Biography
Rav Chasdai Crescas (c. 5100/1340–5171/1411), known as the Rach after his initials, was a rav, posek and leader of Spanish Jewry in the time of the Rishonim, and a philosopher of marked originality. Born in Barcelona to a family of talmidei chachamim — his grandfather was the Talmudist Rav Chasdai ben Yehudah Crescas — he learned his Torah chiefly from Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona, the Ran, in whose beit midrash he also befriended Rav Yitzchak bar Sheshet, the Rivash. In English sources he is called Hasdai Crescas.
In 5138/1378 he was imprisoned together with his teacher on a false accusation, an early sign of the storm to come. In the gezeirot of 5151/1391, which swept destruction through the Jewish communities of Spain, his only son was killed. He had by then moved to Zaragoza, where he was appointed rav of the kehillah — a standing given legal force by the crown — and from there he labored to rebuild Spanish Jewry after the massacres, drawing on his close ties to the royal house and gathering funds to restore the ravaged quarters. He remained the most senior Jew at court until his passing.
The works that carry his name were written after that bitter year. His chief work, Or Hashem (“The Light of Hashem”), completed in 5170/1410, examines and takes issue with the teachings of Aristotle and those who followed them, and was planned as the first part of a larger work, Ner Elokim, that he did not complete. Around 5158/1398 he wrote a treatise in Catalan setting out and refuting the central principles of Christianity, preserved in a Hebrew translation by Rav Yosef ibn Shem-Tov; it became one of the important works of the Jewish side of that debate. He also left a Pesach derashah and a letter to the kehillah of Avignon recounting the events of 5151/1391. Among his talmidim was Rav Yosef Albo, author of the Sefer HaIkkarim. He was niftar in Zaragoza in 5171/1411.
Crescas is a Judaeo-Catalan family name, prominent in the former Crown of Aragon. Crescas is a common name among Jews of southern France and Catalonia. There have been a number of scholars and rabbis sharing that surname, including:Abiathar Crescas, a 15th-century Jewish physician and astrologer, doctor to King John II of Aragon (1458–79) Astruc Don Crescas Meshullam ben Machir, Don Bonet Crescas de Lunel, French scholar who settled at Perpignan, where he died in 1306 Hasdai Crescas, a Catalan Jewish philosopher, halakhist Israel ben Joseph Halevi Crescas Caslari, known as "Crescas Caslari", an Aragonese-French Jewish physician and poet Mordecai En Crescas of Orange Don Crescas Vidal of Perpignan (fr) Vidal de Caslar Crescas
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