Biography
Judah Leon ben Moses Mosconi, also known as Rabbi Yehudah Leon ben Moshe Mosconi (יהודה משקוני), also called Leo Grech, was a rishon of the fourteenth century who spent most of his life traveling in search of Torah and wisdom. He was born in Ohrid, in today’s North Macedonia, about 1328, and wrote Even HaEzer, a peirush on the Torah commentary of Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra.
He left his home city when he was young, and came to Negroponte, the island of Euboea, where he learned under Rabbi Shemaryah ben Eliyahu HaIkriti. After his teacher passed away he moved on, through Chios, Cyprus and Laodicea in Anatolia, and on to Egypt. On these journeys he met Rabbi Ovadyah HaMitzri, himself a commentator on Ibn Ezra, and learned Arabic and the natural sciences from him, above all astronomy; he wrote that most of what he knew came from this teacher. He traveled on to Morocco, where he was in Marrakesh in 1370, and to Italy, Majorca and Perpignan in southern France. In Perpignan he met Rabbi David ben Yom Tov (Bongoron), and he also met Rabbi Moshe Narboni. He served as court physician to King Peter IV of Aragon.
He knew the works of philosophy in Hebrew and Arabic well, and was drawn most of all to their deepest questions, which led him to Ibn Ezra’s peirush on the Torah. He began writing Even HaEzer about 1361. In the course of his travels he examined some thirty earlier peirushim on Ibn Ezra and judged most of them not as worthy.
He was niftar about 1375. His library was sold in 1377 by his wife’s son from her first marriage; he most likely had no sons of his own.
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Where traditions differ. Some say he left his homeland as a youth and learned under Rabbi Shemaryah before about 1345; others say he left about 1360 because of the wars in the region.
רבי יהודה ליאון משקוני היה תלמיד חכם נודד מתקופת הראשונים, מחבר פירוש אבן העזר על פירוש אבן עזרא לתורה.
Judah Leon ben Moses Mosconi was a Bulgarian Romaniote Jewish scholar and Talmudist born at Ohrid. Owing to the wars which agitated Bulgaria in the 14th century, Mosconi left his native country about 1360. He traveled in all the three continents of the Old World. He was in Chios and Cyprus, in Négropont, in Laodicea, and later in Egypt. He was afterward in Morocco, in Italy, and in France. In Perpignan he made the acquaintance of several scholars, among them Moses Narboni and David Bongoron.
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