervention (verapo yerape). We can’t just hope that illness will vanish by HaShem’s grace.  What this Berakha makes clear is that when we visit the doctor, we believe that it is still HaShem who cures us (harbe shelihim lamaqom). We believe that God acts through the medical advise of the physician, or through the hands of the surgeon in the operation room. It is ultimately Him, by means of myriad of human agents -doctors, researchers, nurses- who brings healing and alleviates the sick. Physicians are HaShem’s privileged agents in the art of healing. God, we believe, is behind man’s wisdom to develop medications, and behind man’s ability to cure sickness.

 
We must do all in our power to avoid being sick. And we must do all in our power to get cured. Nevertheless, we pray and beseech God to protect us from all illness, to heal our pain, to cure our wounds and to prolong our lives.  We recognize Him as the ultimate healer. He has the final say.

 



AMIDA (Berakha 07), HaShem, our next of kin

ראה נא בענינו וריבה ריבנו

Please [God] see our suffering and fight our fights, and to grant us a complete salvation, for the sake of Your name, because You are a powerful GO-EL. Blessed are You , God, the GO-EL of Israel.

In this berakha we ask God for His assistance and deliverance.

The key to understand this prayer is the Hebrew word GO-EL. GO-EL means “redeemer”.  In some contexts this term refers to the Messiah. The Messianic times are also known as the days of GE-ULA, the redemption of Israel and the return to the Land of Israel. In the next section, when we ask God to fulfill our national requests, we will have two specific berakhot for these subjects. One berakha in which we ask haShem to bring us back to Israel, and the other in which we ask HaShem to bring us the Messiah, a descendent of King David.  

 

Thus, in the context of this berakha GO-EL should not be connected to the Mashiah or our National GE-ULA. GO-EL in this berakha means: ‘next of kin’ or ‘closest relative’.

 

According to Jewish Law it is the duty of the GO-EL or ‘next of kin’ to help his relatives in moments of need. The best example is Boaz and Naomi. Boaz, a relative of Elimelekh,  assists Naomi, Elimelekh’s widow, and takes care of her and her daughter in law Ruth.  We need to bear in mind that Elimelekh betrayed his own people leaving to Moab, enemy territory. We could have assumed that Elimelekh’s relatives should not deserve anymore the next of kin’s assistance. We see, however, that the duties of the GO-EL supersedes considerations of merit.

 

In this berakha we appeal to God as ‘our next of kin’, ‘our closest relative’, asking Him to assist us and deliver us from suffering. We beseech HaShem as our GO-EL, certain that He will assist us, even if we do not have enough merit to deserve His intervention in our behalf.

What is the diffeence between teshuba and geula? 

Teshuba < i do it by myself. 

In any scenario that I cannot help myself, that I need SOMONE else, then is call GEULA. 

HaShem is our GOEL. We are asking here His collaboration when we cannot do more…



AMIDA (Berakha 06) Father vs King

סלח לנו אבינו כי חטאנו , מחול לנו מלכנו כי פשענו
“Forgive us, our Father, because we have inadvertently sinned; pardon us, our King, because we have rebelled [against You]”
 
In the 6th berakha of the Amida we ask HaShem Almighty for forgiveness.
 
We refer to God with two key words: abinu and malkenu
 
abinu means “Our father”. As we have previously explained, we Jews believe that God loves us as we love our children. We appeal to HaShem first as our loving father. Confident that no matter how bad we might have behaved, we know He will always take us back. Same as a loving but responsible parent, all God demands from us to forgive our offenses toward Him, is that we take charge and admit our responsibility.   When we refer to God as “our father” we describe our sins as “hat aim” or inadvertent wrongdoings. We excuse ourselves saying that our general intention is to do good, but sometimes we make mistakes or we fail to control our impulses…
 
But we also know that God is malkenu, our King. The King is the ultimate authority. In ancient monarchies, Israel included, the King was also the supreme Judge, and among other things the King had the power to sentence his subjects to death. Every time we say melekh we are stating that our lives are at His mercy. When addressing God as a King we use the word pasha’nu, we rebelled against You. We disobeyed You. We don’t excuse ourselves as before.
 
abinu and malkneu often come together to express that God is the One who granted us the gift of life (abinu), and He is also the One who can take life away from us (malkenu). The tension between these two words is solved at the end of this berakha: “Barukh Ata haShem, hanun hamarbe lisloah” we say that HaShem is merciful, and that He forgives abundantly. At the end of this prayer we assert, and simultaneously wish for, that God as “our father” prevails over God as “the King”. As a loving parent He will see our sins as mistakes, not rebellion. And He will be waiting for us to come back to Him.
 
אני שלום וכי אדבר המה למלחמה
 
PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS (Jews and non-Jews). 
THIS IS MOST YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ISRAEL AND ITS CURRENT EFFORTS FOR PEACE 
 
 
 

 



Rabbi Binyamin Musafia (1606-1675)

Rabbi Binyamin ben Emanuel Musafia was born in Spain in 1606. He belonged to a family of “conversos”, Jews that were forced to convert and pretend to live as Christians, while studying Tora and observe Jewish law in secret.  In Spain he studied medicine and at a young age he went to Hamburg where he was able to practice openly his Jewish faith.
While in Hamburg he was invited to serve as a physician in the Danish-Norway Monarchy. He was the personal doctor of King Christian the IVth. Here in 1640 he composed his first book in Latin:   “Sacro-Medics” a book that contains 650 different medical advices, cures and antidotes coming from the Hebrew Bible. He signed his name in Latin  “Dionysius Manuel”
In 1642 he went to Amsterdam. When his wife died, six years after their wedding, he composed in her honor a book called “zekher rab”, in this book he took all the nouns and verbs of the Hebrew Bible in thematic order and composed for each term pomes of praise and prayer to haShem.  This extraordinary book was reprinted in Germany in 1868 by rabbi Naftali Hertz with footnotes mentioning the sources of each term.  To download this book click  here.
At his old age Rabbi Musafia served as the rabbi of the Sephardic community of Amsterdam (Spanish -Portuguese). At this time he wrote a commentary on the Talmud of Jerusalem which was never published.  In those days 1664-1665 the false Messiah Shabbetai Zebi was acclaimed by most Jewish communities and Rabbis.  The community of Amsterdam was no exception, and apparently, rabbi Musafia was also a supporter of Shabettai Zebi until the false Messiah converted to islam in 1666.   As rabbi David Margaliot explains, unfortunately most rabbis of that time fell naively into this belief, more for psychological than from philosophical reasons.
The main contribution of Rabbi Binyamin Musafia is a book called “Musaf he’arukh”, a supplement to the famous book “he’arukh”. The book “he’arukh” written in the 11th century by Rabbi Nathan ben Yehiel from Roma, is one of the most important books of Jewish linguistic. A comprehensive dictionary of difficult words found in the Talmud and Midrash.  The sefer he’arukh was extensively used by great rabbis, for example, Rashi (see TB Shabbat 13b) who quoted the ‘arukh as an authoritative book . Rabbi Musafia wrote a multiple-volumes supplement to that book: “Mosif he’arukh”.  Rabbi Musafia was an expert in classic literature and languages, and the Talmudic Literature contains approximately 3000 terms coming from Greek or Latin. His contribution was thus priceless.
He died in Amsterdam in 1675.