This is an interesting excerpt from Joseph Wolff's Missionary Journals, his diaries from his period in the Holy Land in the early 1820s. It concerns his meeting with Rabbi Joseph Marcowitz and their discussion of the 72 letter name of God, and Marcowitz's alleged use of it in performing a miraculous exorcism in Constantinople.
Marcowitz is identified by Wolff as 80 years old, from Poland, and regarded by the Jews as a Ba'al Shem. Later in his journal he writes that the Sephardic Jews became angry with Marcowitz for teaching the 72 letter Name to Wolff. In other places in the journal, Wolff writes about various discussions about passages in the Talmud which he had with Marcowitz, including an instance of a fantastic aggadah which other Jews were annoyed at Marcowitz for showing him, because, writes Wolff, it would make the Talmud appear ridiculous to him.
All of it is interesting and worth a read, but the part I like best is a little mistake that Wolff makes, so I will highlight at the top:
As you can see, Wolff writes that Marcowitz showed him a copy of the Sefer Raziel Ha-malach, and he translates the title page. In doing so, Wolff identifies the edition; Amsterdam 1701. And as you can see, he rather clumsily misconstrued the name of the printer, who was not Moses Ben Ayeshish, but Moses ben ha-yashish [=the aged] and honorable gentleman Abraham Mendes Coutinho z"l. What is strange about this is the way the names are actually set apart in large type, so not only is this Wolff not understanding the Hebrew word הישיש, for some inexplicable reason he failed to notice the last two lines which give the printer's complete name. Maybe he copied wrong, or didn't see it fast enough to get all of it. Who can tell?
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