תּוֹלְדוֹת
Rabbi Shlomo ben Reuven Bonafed (שלמה בונפיד) was a rabbi and Hebrew poet of Sefarad in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, one of the last Hebrew poets of Christian Spain. He was most likely born in Catalonia, lived first in Zaragoza and later in other cities, and was niftar some time after 1445.
His father took care to give him a broad education. He knew Spanish and Latin well, kept on learning by himself as an adult, and went to a Christian teacher to study logic. A long, sharp debate with one of his talmidim shows his knowledge of philosophy; in it he quotes many Christian writers.
Poetry was his main occupation, and he was perhaps the last poet in Spain who tried to earn his living by his writing. About 363 poems are attributed to him, besides pieces of rhymed prose and tales. They are gathered in his diwan (collection of poems), which survives in manuscript and holds much historical information. He was the youngest member of the Adat HaNognim (“band of minstrels”), a circle of Hebrew poets founded by Shlomo ben Meshullam Dapiera, with Vidal ben Lavi and Vidal Benveniste among its members. The circle did not last long: several of its members, among them Dapiera, Vidal ben Lavi and Astruc Raimuch, converted to Christianity.
He was present at the disputation of Tortosa in 1413–14, and he wrote many poems to men who took part in it. His collection of poems (diwan) also holds his answer, in rhymed prose, to a letter of Astruc Raimuch of Fraga, a Jew who had converted and tried to prove Christian beliefs, the Trinity among them, from Tanach. Although the letter was not written to him, Bonfed went through its claims one by one and showed that they could not stand. He also lamented the weakening of the Jews of Aragon after the Black Death (the Plague) of 1348, the persecutions of 1391 and the Tortosa disputation, when their numbers fell and leadership passed to less worthy men.
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שלמה בן ראובן בּוֹנָפֵיד היה מאחרוני המשוררים העבריים שפעלו בספרד הנוצרית.
Solomon ben Reuben Bonfed was a Spanish rabbi and poet who lived in Zaragoza.