יצחק עראמה

Rav Yitzchak Arama (c. 5180/1420–5255/1495), known for his sefer as the Baal HaAkeidah, was among the chachamim of Sefarad in the generation of the expulsion — a darshan and a commentator on the Mikra, known in English sources as Isaac ben Moses Arama. He was born to Rav Moshe Arama ben Meir, of a family whose records place them in Aragon. From his youth he was occupied with Talmud and halachah, traveling with his brother Rav Yaakov to the yeshiva of Rav Yitzchak Canpanton in Zamora, where he later opened a yeshiva of his own.

Invited by the kehillah of Tarragona to open a yeshiva in their city, he found their poverty and the weight of the taxes made it impossible to sustain, and he moved on to a nearby place he calls Berga. There, far from the centers of Torah, he began the first edition of Akeidat Yitzchak out of the derashot he was asked to say on Shabbat, and opened a correspondence in Torah with Rav Yitzchak Abarbanel, then in Toledo. About 5240/1480 he came to Calatayud, which held a larger kehillah, talmidei chachamim to learn with, and manuscripts he had not had before, and he sat there in the rabbanut until the expulsion, reworking his great sefer. He took up the affairs of the kehillah as well, demanding the closing of the licensed houses of sin, holding that an aveirah made into an institution is graver than one that is not.

Akeidat Yitzchak is built on the parshiyot in one hundred and five she’arim, each divided in three: a question of religious thought bound to the parshah; a derashah opening with a pasuk joined to a chapter of Tehillim or a midrash of Chazal; and the parshah explained in questions and answers. Through it he brings Rav Saadia Gaon, the Kuzari, the ibn Ezra and the Rambam, and much from the Zohar, not yet printed in his day. Philosophy he held useful and even necessary to the Torah, but he set it in its place: let the maidservant serve as far as her hand reaches, and let the mistress remain on her throne. Beside it he wrote Chazut Kashah, which answers the missionary sermons the Jews were then compelled to hear; a commentary on the Five Megillot; and Yad Avshalom on Mishlei.

The sefer was quoted by Rav Yitzchak Abarbanel and by the rabbanim of eastern Europe, among them the Rema and the Maharsha. When the Jews were expelled from Sefarad in 5252/1492 he went out with his son Rav Meir to Italy and reached Naples, where the sicknesses of the wanderings brought a plague among the exiles and they were forced to sit apart outside the city. His son Rav Meir Arama later led the Aragonese kehillah of Salonika; among the family’s descendants was Rav Yitzchak Arama of Tzfat, one of the founders of the renewed yishuv in Teveria (Israel).