חיזוי עתידות: לתולדותיו של ספר הפרכוס העברי

Sefer Reffafot, also known as Sefer HaPirkus (i.e., “Book of Organ Convulsions”), is a short work based on the belief that a tremor that passes through one of the body’s organs may indicate a person’s fate for better or for worse. This form of divination is known as palmomancy. In several later editions of the essay, the work was attributed to R. Hai Gaon, the last of the Babylonian Geonim and the head of the Pumbedita academy at the turn of the 10th–11th centuries. The present article examines the reliability of the work’s attribution to R. Hai Gaon, as well as its time of composition, its content, and the origin of the belief that future events may be predicted through bodily tremors. This belief has no basis in classical rabbinic literature or in the Geonic writings. It was mentioned in the Sefer Hasidim of R. Judah the Hasid, the central figure in the mystical and ascetic Ashkenazi Hasidic movement of the 12th–13th centuries. The 15th-century Italian manuscript of Sefer HaPirkus does not explicitly attribute the work to R. Hai Gaon or to R. Judah the Hasid, nor do the first Italian printings from the 16th century. There are significant differences between Sefer HaPirkus and Sefer Hasidim. Although both works discuss the same belief, it does not appear that the author of the text relied on Sefer Hasidim. The fact that Sefer HaPirkus was attached to R. Hai Gaon’s writings or those attributed to him may have contributed to his identification as the author of the book.