ר' אבא מרי

Rabbi Abba Mari bar Moshe HaYarchi, called also Don Astruc, was a chacham of Provence of the close of the thirteenth century. He was born at Lunel — whence his name HaYarchi, the town’s name carrying the sense of moon — to Rabbi Moshe ben Yosef, son of the chacham Rabbi Meshullam ben Yaakov of Lunel. He occupied himself with Gemara and with Jewish thought both; he studied the writings of the Rambam and held him in esteem, but followed the path of the Ramban.

Settling in Montpellier, he found that some of the chachamim and darshanim there, particularly those drawn to the Rambam’s thought, had joined Aristotelian philosophy to the received rabbinic literature, to the point of expounding the Torah allegorically and denying the creation of the world in time and the miracles. He feared that this path, and the comparison of Aristotle with Moshe Rabbeinu, would unsettle emunah. Together with two brothers of the Vidal family he called on the Rashba of Barcelona, the greatest authority of the generation in the eyes of Provence as well as Spain, who in 5064/1304 sent letters to the chachamim of Spain and Provence to examine whether a cherem should be placed on the study of philosophy.

The Rashba received many letters of protest from Provence and elsewhere, and Rabbi Abba Mari then turned to the Rosh, who had shortly before come to Spain, to act with the Rashba in the matter. A severe cherem issued from the Rashba’s beit din on Shabbat Chazon, the fourth of Av 5065/1305, against those spreading philosophical opinions that read the Torah not according to halachah, together with a ban of fifty years on teaching philosophy to young men under twenty-five. The controversy that followed at Montpellier set Rabbi Abba Mari and his party against those who supported the study of philosophy, led by Rabbi Yaakov ben Machir ibn Tibbon; the matter reached the French authorities, who acted for the other side, and Rabbi Abba Mari and his people had to leave Montpellier and settled at Arles.

After the expulsion of the Jews of France by Philip the Fourth in 5066/1306 he settled at Perpignan, and there published the letters exchanged between the sides in a sefer called Minchat Kena’ot, by which he is chiefly known, though he wrote other works and piyutim as well. From the sefer it appears that he tried at some stage to move to Spain, could not, and returned to Arles. Teshuvot of his are known across some twenty years; in a teshuvah of 5097/1337 his name is brought with the blessing said of the departed, so he was no longer alive that year.