Leaves of an Unknown Hebrew Work Related to Abraham Azulai’s Ba’ale Berit Avram

This paper reports the discovery of several leaves of an unknown Hebrew work that appears to be related to the biblical commentary Ba’ale Berit Avram written by Rabbi Abraham ben Mordechai Azulai, the author of Hesed Le-Avraham (c. 1160-c. 1741). These handwritten pages have been used as endpaper in a volume containing printed editions of מנהג אבות תניא (1514, Mantua) and השגות של הרבמ``ן ז``ל (1510, Constantinople). The volume was in private collection of Professor Rabbi Israel Otto Lehman (Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati). While some of the text found in these leaves is quite close to Azulai’s Ba’ale Berit Avram, there are also notable differences between the two works, including a presence of entire units that have no parallel in Rabbi Azulai’s commentary. The paper offers a provisional reading of the newly-found pages and asks whether the work they belong to makes a use of Ba’ale Berit Avram or perhaps preserves one of Rabbi Azulai’s previously unknown sources.