יצחק קנפנטון

Rav Yitzchak ben Yaakov Canpanton (5120/1360–1 Tammuz 5223/1463), known to the chroniclers as the Gaon of Castile, was the great rosh yeshiva of Spanish Jewry in the generation before the expulsion — rosh yeshiva, mekubal, physician, and mathematician in an age when Talmudic learning in Spain had fallen low. His father Rav Yaakov was a talmid of Rav Chasdai Crescas. Rav Yitzchak stood at the head of a great yeshiva in Zamora in northwest Spain, and the chroniclers of the generations — Rav Avraham Zacuto in the Sefer Yuchasin, Immanuel Aboab, and Rav Yosef ben Tzaddik — all crown him with the title gaon. Zacuto, who merited to see him as a child of six or seven, wrote that one who beheld his face was as one who greets the Shechinah.

From his beit midrash came the gedolim of the generation of the expulsion: Rav Yitzchak Aboab, who inherited the title Gaon of Castile; Rav Yitzchak de Leon; Rav Yitzchak Karo; Rav Shmuel Valensi; Rav Yosef ben Avraham Chayun; and Rav Shimon Maimi — and some count Rav Yitzchak Arama among his talmidim as well.

One sefer of his has reached us: Darchei HaTalmud, also called Darchei HaGemara — the classic methodology of learning Gemara b’iyun. Its foundations: every word and letter of the Gemara and of the Rishonim, above all Rashi and the Ramban, is exactly measured and must be accounted for; a pirush must sit in the language without dochak; and the sevarot of the sugya’s makshan and tartzan must each emerge straight and strong. This derech ha’iyun was carried onward by his talmidim and was practiced in the yeshiva of Rav Yaakov Berav in Tzfat. First printed in Constantinople around 5280/1520, the sefer has been reprinted from Venice and Amsterdam down to Yerushalayim editions in our own day. Later mekubalim bring kabbalah traditions in his name, though his teachings in kabbalah were not preserved in writing. He was niftar at the age of 103 at Peñafiel in Spain.