אבן עזרא

Rav Avraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra (4849/1089–1 Adar I 4924/1164), known simply as the Ibn Ezra and in European sources as Abenezra, was one of the greatest parshanim of Tanach of all the generations — poet, master of dikduk, philosopher, and astronomer of the golden age of Sefarad. Born in Tudela in Spain, he spent his early decades in the great communities of Sefarad, above all Cordoba, given over chiefly to poetry; there he was bound in deep friendship with Rav Yehuda HaLevi. He traveled also through North Africa — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia — and when the kehillot of Spain and the Maghreb were destroyed in the Almohad persecutions, he mourned them one by one in his kinah Ahah Yarad Alei Sefarad.

Manuscripts differ on his years: birth in 4849/1089 or 4852/1092, and petirah on 1 Adar I 4924/1164 or 4927/1167, at seventy-five by either count. The place of his petirah and kever is also disputed — England by the earliest source, Kabul in the Galil by an old burial tradition, or Rome.

Around 4900/1140, in his fifties, he left Sefarad — “the wrath of the oppressors brought me out of the land of Spain,” he wrote — and began the wanderings that filled the rest of his life, carrying the Torah of Sefarad, until then written mostly in Arabic, to the kehillot of Christian Europe in a clear and exact Hebrew. In Italy he passed through Rome, Lucca, Mantua, and Verona — in Mantua he fell deathly ill and vowed that if he recovered he would explain the Torah according to its peshat — and then went on to Provence and France: Béziers, where he wrote Sefer HaShem in honor of the community; Narbonne; and Rouen. In France he became a friend of Rabbeinu Tam, and the two exchanged letters and verses. In 4918/1158 he was in London, where he wrote Iggeret Shabbat and Yesod Mora, on the taamei hamitzvot, for his talmid Rav Yosef ben Yaakov.

Nearly all his sefarim were written on the road. His peirush on the Torah — concise, sharp, holding fast to peshat and to the rules of dikduk — stands among the pillars of parshanut, and his peirushim survive as well on the five Megillot, Yeshayahu, Trei Asar, Tehillim, Iyov, and Daniel. In dikduk he wrote Moznayim, Tzachot, and Safah Berurah, opening the grammar of the chachmei Sefarad to readers of Hebrew, and he rose to the defense of Rav Saadia Gaon against the criticisms of Dunash ben Labrat. He wrote also on cheshbon and the heavens — Sefer HaMispar on arithmetic, Sefer HaIbbur on the calendar, and Keli HaNechoshet on the astrolabe.

He was niftar on a Monday, Rosh Chodesh Adar I, at seventy-five; where, the sources dispute. The earliest witness, Rav Moshe ben Chasdai, wrote within a century that the Jews of England told him the Ibn Ezra had been niftar among them; an old tradition places his kever at Kabul in the Galil, beside Rav Yehuda HaLevi; and others say Rome.