In honor of the Lag B’Omer holiday beginning Monday night, the ANU Museum of the Jewish People is unveiling a 16th-century prayer book based on the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as Ha’ari, a leading 16th-century mystic from Safed.

It was Luria who turned Lag B’Omer, initially considered a technical break in the counting of the Omer period, into a major kabbalistic holiday.

The rare prayer book contains his mystical intentions.

Written in ink on paper and bound in an ornate leather cover decorated with leather panels and gold leaf, the prayer book reflects Luria’s spiritual tradition, in which prayer is seen as a means of repairing the world and accessing the higher spiritual realms.

He composed the kavanot, meditative intentions designed to guide one’s thoughts during prayer, based on the belief that these intentions could affect the divine and the cosmos.

The prayer book includes detailed instructions for the meditative intentions, with visual........

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