יצחק אברבנאל

Don Yitzchak Abarbanel (5197/1437–5268/1508), known in English sources also as Abravanel, was a commentator on Tanach, a Torah philosopher, and a statesman who stood among the leaders of Iberian Jewry in the generation of the expulsion. He was born in Lisbon to an ancient Sephardic family of nobility whose tradition traced its descent to Dovid HaMelech. He learned Torah under Rav Yosef Chayun, the rav of Lisbon, and philosophy under Rav Yosef ibn Shem Tov; already in his youth he wrote Ateret Zekeinim. Afonso V of Portugal raised him to treasurer of the kingdom, an office his father Don Yehudah had held before him, and he turned his position and wealth to the good of his brothers: when the Portuguese took Arzila in Morocco in 5231/1471, he gathered funds to redeem 250 Jewish captives and saw to their needs for two years.

After Afonso’s passing he was falsely accused of plotting against the new king; warned in time, he fled in 5243/1483 to Toledo in Castile, and his fortune was seized. There he returned to his pen — within six months he completed his perush on Yehoshua, Shoftim, and Shmuel — until Ferdinand and Isabella called him to manage the royal finances, which he did for eight years. When the decree of expulsion went out in 5252/1492 he labored to have it annulled and offered the crown great sums, but the gezeirah stood, and he went out into galut with his people.

In Naples he served the king, who had opened his gates to the exiles; when the French took the city in 5255/1495 his possessions were plundered and sefarim of his were lost, among them a work on nevuah. He accompanied the young king Alfonso to Messina, passed to Corfu — where he found a copy of his unfinished perush on Devarim — and settled in 5256/1496 in Monopoli, where he completed Zevach Pesach on the Haggadah on erev Pesach and wrote Nachalat Avot on Pirkei Avot at the request of his son Shmuel. From 5263/1503 he lived in Venice, where the Republic drew on his experience in its trade dealings with Portugal.

His perush on the Torah and on Neviim opens every section with a list of questions and resolves them in a long, flowing maamar, and each sefer receives a comprehensive introduction on its content and its author. Beside these stand Rosh Amanah on the ikkarei emunah, a perush on the Moreh Nevuchim, and the three sefarim of geulah written to lift the spirits of the exiles — Maayanei HaYeshuah on Daniel, Mashmia Yeshuah, and Yeshuot Meshicho. He was niftar in Venice at seventy-one and was buried in Padua beside Rav Yehudah Mintz; the beit hachaim was destroyed in the fighting a year later, and the place of his kever is no longer known.