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Sefer Yesod: Meshech Chochmah by Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk. Special Copy with White Leaves. First Edition. Riga, 1927. * Explanations and commentaries, insights and drashos, notes and chiddushim on the Chamisha Chumshei Torah, by the gaon Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk, author of Ohr Somayach. First edition of the foundational commentary of the Ohr Somayach on the Torah, a vast treasury of original insights, precious pearls of hashkafa, and foundational principles in halacha. Written on the title page: “Compiled with the will of our Father in Heaven.” Rabbi Meir Simcha held his sefer Meshech Chochmah in especially high regard and would often say that he toiled and labored over Meshech Chochmah far more than over Ohr Somayach (Rabbeinu Meir Simcha HaKohen, p. 66). The Imrei Emes spoke exceedingly highly of the sefer, and it never left his table (testimony of Rabbi A. Zamba in the name of his uncle, Rabbi Menachem Zemba, Hy”d). Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, Av Beis Din of Vilna, established a fixed study session in it every Erev Shabbos and would marvel at the great light hidden within it (testimony of Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth, ibid., p. 64). During his final illness, he entrusted the sefer for publication to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Zak, Av Beis Din of Riga, telling him, “It contains great and hidden treasures.” A century has passed since the sefer was first printed, and since then it has been reprinted many times in dozens of editions. A very fine copy. Riga, 1927. First edition. Page Count: 217 leaves. Condition : Good. A few stains. New binding. Bibliography : Stefansky, Sifrei Yesod, no. 30. - - - - - - - - - - - - “Rabbi Meir Simcha was the great luminary of his generation, and his light shines forth as well through his remarkable sefarim, Ohr Somayach on the Rambam and Meshech Chochmah on the Torah. If in Ohr Somayach we encounter the depth and breadth of his Torah, then in Meshech Chochmah we come to know something of the man himself. In the former we see his brilliance; in the latter we see the gaon himself — a living portrait of this great man, of his Torah and his thoughts on every subject and every sphere of life: the individual and the community, the private person and the nation, Yisrael and the nations of the world, the mitzvos and their underlying meaning, character traits and mussar, exile and redemption…” (Maran Rabbeinu Meir Simcha HaKohen, 1967, p. 62). - - - - - - - - - - - - The Prophecy of the Ohr Somayach Before the Holocaust: “He Will Think that Berlin is Jerusalem… Then a Raging Storm Shall Come” In the present sefer Meshech Chochmah, in Parshas Bechukosai, Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk cries out in pain against the movement of Jews seeking to settle permanently in exile and to forget their Yiddishkeit. In his words: “He will think that Berlin is Jerusalem.” Of these Jews, he warns in chilling language: “A raging storm shall come and uproot him from his roots… He will realize that he is, but a stranger… and foreign tongues are like a transient garment.” After these harsh words come words of consolation as well: “I [Hashem] have not despised them nor rejected them to destroy them.” This passage became famous and was quoted hundreds of times following the destruction of European Jewry. Rabbi Menachem Zemba, may Hashem avenge his blood, showed these words to his talmidim even before the Holocaust, and Rabbi Menasheh HaKatan of Ungvar quoted them and wrote of them: “As though from the mouth of a prophet of Hashem.”